Allegheny Cemetery Stories

The following information was presented by Jim Wudarczyk to The Lawrenceville Historical Society on Thursday, September 19, 2002.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen for your kind invitation to be here tonight. It is always a great honor for me to return to the Lawrenceville Historical Society.

So what do we know about Allegheny Cemetery? We know that it is old, charming, historic, beautiful, and even after the disastrous storm of May 31st it is the largest green spot on the map of the area. But do we realize why it is called a “Romantic Garden Cemetery?” Or have we ever given any thought to its history prior to the cemetery’s opening in 1844?

To understand the concept of Romanticism, one does not look at history but rather at late 18th century English literature. Literary critics are generally in agreement that the Romantic Period spanned from 1798 with the publishing of “Lyrical Ballads” by William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge and ends with the death of Sir Walter Scott in 1832. Wordsworth defined the poetry of “Lyrical Ballads” as “the spontaneous overflow of feelings.” This concept of “spontaneous overflow of feelings” became embodied in a variety of art, architectural and literary forms. One of those concepts would evolve into the garden cemetery. When one looks at the late 18th century in historical terms one finds the world was in a tremendous state of upheaval with the French Revolution, social changes, and economic turmoil created by the early phases of the Industrial Revolution. Thus, it is easy to understand why the Romantics yearned for Nature and a simpler past, with interest in Antiquity, especially in Rome, Grecian and Egyptian culture, as well as the Middle Ages with castles, heroic knights, ruins, old abbeys, and cottage life. For the Romantics the past was the “way things should have been rather than the way they were.” Nonetheless, the Romantics would influence the early Victorians and would even have a profound effect on a Pittsburgh city neighborhood like Lawrenceville with the creation of Allegheny Cemetery.

The earliest cemetery in Lawrenceville was the Lawrenceville Burial Ground on Main Street and Government Way. This opened in 1814 and fell pretty much into disuse after the opening of Allegheny Cemetery in 1844. The third and last cemetery to be opened in Lawrenceville was Saint Mary Roman Catholic Cemetery in 1849.

The opening of Allegheny Cemetery in 1844 fulfilled a ten-year dream of Dr. Speer and other prominent citizens. Severe economic depression and business stagnation had halted earlier incorporation of the cemetery. Curiously the cemetery developed during the rise of the romantic garden suburb and its counterpart, the rural cemetery. To this day it has maintained its park-like atmosphere with its winding roads, wooded areas, glades and lakes. The oldest garden cemetery in the city, Allegheny Cemetery is also the sixth of its kind in America, preceded only by Boston’s Mount Auburn (1831), Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill (1836), Brooklyn’s Greenwood (1838), Rochester’s Mount Hope (1838) and Albany Rural Cemetery (1841).

Early incorporators included Blakewell, Speer, Biddle, Denny, Robinson, Eichbaum, Avery, Schoenberger, Painter, Laughlin, Holmes and Howe. Unfortunately all records of proceedings prior to April 10, 1845, were destroyed when a great fire ravaged the office of Richard Biddle. The report of 1848, however, indicates that as early as 1834, Dr. J. R. Speer, Stephen Colwell and John Chislett made attempts to establish a rural cemetery. All three persons were connected with the Third Presbyterian Church of which Dr. D. H. Riddle was pastor; and all three persons, after hearing of the success of Boston’s Mount Auburn, had envisioned a cemetery greater in scope than a church burial ground. Hence, the proposal to purchase eleven acres on the south side of Wylie street from the heirs of Judge Roberts, who offered the property for five thousand dollars on easy terms, was rejected, and the plan to open a cemetery for the cities of Pittsburgh and Allegheny for all denominations was formed. In May, 1834, a tour of the cemeteries along the Atlantic coast from Washington to Boston was made for the purpose of procuring information relating to the matter.

Chartered on April 24, 1844, the act of incorporation was approved by Governor David R. Porter with 100 acres from the homestead farm of Colonel Bayard being selected as the site, with later tracts purchased from Mrs. Mowry, the heirs of Richard Biddle, William Young and Mrs. Semple. Present size of the cemetery is 267 acres. Grounds were dedicated on September 20, 1845, with appropriate religious ceremonies.

I mentioned that the Romantics were fascinated with ancient antiquity: Rome, Greece, and Egypt. As you walk through Allegheny Cemetery, you will see examples of architecture of the ancient world in mausoleums shaped like Grecian or Roman temples, Egyptian obelisks, or crypts with Byzantine domes.

Since Walter Kidney in his book, Allegheny Cemetery A Romantic Landscape in Pittsburgh, discusses quite eloquently the art, architecture and landscaping of Allegheny Cemetery, I believe that it would be more profitable to spend this evening examining other aspects of the cemetery; namely some of the stories of the people who are laid to rest within these hallowed grounds.

Half of the mayors of the city of Pittsburgh are buried in Allegheny Cemetery, but none had the reputation of Joseph Barker, who has the distinction of being the only mayor who was in jail when elected to the office.

In the late 1840’s city elections were held on an annual basis, but voter turnout was usually low since local politics were noted for corruption. Pittsburgh with its population of 46,000 was besieged with vice, crime, and corruption, as well as preachers, social reformers, and soapbox orators.

It appears that Barker held some minor elective offices throughout the 1840’s and claimed to be a Methodist minister, although there is nothing to substantiate his boast. Appearing in a white neck cloth, cape, and stovepipe hat, Barker usually delivered two sermons a week from the bridge of the old Pennsylvania Canal at the present Eleventh Street. Accompanied by a yes-man named Hugh Kirkland, Barker preached the popular doctrine of Native Americanism, which promoted suspicion of everything foreign. His fierce attacks were aimed against politicians, Freemasonry, immigrants, and Catholics. Kirkland would support Barker’s oratory with documents that generally had nothing to do with Barker’s speech but the trick appeared to impress a number of Pittsburgh citizens.

One day in November, 1849, when stirring up a crowd from the canal bridge, a riot broke out, which led to Joseph Barker’s arrest. He was in indicted on charges that he had used “indecent, lewd, and immoral language calculated to deprave the morals of the community.” The trial drew a great deal of public attention since it was one of the first in the state of Pennsylvania to address the question of freedom of speech. A jury found Barker guilty of public use of obscene language, all of it directed against the Catholic clergy. Judge Patton sentenced Barker to a fine of $250 and one year in prison.

The sentence made Barker a martyr in the eyes of his fans. Prior to being committed to jail, Barker was released for a brief period, only to return to his soapbox oratory. Speaking to approximately a thousand followers, Barker compared his ordeal to the persecution of the Savior.

By the end of November, 1849, Barker was in jail, but that was hardly the end of the soapbox orator from Bayardstown. An election for the mayor’s seat was scheduled for January, 1850, with Robert McCutcheon, being nominated by the Whigs, and John B. Guthrie, as the Democratic “recommended” candidate. When the ballots were counted on January 7th, everyone was astonished that Barker, whose name did not even appear on the ballot, received 1,787 votes, compared with 1,584 for Guthrie and 1,034 for McCutcheon.

Low voter turnout was common in those days, but still few people ever expected Barker to win, for the Morning Post complained of the need for someone to “rescue the government of the city form the hands of the ignorant, vulgar, profane and lawless madman.” Barker’s followers organized a torchlight parade and managed to have their candidate freed until the governor could grant a pardon. It was somewhat ironic that the same Judge Patton, who sentenced Barker, was the presiding judge who swore in Joseph Barker as mayor.

The early days of the Barker’s administration were aimed at desperately needed reforms with crackdowns on vice dens, gambling, drunkenness, and inaugurating a program to test the scales of area merchants to protect buyers. Baker’s impulses, however, soon overruled reason and he was back to practicing his Native Americanism doctrine. One classic case involved the ruling against a German band on one boat who petitioned for a restraining order against the use of a calliope on another boat since the calliope was drowning out the music of the German band. Barker contended, “The calliope is an American institution… and I am for America all the time.” Another of the classical examples of Baker’s bigotry took place when he arrested Roman Catholic Bishop Michael O’Connor and the Mother Superior of Mercy Hospital on a charge that a sewer line running from the hospital was a public nuisance. Bishop O’Connor was tried by Barker himself, fined $20, and denied the right of appeal.

The real political battle, however, started as a feud with the city’s police committee. This fight raged all summer and moved into all out warfare in October, 1850, when Barker fired several policemen for alleged misconduct. When the police committee reinstated the men, Barker hired his own squad of replacements and for a few months the city was patrolled by two squads of night watchmen. This led to brawls and several lawsuits against the mayor. The crisis was settled when Barker eventually submitted to a ruling by the county court and discharged his force.

Later Barker arrested Sheriff Carter Curtis and County Jailer William Glenn in a dispute over the handling of a prisoner. Barker also faced criminal charges when he became personally involved in a custody case involving two small children.

In 1851 Barker ran for reelection but was defeated by John Guthrie. Barker returned to his soapboxes and again faced charges resulting from drinking and raw language. On several occasions he was sent to the work farm. Finally his life came to a tragic end in 1862 when returning from a Civil War rally he was killed by a train near Manchester.

In 1980 the University of Pittsburgh presented a play called “Hearts and Diamonds,” which featured two vastly different women who lived in Pittsburgh. According to the play the only time the lives of the two women crossed was when writer Willa Cather reviewed one of actress Lillian Russell’s performances.

However, there was one other point that connected the two women, and that point was Allegheny Cemetery. It was in Allegheny Cemetery that Lillian Russell would find her final resting place, and it was here that Willa Cather was inspired to write a short story after attending the funeral of C. Stanley Reinhart.

First, let’s take a look at Lillian Russell.

Born Helen Louise Leonard in Kansas City, she was young when the family moved to New York City, where she studied opera. Since she did not want her mother to know that she was performing on the stage, she assumed the name of Lillian Russell. Soon she was earning $75 per week. Her big break on stage came in burlesque spoofing Gilbert and Sullivan. Soon she became very popular and was known as the “Queen of Comic Opera.” By 1891 she commanded a salary of $1,200 per week. Russell was best known for her work with the comedy team of Weber and Fields. Said to be one of the most beautiful women in the world, she commanded a hefty salary for a column on “Care of Beauty of Face and Form.” After her second divorce, and remarriage for a third time, she shocked society so much that she was banned from performing in New York City. This even exceeded the scandal when she appeared on stage dressed in men’s attire smoking cigarettes. There were really two sides to the actress. In one respect she was very generous, showering gifts on the cast for Christmas. Another time, it was said that she learned that one chorus girl did not receive any flowers, so she hurriedly ripped the name tag from her largest bouquet and had it delivered to the girl, telling her that the card had fallen off. So while on one hand, Russell was very generous, she was also very shrewd and demanding. Often in her contracts she demanded a percentage of everything the theater took in, including a percentage of the tips given to the hat check girls. In 1912 she married Pittsburgh publisher and Ambassador to Spain Alexander P. Moore. The two remained married until her death in 1922. From 1912 onward Lillian Russell Moore resided in Pittsburgh in her husband’s mansion at 6744 Penn Avenue.

I would not have had any idea of the role Allegheny Cemetery played in inspiring novelist Willa Cather had it not been for Betty Shields of the Sewickley Historical Society. In January, 2001, two professors, Madigan and Brintrim, of the Willa Cather Society came to Allegheny Cemetery to view the grave of Charles Stanley Reinhart. They discovered that the massive cross adorning the Reinhart plot had tumbled over, so they contacted Mrs. Shields and the management of the cemetery in a crusade to resurrect the cross.

So who was Charles Stanley Reinhart? Born in Sewickley, Reinhart became a noted artist and illustrator, and was credited with revolutionizing the art of illustration in the 19th century and pioneering a modern style of design for books and magazines.

Many of you may be more familiar with Cather than you are with Reinhart since she wrote a number of novels, including “My Antonio,” “Death Comes for the Archbishop,” and “O Pioneers.” She was editor of “The Home Monthly” in October,. 1896, when she carried an article on the death of Reinhart by Lawrence Brenton. The article was a harsh indictment of Pittsburgh’s lack of appreciation for the arts. Brenton wrote, “Pittsburgh is not a city on which art often smiled. Like most American towns it has had other things to think of and has found them to be so engrossing as to almost completely shut out that form of spiritual development which manifest itself in the artistic creation.”

While the Brenton account was somewhat unfavorable toward the city, he praised Reinhart as an artist. “Among American illustrators of his generation there are men more poetic in conception and graceful in execution but none with the same power of suggestion character, none who have introduced the average man and all the quaint ironies of commonplace American life so successfully into art. For the average American was Reinhart’s theme; as a politician, as a mechanic, as a tradesman, as a soldier, as a sailor. In all forms of labor and recreation he drew the common man.”

A year later, in 1897, Willa Cather contributed a piece to the Courier, in which she reflected on returning to Allegheny Cemetery and shared the thoughts on the events surrounding Reinhart’s funeral. She wrote, “I went out yesterday to the cemetery to see the stone erected by his family to Charles Stanley Reinhart lifted into place. It was just a little over a year ago that I went to his funeral.” In her account, she accused Pittsburgh as being “a town in which the war for wealth is waged to the uttermost, in which money is omnipotent and success is measured only by decimal points. It passes under-standing, almost, that from such a city such a man should come.”

Apparently Cather was so moved by Reinhart’s life that several years later she wrote an allegorical study of the alienation of the artist from society. In January, 1905, “The Sculptor’s Funeral” was first published in McCLURE’S and was later collected in THE TROLL GARDEN. The last individual that we want to look at tonight is Alfred E. Hunt because his is the story of a modern Midas. You may remember from mythology the story of King Midas, the man who loved gold so much that the gods granted him his wish – that anything he touched would turn to gold. Only in the case of Hunt, he was not an interested in being a classical alchemist, who could turn ordinary objects into gold. No, he was looking for something much more valuable: aluminum. In ancient times and well into the 19th century, aluminum was so rare and found in such minute quantities that it originally of great value. There are examples from ancient China that illustrate that it was so rare that it was used only for jewelry or toys for the children of the nobility. Hunt and his partner developed the process of electroalysis to extract aluminum from common bauxite. Like King Midas, Hunt learned that there could be too much of a good thing. According to the myth, Midas accidentally touched the daughter that he greatly loved and turned her to gold. Hunt soon learned that his process worked so well that by the next day the value of aluminum tumbled to nearly nothing once the public learned that it could be produced so cheaply. So Hunt and his partner had to come up with new uses for aluminum – and the result was the formation of a company that is known today as ALCOA.

Yes my friends, there are many more stories affiliated with Allegheny Cemetery, but those are tales for another day.

Thank you and may God bless you.