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.
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.
A granite monument with a crumbling marble statue on top; it was probably allegorical, but one of the arms would have held the key to the allegory, and both are gone. If old Pa Pitt had to guess, he would suggest that this was a statue of Hope, with the left arm holding up an anchor and the right pointing heavenward. This is certainly a good demonstration of the different aging properties of the two kinds of stone.
The statue may date from 1878, the year the cemetery opened, when the first Martin was buried here; old Pa Pitt suspects that the base is later, replacing an earlier base that had been damaged or become illegible. The individual gravestones in front of the monument are matching in style, and look like the style of the early twentieth century, though they include dates back to 1878. Father Pitt’s guess is that the original base bore inscriptions for all the Martins and Aulls buried up to the time of its replacement.
