GOODMAN Y. COULTER, Jr.
Died in N. Orleans
March 1, 1851
interred here
March 21, 1851
in his 21 year.
—
To the young
He being dead yet speaketh.
A good example of the style of the 1850s; it must have looked very modern beside the traditional tombstones of ten years earlier. “He being dead yet speaketh” is a quotation from Hebrews 11:4.
This is the churchyard of the Mount Pisgah Presbyterian Church in Green Tree. The little cemetery itself straddles the line between Green Tree and the Westwood neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and it is a curious fact that the section of the cemetery in Green Tree is neatly maintained, but the section in Pittsburgh is overgrown and forgotten—although some attempt had been made to clear some of the larger bushes from it when Father Pitt visited. Doubtless the true explanation of the phenomenon is that the overgrown section is not visible from the church, and thus can be allowed to go to ruin without making a spectacle of itself every Sunday.
Tombstones litter the forest in the overgrown section. Much of the ground cover is Vinca minor, which is often called Cemetery Vine because it was such a popular planting in old cemeteries.
In this section were some old family plots fenced with iron rails; we can still identify the Graham family plot, below:
Note, again, the luxuriant growth of Vinca minor.
There are tombstones here that go back to the 1840s at least, but most of the older ones are illegible, if they can be found at all. Here, however, is a legible tombstone from 1842 (forgive the strong backlighting):
SACRED
to the memory
OF
GEORGE P. RAMSEY
Who departed this life
July 27th 1842.
In the 54th year of his age.
—
Remember man as you pass by
As you are now so once was I;
Repent in time, make no delay,
For in a moment I was call’d away.
The epitaph begins as one well-known funerary poem and ends as another; the last line has five feet instead of four. But it is still a powerful sentiment.
In spite of the general neglect, someone cares enough to see that all the identifiable veterans have flags for their graves, so that little flashes of red, white, and blue light up the floor of the woods. Here is the grave of Corporal David Aston, a Civil War soldier whose birth and death dates are not mentioned:
In spite of the damaged statue, this is an unusually beautiful monument, and the inscriptions are very good examples of German stonecutting in Pittsburgh.
Georg Kirner
Born Hoeffingen, Baden,
April 17, 1831.
Died in Pittsburg
May 12, 1872.
The language does not seem to be standard German (note, for example, the spelling “Maÿ” rather than “Mai”). Is it some Alemannic dialect? Perhaps someone more familiar with German can help old Pa Pitt by identifying the dialect and translating the other inscriptions:
So leb denn wohl so zieh dahin
Die Erde wartet dein
Geh in des Todes stille Ruhe-Kammerein
Shlaf eine sanfte süse Ruh’
Die Hand der Liebe deckt dich zu,
In his transcription, Father Pitt has made the assumption that a horizontal line over an N or M doubles the letter.
Jeh empfand an deiner Seite
Lebensfroh der Erde Glück
Jinner geh mir dein Geleite
Einen frohen augenblick.
The base of the statue is marked “Mein Gatte” (“My Husband).” The statue is probably ordered from a monument-dealer’s catalogue, with the simple Gothic letters already on the base. They are not nearly as elegant as the beautiful lettering by the local stonecutter.
A grave of a girl who did not quite live to eleven years old. The Nixon family was prominent in the congregation of Old St. Luke’s, and this is one of the more elaborate memorials in the churchyard. The epitaph, which takes up both sections of the base of the headstone, seems to be original, not one of those circulating funerary poems we usually find on graves of the late 1800s: an Internet search finds the poem mentioned only in connection with this particular monument—transcribed in a text tour of the burial ground by Mr. Charles Nixon, and now here.
Her form is missing from its place,
And will not come for calling;
God only calleth back his own,
Why should our tears be falling?
The echo of the childish notes,
Have ceased their happy ringing.
We cannot catch a sound that floats,
From where she now is singing.
A marble monument in what we might call folk-romantic style. The recording angel has been eroded by pollution and time, but it does not look as though it was ever a very skillful carving, Nevertheless, the whole effect of the monument is very pleasing.
The epitaph (a poem commonly found on monuments of the era) reads:
Dear mother, rest in quiet sleep,
While friends in sorrow o’er thee weep,
And here their heartfelt offerings bring
And near thy grave thy requiem sing.
