Pittsburgh Cemeteries

One of the most picturesquely mysterious-looking structures in the city of Pittsburgh: we can imagine it as the setting for an atmospheric scene in an old-fashioned Universal horror movie.

This must have been one of the earliest interments in the cemetery, which opened in 1849, the year Henry Donnelly died. It is perhaps the most striking in-ground mausoleum in Pittsburgh. In the early and middle nineteenth century, these mausoleums cut into a hillside were the usual resting places of the rich; they are most often referred to as “mausoleums,” but sometimes as “vaults,” and perhaps it would be best to use that term, reserving “mausoleum” for a free-standing building. They fell out of favor by the 1870s or so, and proper mausoleums came into fashion.

The cross has gone missing from this typical Slavic tombstone. The inscription is partly Slovenian and partly English; we suspect that “OUR FATHER” came with the stone, and the rest of the inscription was made to order.

Broken but still mostly legible, except where the stone has flaked away toward the right. We are almost certain of the surname “Henry,” because the stone lies near several other members of the Henry family. Here is how we reconstruct the inscription:

This epitaph, such as it is, seems to be an original composition; Father Pitt has not found it anywhere else on the Web. The spelling “deaughter” is not unusual for Western Pennsylvania tombstones.

Leopold Vilsack was an early partner in Iron City Brewing, a wise investment that earned him this extravagant Romanesque mausoleum.

A typical zinc monument in most respects, except that it bears no inscriptions other than the name “STEWART” on the base. Instead, the various Stewarts have individual stone markers. Since one of the attractions of a zinc monument was that it could bear a number of inscriptions, thus saving the expense of individual markers, we suspect that there may have been a Stewart family argument over the Stewart family plot.

Autumn landscapes in St. Mary’s Cemetery, Lawrenceville.

William Sheraden was the founder of the Sheraden borough that later became the Sheraden neighborhood of Pittsburgh. We have featured this monument before, but not with such fine fall colors in the background.

A matched pair of monuments in a late version of the romantic style that was popular in the middle 1800s. August Abbott was born in Saxony, but his inscription is in English, suggesting that his family—unlike many German immigrant families—Americanized in one generation.

The monuments are signed by the stonecutters, and the signatures are different.

Boggs & Lindsey, if we read correctly.

Alex. Boggs—again if we read correctly. Perhaps Lindsey retired or died.