Father Pitt wrote this article for the Pittsburgh Cemeteries site, but he thought his readers here might be interested as well.
For literally decades it has been a small local scandal: the once-beautiful Minersville Cemetery, a German Lutheran burying ground in the Hill District, was overgrown with weeds and vandalized, and no one would step forward to take care of it.
Now, at last, a group of Lutheran volunteers has taken on the cemetery. With the help of a bit of money from the cemetery’s upkeep fund and some more from Pittsburgh Area Lutheran Ministries, they have cleared the weeds, righted as many of the monuments as possible, and built a fine new iron gate to keep contractors with pickups from driving in to dump their garbage. (Pedestrians without garbage are still welcome.) The cemetery is beautiful again, an oasis of quiet repose in the middle of Herron Hill.
Some work still to be done: toppled and broken monuments gathered on one of the cemetery drives.
0 responses to “Minersville Cemetery Comes Back from the Dead”
Adam Forster, my husband’s grandfather, is buried here. He started an artificial limb business in the basement of his home in the Duquesne Heights section of Mt. Washington. It continues today (although no longer in our family) as Union Orthotics & Prosthetic Co. Their main office is here in Pittsburgh.
Thank you to the Lutheran volunteers and you for making us and others aware of their efforts. We enjoyed seeing pictures of the cemetery.