Pittsburgh Cemeteries

Tag: Early Settlers

  • White Family Plot, Oak Spring Cemetery

    Oak Spring Cemetery in Canonsburg has a number of slab stones elevated into table-like structures—an arrangement common in some old cemeteries. Obviously the props under these stones are newer than the stones, but they may have replaced older ones that were original. Old Pa Pitt simply doesn’t know whether these slab stones were always elevated or whether graveyard caretakers elevated them later, when they began to vanish under the ground.

    SACRED
    to the
    MEMORY OF
    SAMUEL WHITE
    Who departed this life
    May 12th 1837, In the
    82nd year of his
    age.

    Samuel White, Sr. was a veteran of the Revolutionary War. He married a considerably younger woman named Mary:

    SACRED
    to the
    MEMORY
    of
    MARY WHITE
    wife of
    SAMUEL WHITE
    DIED
    JUNE 12th, 1841 in the
    76th year of her age.

    In the short time between the death of Samuel in 1837 and the death of Mary in 1841, a new fashion in tombstones had swept over Western Pennsylvania. Samuel’s is a simple slab stone of the sort that had been made here since the late 1700s, but Mary’s is in what Father Pitt calls the “poster style,” with each line in a different style of lettering, like an advertising poster of the same era.

  • Jane and James McBurney Tombstones, Robinson Run Cemetery

    Instantly recognizable as the work of the Master of the Curly G, these two stones have inscriptions beginning simply “the grave of”—a curious family tradition also observed by Elisabeth Moss, who was buried in the same plot and is probably related. Note the awkward and rather embarrassing correction of the name “McBur[n]ey” above.

  • Gideon Miller Tombstone, Prospect Cemetery

    This is one of the earlier burials that were moved from nearby churchyards to Prospect Cemetery in Brackenridge, and it is probably the most artistic early-settler tombstone Father Pitt has yet found in this area. The style is a close and extraordinarily skillful imitation of nineteenth-century decorative penmanship styles, so we shall call this craftsman the Master of the Brackenridge Flourishes. And although Father Pitt admits to using the title “Master” a bit facetiously for some of the other local craftsmen, it is entirely deserved here.

    In Memory of
    GIDEON MILLER
    Who departed this life,
    February –th, 1820
    in the –th Year
    [Of his Age]

    [Epitaph]

    The stone may be later than its 1820 date, but it is almost certainly not later than the 1840s. A matching stone beside it, obviously by the same artist, is too badly damaged to read.

  • Richard Coulter Tombstone, Bethany Cemetery

    IN
    memory of
    RICHARD COULTER
    who departed this life
    May 4th 1821, Aged 22 years
    ———
    Long, long expected home, and lo:
    Home he has scarcely come,
    Till he is summon’d and must go
    To his eternal home.

    This is a fairly well-preserved tombstone from nearly two centuries ago, and that is of course interesting enough. The most interesting thing, however, is the poem, which is from a collection of poems by the very obscure James Meikle, this one being headed “On a gentleman who died after his return to his family from foreign parts, after an absence of twelve years.” The poem itself is dated 1768, but it was kept in manuscript until after the poet’s death in 1799. The only edition of the posthumous poems of Meikle Father Pitt has been able to find is one published in Pittsburgh in 1819, two years before the death of Richard Coulter; so that we know with near certainty that whoever specified the epitaph on this stone had read it in this particular book.

  • Master of the Curlicue I in Canonsburg

    Oak Spring Cemetery

    In memory of
    James R. Sinclair
    who departed this life
    Jan. the 21, AD 1843.
    aged 5 months.

    Two early-settler graveyards at opposite ends of Canonsburg have tombstones inscribed by some of the same local craftsmen. One of them, who worked in the 1830s and 1840s, is very easy to identify by three obvious quirks of his style:

    1. He writes almost exclusively in italic letters.
    2. He begins each inscription with a very distinctive capital I with curlicues.
    3. He makes the abbreviation “AD” into a single character, with the right-hand stroke of the A serving as the left-hand stroke of the D.

    In addition, if you paid him well enough, he was capable of some fine decorative folk-art reliefs.

    The Giffin family, buried in Speer Spring Cemetery, employed him almost exclusively:

    In memory of
    ROBERT H. GIFFIN
    who departed this life
    in the 19 year of his
    —age—
    April 22 AD 1842

    In memory of
    ANDREW GIFFIN
    who departed this life
    in the 53d year of his
    —age—
    Aug. 12, AD 1841.

    In
    memory of
    Samuel Webster Giffin
    who departed this life
    Sept. 18th, AD 1838, aged
    9 months and 25 days
    —

    In
    memory of
    ELIZABETH McCOY
    Consort of Andrew H. Giffin
    who departed this life
    May the 15th AD 1842, in
    the 36th year of her age
    — — —

    Following his usual method of naming anonymous craftsmen after a distinguishing characteristic of their work, Father Pitt will call this artist the Master of the Curlicue I.

    To round out the Giffin family plot, we include one broken tombstone done by a different craftsman:

    IN
    Memory of
    ANDREW RAY
    GIFFIN, who—
    departed this life,
    Febr. 11th, 1836
    in the 13th year of
    his age.