Mr. Daniel O’Neill was editor of the Dispatch, which he built into Pittsburgh’s most respectable newspaper, a position it maintained until it fell victim to the great newspaper massacre of 1923, when spiraling paper costs forced countless newspapers across the country out of business. It seems that a newspaperman’s work is quite literally never done: this statue of Mr. O’Neill hard at work still looks as fresh as it did when it was put up in 1877. Note the Egyptian-style lotus-blossom pedestal that supports his desk.
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Daniel O’Neill Monument, Allegheny Cemetery
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Mary L. Lippincott Monument in Allegheny Cemetery
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The Charles Avery Memorial in Allegheny Cemetery
Unfortunately this memorial was executed in soft stone that has decayed considerably over the last century and a half. It’s still impressive, though, and the erosion gives one the sense of confronting the distant past face to face.
Avery was a notable abolitionist who founded the Allegheny Institute and Mission Church, later Avery College, whose mission was to provide an education meeting the highest standards for free black students of both sexes. (The rumor had it that it was also a stop on the Underground Railroad, which is quite likely, given Avery’s strong feelings about slavery.) Avery’s monument is decorated with allegorical sculptures whose mutilation over the years makes their meaning hard to interpret. This blindfolded woman has lost her right hand and whatever she was holding in it. Was she Justice?
This young mother, again, has lost part of her right hand, and probably some allegorical attribute with it.
This mutilated relief may depict Avery College in the background; though it survived till about 1970 in Dutchtown, Father Pitt has not found a picture of the building. The headless figure at right has the rotund torso of the Rev. Charles Avery; the other figures seem to be some of the Negro citizens who benefited from his work. Father Pitt is not sure what the ship has to do with the story; Avery was not one of those colonizationists who believed in sending Africans back to Africa. He believed that education would make the Negro an equal citizen in the United States. He did, however, sponsor missions to Africa, and perhaps the ship represents those.
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Mourners on the Ford Mausoleum, Allegheny Cemetery
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St. Michael’s Cemetery
Downtown skyscrapers viewed from St. Michael’s Cemetery on the South Side Slopes. This picture is only as metaphorical as you want it to be.
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View of Oakland from St. Michael’s Cemetery
St. Michael’s cemetery occupies a large patch of precipitous ground on the South Side Slopes. The views from here are breathtaking and sometimes a little terrifying. Here we see Oakland in the distance across the Monongahela, with a few rows of typical Slopes frame houses in the middle distance.
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Autumn in the Union Dale Cemetery
Cemeteries in Pittsburgh have the advantage of Pittsburgh topography to make them picturesque. Add fall colors, and the picturesqueness is irresistible. The Union Dale Cemetery is the premier address for deceased residents of the old City of Allegheny.
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Country Graveyard in the Fall
Fall colors surround a little country graveyard west of Cranberry.
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Old St. Luke’s, Woodville
Old St. Luke’s Church in the little village of Woodville (an unincorporated part of Scott Township) was founded in 1765. It was stuck in the middle of the Whiskey Rebellion, which divided the congregation, one of whose members was General John Neville, a tax collector who barely escaped with his life. (Woodville Plantation, the house to which he escaped, is still standing nearby.)
The current building dates from 1852. In the burying ground surrounding the little stone church are some very old graves, including some Revolutionary War veterans and “the first white child born in the Chartiers Valley.” The oldest stones were native shale, which is a very poor material for gravestones; but some of the obliterated inscriptions have been duplicated in plaques beside the stones.
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James B. Oliver Monument, Allegheny Cemetery
An unusual bronze monument with a wealth of detail. Father Pitt has uploaded this picture at 2-megapixel resolution; click on the picture to enlarge it.