Pittsburgh Cemeteries

Tag: McKee

  • McKee Shaft, Union Dale Cemetery

    McKee shaft

    A tall shaft topped by an urn. The very Victorian design includes elaborate monograms and ample space for inscriptions, but no inscriptions were ever engraved. Instead, the McKees have individual headstones around the monument. Eleanor McKee died in 1877, and that may be the date of the monument as well; but from the style old Pa Pitt might guess that it is later, perhaps from 1892, when Eleanor’s husband John, the family patriarch, was buried. They had two children who died before either of them. All the McKees were buried with sentimentally illiterate rhymed epitaphs. The worst is for Samuel Sterrett McKee, who was born in 1861 and died in 1868:

    CEASE DEAR PARENTS CEASE THY WEEPING
    O’RE THE GRAVE WHERE I AM SLEEPING
    FOR E’RE I LEFT MY HOME BELOW,
    THE ANGELS WERE BECKONING ME TO GO.

    Father Pitt counts two bad spellings and one grammatical error; he has given up the punctuation for lost.

    Urn

  • McKee Monument, Homewood Cemetery

    “Youth and Age at the Tree of Life” is the title of this relief. It is rare to find a work of art with a title in a cemetery; we wish the artist had signed it as well.

  • McKee Monument, Allegheny Cemetery

    This Gothic shaft no longer bears any legible inscriptions except the name McKee in a shield halfway up the shaft and, added later, the name Dravo on the base. For genealogical purposes it is a disappointment, but as a picturesque accessory in the landscape it is probably even more delightful in its worn state than it was when it was new. It was probably put up in the 1870s; the plot owner was one Samuel McKee.