This is an unusual Gothic shaft, probably dating from about 1850, when Sarah Pennock was buried here. There may have been inscriptions, but the raised letters spelling “Pennock” are the only legible marking now. Pennocks continued to be buried in this plot until 1929.
There is a bit of a mystery to the Samuel Montgomery monument: it gives the date of death as 1844, which is a year before the Allegheny Cemetery opened. Cemetery records say that Mr. Montgomery died in 1847. A close look at the base suggests that it might be a sort of marble palimpsest; the inscription is quite clear, and it may be a replacement for an inscription that was almost completely effaced. The stonecutter may have misread what was left of the earlier inscription. UPDATE: Commenter Lisa Speranza (see below) points out that a number of burials were moved here from other sites when the Allegheny Cemetery opened, which gives us another possible explanation, though it does not resolve the difference between the inscription and the cemetery records.
The Maria Smith is a quite elaborately and romantically mixed metaphor; a woman (now headless) standing, perhaps weeping, next to a broken classical column, sheltered in a Gothic alcove.
A particularly fine Gothic monument most notable for the absolutely splendid lettering on all four sides. The verses are from Psalm 34.
The first burial in this mausoleum seems to have been John Duncan Evans in 1921, and we can take that as a good guess at the date of the mausoleum. The style is distinctive: it is more secular Gothic—the Gothic of city gates and guildhalls—than the usual ecclesiastically inspired Gothic found in Pittsburgh mausoleums.
A very busy Gothic design with a praying angel in an alcove and a crucifix on top. Nevertheless, though Father Pitt cannot justify it intellectually, it is still his feeling that the form of the monument is pleasingly balanced.
