Pittsburgh Cemeteries

Tag: Revolutionary War Veterans

  • John and Lette S. Hall Tombstones, Union Cemetery

    John Hall tombstone

    John Hall was a Revolutionary War private. The year on his stone is crusted over with lichens; from the style of the stone, Father Pitt might guess it was carved in the 1820s.

    John Hall tombstone
    John Hall marker

    This marker probably has birth and death dates on a last line invisible under the lawn. When he returns to the cemetery, old Pa Pitt will try to remember to pull away the growth.

    Lette S. Hall

    Lette S. Hall, probably John’s wife, is buried next to him. We believe we are reading the stone correctly, but some erosion in the middle makes us a little uncertain. She died September 11, 1836; we cannot read her age with an certainty. It might be 54, in which case she would have been during the Revolution and might have been an unmarried daughter instead of a wife.

  • Joseph and Jane Porter Tombstones, Union Cemetery

    Joseph Porter tombstone with Union Church in the background

    Joseph Porter served as a private in the Revolutionary War, perhaps beginning when he was a teenager. When he died in 1843 at the good old age of 83, he was given a hand-crafted tombstone by a traditional local craftsman—a craft that would soon die out even way out here in the wilds of Robinson Township. Unfortunately much of the inscription is obliterated, but the church has taken care to mark all the graves of its Revolutionary War veterans.

    Marker for Private Joseph Porter
    Joseph Porter tombstone

    When Joseph’s wife Jane died in 1857 at the age of 86, the old hand-crafted stones were out of style, and all the old craftsmen were retired or dead. She was given a tombstone in what old Pa Pitt calls the “poster style,” popular in the middle nineteenth century, which mixes different styles of lettering after the manner of posters of the same period.

    Jane Porter tombstone

  • David Philips Tombstone, Peters Creek Baptist Church Cemetery

    Captain Philips, who fought in the Revolution, lived to see the fiftieth anniversary of American independence. He is identified as Revd. Philips on his tombstone, and he is buried in the Philips family plot, which is still separated from the hoi polloi by a metal rail. From this one stone we identify a new Master in our collection of folk artists who produced tombstones here two centuries ago: the Master of the Curly Numerals, identifiable by the curled decorations on his numbers. Note also the fine curly script of “The Revd.”

  • Philips Plot, Peters Creek Baptist Church Cemetery

    This plot includes the tombstone of the Rev. David Philips, minister and Revolutionary War captain; clearly it belongs to a family of some influence, and it is still kept separate from the rest of the cemetery by a metal railing of comparatively recent vintage (which is to say within the past century).

  • Henry Huls Snr. Tombstone, Peters Creek Baptist Church Cemetery

    A newly identified work by the Master of the Robinson Run Reliefs, all of whose trademarks are visible here: the thistle decoration flanked by flowers, the fan patterns in the corners, and even the curled tail on the top of the lower-case g in age. Henry Huls was a private in the Revolutionary War; he is identified here as having served in the Washington County Militia, but that could only have been in the last few months of the war, since Washington County itself was formed in 1781.