Pittsburgh Cemeteries

Tag: Relief

  • Morgan Tombstones, Bethany Cemetery

    In Memory of
    BILLINGSLEY MORGAN
    Who departed this life
    [Marc]h the 7th 1836
    [in the —]th year of his age

    Here is a pair of tombstones by the same extraordinary folk artist—and, because he actually signed one of them, we know his name: H. Savage. Both are badly damaged, but they form a pair side by side, so old Pa Pitt guesses that the illegible stone marks the resting place of Mrs. Billingsley Morgan. Unlike most Western Pennsylvania tombstones of the 1830s, these are handsomely carved in relief, much like the famous New England tombstones of the colonial era, but without the flying skulls.

    Even this unusually artistic and ambitious stonecutter did not sketch out his lettering before beginning the inscription, so that he ran out of space for the name “MORGAN” on Billingsley Morgan’s tombstone.

  • James McKown Tombstone, Bethany Cemetery

    The 1840s were a time when the old art of tombstone-cutting was dying out, and new styles came into vogue—styles that, in many ways, imitated the styles of engravings of the era. Here is a good example: a large tombstone from 1848 that looks very much like an engraved title page of the same era. It no longer has the handmade look of even the best local craftsmen’s work, and it is executed in more expensive stone that turned out to be much less permanent. With some difficulty, we can make out most of the inscription except the epitaph:

    JAMES McKOWN
    DIED
    Feb. 25, 1848
    In the 60th year
    of his age

    The surname “McKown” is damaged, but there are several other McKowns buried in this graveyard, so there is little question about the reading.

  • Lewis Grave, Allegheny Cemetery

    A certain strain of romanticism is common in monuments of the 1800s, but few go to such extremes of romanticism as this. The profusion of vine-covered vines overwhelms the composition so much that at first it is hard to make any visual sense of the thing. How many different kinds of vines can you identify? Father Pitt finds at least passionflowers, morning glories, and ivy, and the top may be roses, although the erosion makes it hard to tell. If the enormous urn-flower at the foot end came from a vine, it was a vine that wants to eat you.

    If there was ever an inscription, it is illegible now; but since the monument occupies a space in the Lewis family plot, we may presume that it belongs to some Lewis or other.

  • Crecencia Lutz Monument, St. Mary’s Cemetery, Ross Township

    This towering monument is in a style all its own. What shall we call it? Pittsburgh German Rococo? The inscription, cut by a local stonecutter (a tradition that survived among the Germans here decades longer than it did among English-speakers) quotes from Job: in the words of the King James Version, “Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass.“ The German translation of the first line would be more closely rendered as “Short are the days of man,” which is a more striking sentiment that seems tailor-made for an epitaph.

    The relief is a bit elementary, like something that would have been turned out by the second-best student in a community-college sculpture class. The overall composition, however, is unforgettable. The blackness of industry has only added to the impression that this monument is something colossal and important.

  • Magdalena Pfeil Monument, South Side Cemetery

    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.