The edge of the cemetery is right up against a city alley, giving this romantically eroded monument a less-than-romantic location. Ludwig Biller died in 1903, and that is probably the date of this monument. “Marble” monuments like this one were out of fashion in the high-rent cemeteries by then, but they seem to have been produced much later for the ethnic cemeteries.
We also have some older pictures of the Nickel plot.
A family plot of matching graves that is missing one important tenant, or at least the inscription for him.
Lina B. Nickel, who died in 1916 at the age of 29 or 30, is buried here under an inscription identifying her as “MY WIFE.” But the matching headstone is blank, suggesting that Mr. Nickel (whose name was almost certainly William; see below) is not buried here. A husband in mourning might think that of course he would never marry again and would be buried next to his late wife when he died, but a year or two or five go by, and he begins to take a more realistic view of the rest of his life. Or it is quite possible that the whole matching set was ordered when the two sons died in 1912.
A standard flower-dropping mourner. The wrists are always a weak point in this design.
Two young sons, William Jr. and John, died in 1912, very probably of the same childhood disease. From the name William Jr. we can deduce the father’s name.
This angel might also have been dropping flowers, as we can guess from its downward gaze and the eroded bouquet.
A towering pile of eclecticism topped by a curiously amateurish statue, this is by far the grandest monument in this little Lutheran cemetery in Mount Oliver. It marks a family plot that still retains its original stone fencing.
The eyes make this wreath-bearing mourner look as though someone just stuck a pin in her.
Louis Knoepp was just forty years old when he died and left this thing to remember him by.
He rests under this headstone next to his father and mother.
In a cemetery of mostly poor East Europeans (plus Andy Warhol), this Sacred Heart statue is one of the grandest monuments. The earliest burial here was in 1934, and that may be the date of the monument.
The earliest Laughlin buried here died in 1882, but old Pa Pitt would guess that the family monument might be about a decade later. It is a sober classical base with a statue of Hope carrying the compact portable anchor she sometimes travels with.
