Pittsburgh Cemeteries

This still-splendid Gothic headstone has eroded to the point where the name is illegible, at least in this light. We can just make out “Hier ruhet in Gott” as the first line, and at the bottom a birth date of 1829 (or perhaps 1828) and a death date of 1880. On the base is an epitaph that might almost be legible in different light.

This is almost certainly a marble pedestal for a large urn, now missing. By the style it looks as though this monument dates from about the time Katharina Wilbert died in 1875, which is a quarter-century before the foundation of the cemetery; so old Pa Pitt suspects it was moved here from another site. German inscriptions, common elsewhere, are unusual in the upper-middle-class Mount Lebanon Cemetery.

KATHARINA F.
WILBERT
NÉE HAAS
BORN APRIL 15, 1832
DIED SEPTEMBER 24, 1875

HERE
RESTETH IN GOD
CHRISTINA WEGL
WAS BORN 23 MAY 18—
DIED 23 DEC. 1811

[The birth date is obscured in the picture. Sorry about that.]

Is “amateur” the word we are looking for? There are tombstones in the Brush Creek Cemetery that are remarkable works of folk art—and then there are these, some of which appear to have been made by craftsmen who were quite good at scratching letters in stone, but none of which seem to rise to the level of professional stonecutting.

There were a fair number of Germans among the early settlers. Some of the families have some of their tombstones in English and others in German. Father Pitt earnestly solicits corrections to his German translations.

J. W.
B. 1718
D. 1802

The plaque gives the name of this Revolutionary War veteran as John Wagle; he is buried near Christina Wegl, and Wagle and Wegl are almost certainly different ways of spelling the same name.

IN
MEMORY
OF
PHILIP SMITH
HE WAS BORN 1743
AND DIED 1824
AGED 76

HERE LIES
LUDWIG KAEMMERER
DIED JANUARY
21ST 1808 AGED
90 YEARS

Old Pa Pitt is assuming that the line over the M indicates a doubled letter.

HERE LIES
MAGDALENA
KAEMMERIN DIED
JUNE 12th IN THE
YEAR 1794 AGED 26

If this was installed when Magdalena died, then this is one of the earliest legible tombstones in the area.

IN
MEMORY
OF
LUDWIG
KEMERER Junr. HE
WAS BORN AD 1749
DEPARDET THIS
LIFE 1817 AGE —

This seems to be the work of the same stonecutter—perhaps a family member—who did the two German stones above. Note the different spelling of “Kemerer” in English.

HERE LIES
J. CONRAD SCHIDLER
HE & ELISABETH HIS
WIFE BORE 10
CHILDREN HIS PARENTS
ANDREAS & MARGARET
HE DIED APRIL 20th
1796 AGED 58 YEARS
Text John Chap. II V. 25

PAUL EBERHART

ELISABETH
LINSENBIGLER

Since Roman times, the inverted torch has been a symbol of death. Here are two examples from the Smithfield East End Cemetery, in both of which we note that the torch keeps burning upside-down in a most unlikely manner. Both couples have German names, both were probably members of the same Reformed congregation, and the stones are nearly contemporary and side by side; but we note that one of them is English and one is German—an indication of how thoroughly bilingual the more prosperous parts of the German community in Pittsburgh were at the beginning of the twentieth century.

A splendid bilingual zinc monument—German on one side, English on the other. As usual with zinc monuments, it is as legible now as it was when it was put up. This is style no. 156 from the Monumental Bronze Company, with an interesting choice of panel inserts.

Father Pitt was not able to find this poem anywhere on line. His attempt at a translation follows the transcription, but anyone who knows German better is invited to correct it:

Liebe Eltern ich muss scheiden,
Denn mein Jesus ruft mir zu;
Nun erlost von allem Leiden,
Gönnet mir die susse Ruh.

Tröstet euch, wir seh’n uns wieder,
Dort in jener Herrlichkeit,
Singet ihm die frohen Lieder,
Bleibet doch mit Gott vereint.

Dear parents, I must depart,
For my Jesus calls to me;
Spared by good fortune from all suffering,
He allows me sweet repose.

Be comforted; we shall meet again,
There in that glory,
Sing joyful songs to him,
Linger still united with God.

A bilingual zinc or “white bronze” monument for a native of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (now part of Thuringia): English on one side, German on the other. Unusually it gives us two dates: the date of death (1877) and the date the monument was erected (1880).

Kisselbach is a very small town: Wikipedia gives its current population as 586.

The epitaph seems to be from an old folk song. Father Pitt appends his own attempt at a translation, but anyone who knows German better is welcome to improve it.

Lebe wohl du mutterliche Erde,
Nimm mich auf in deinen kühlen Schoos,
Dass mein Herz nach kummer nach beschwerden,
Ruhen möge unterm kühlen Moos.

Farewell, thou motherly earth,
Take me in thy cooling lap,
So that after all my trials and pains,
My heart may rest under the cooling moss.

This particular style of monument is the Monumental Bronze Company’s Design No. 8.

This towering monument is in a style all its own. What shall we call it? Pittsburgh German Rococo? The inscription, cut by a local stonecutter (a tradition that survived among the Germans here decades longer than it did among English-speakers) quotes from Job: in the words of the King James Version, “Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass.” The German translation of the first line would be more closely rendered as “Short are the days of man,” which is a more striking sentiment that seems tailor-made for an epitaph.

The relief is a bit elementary, like something that would have been turned out by the second-best student in a community-college sculpture class. The overall composition, however, is unforgettable. The blackness of industry has only added to the impression that this monument is something colossal and important.

In spite of the damaged statue, this is an unusually beautiful monument, and the inscriptions are very good examples of German stonecutting in Pittsburgh.

Georg Kirner
Born Hoeffingen, Baden,
April 17, 1831.
Died in Pittsburg
May 12, 1872.

The language does not seem to be standard German (note, for example, the spelling “Maÿ” rather than “Mai”). Is it some Alemannic dialect? Perhaps someone more familiar with German can help old Pa Pitt by identifying the dialect and translating the other inscriptions:

So leb denn wohl so zieh dahin
Die Erde wartet dein
Geh in des Todes stille Ruhe-Kammerein
Shlaf eine sanfte süse Ruh’
Die Hand der Liebe deckt dich zu,

In his transcription, Father Pitt has made the assumption that a horizontal line over an N or M doubles the letter.

Jeh empfand an deiner Seite
Lebensfroh der Erde Glück
Jinner geh mir dein Geleite
Einen frohen augenblick.

The base of the statue is marked “Mein Gatte” (“My Husband).” The statue is probably ordered from a monument-dealer’s catalogue, with the simple Gothic letters already on the base. They are not nearly as elegant as the beautiful lettering by the local stonecutter.

An update: Old Pa Pitt suspects that the dialect is some form of the Alemannic spoken in Baden.