An octagonal marble shaft of the sort that was very popular in the middle 1800s.
THOMAS H. HAYS
DIED
MARCH 11, 1855,
IN THE 51 YEAR
OF HIS AGE.
SARAH STEWART HAYS
DIED JULY 16, 1860,
AGED 54 YEARS.
On this side, two young soldiers who died in the Civil War:
CHARLES T. HAYS,
CO. C. 23. REGT. PA. VOLS.
DIED NOV. 19, 1862,
AT GEORGETOWN, D. C..,
IN THE 20 YEAR OF HIS AGE
GEORGE S. HAYS,
—- REGT. G. T. (?) VOLS.
DIED OCT 11., 1863(?)
AT MARTINSBURG, VA.
IN THE 23 YEAR OF HIS AGE
A marble shaft in the style of the middle 1800s. The inscriptions are mostly legible, except for Jane Shepherd’s, which was probably the last added:
JOHN SHEPHERD
BORN IN IRELAND
DIED APR. 5, 1851
AGED 50 YEARS
JANE
WIFE OF
JOHN SHEPHERD
BORN ———-
DIED — 17, 1877
AGED — YEARS
JOHN, JR.
SON OF
JOHN & JANE SHEPHERD
BORN DEC. 16, 1826
DIED FEB. 3, 1862
AGED 26 YEARS
The younger John Shepherd died at the age of 26 during the Civil War, and it is natural to wonder whether he was killed in battle; but since no mention is made of service or sacrifice, he may have died of natural causes.
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.
If an illustrator wanted to draw a typical cemetery monument of the middle 1800s, it would look like this. Rich but not extravagantly ornate, these shafts were popular because they easily direct the family to the plot, and they have abundant surface for inscriptions, meaning that one expensive monument can take the place of any number of tombstones, an expense that adds up over the years as scarlet fever and cholera take their toll.
Unfortunately, the material—limestone or marble—erodes over the decades, so that the inscriptions become illegible after a while. Our readers are welcome to try their hands at reading the inscription for James M. Henry below, but poor old Pa Pitt gave up. The inscription may remember a child who was born in 1831 and died in 1837, but Father Pitt is not willing to stand by that reading.
This truly monumental monument is the tallest private memorial in the cemetery; only the Civil War monument is taller. It is nevertheless a monument-dealer’s stock item; an identical monument can be found in Allegheny Cemetery. It marks the family plot of the Gormleys, whose patriarch was named James for several generations, until the last James Gormley was finally buried under the epitaph “THE LAST OF THE LINE.”
