Written in stone
Members of the military conduct a memorial service circa 1895 for Civil War veterans buried in Monongahela Cemetery.
The Nittany Lion mascot of Pennsylvania State University makes a visit in 2004 to Monongahela Cemetery, where the man who came up with the character’s name is buried.
Lt. Henry Clark was burried in Monongahela Cemetery after he was fatally wounded during the Civil War on July 4, 1863.
Monongahela Cemetery has a special section for Civil War veterans. Each headstone commemorates their service with an American flag, and the section is set apart by three Civil War cannons.
Katie Roupe/Observer-Reporter
Monongahela Cemetery was established over 150 years ago. The cemetery is host to veterans, historical figures and an old stone chapel.
Monongahela Cemetery has a special section for Civil War veterans. Each headstone commemorates their service with an American flag, and the section is set apart by three Civil War cannons.
MONONGAHELA – It would not be that unusual to bump into Pennsylvania State University’s cherished mascot, the Nittany Lion, roaming around the moss-covered tombstones in historic Monongahela Cemetery.
The costumed character stopped by in 2004 to celebrate its 100th birthday at the grave of the man who created the mascot in a show of braggadocio during a 1904 away baseball game against Princeton University. And, the “lion” is due back in June to help the cemetery celebrate it’s 150th birthday.
“We had no idea there was a connection until that group of people showed up from Penn State,” said John “Jack” Cattaneo, vice president of the cemetery’s board of directors.
“That’s when they divulged this relationship,” he said. “We’re very proud.”
The Nittany Lion was born April 20, 1904, when Harrison Denning “Joe” Mason of Monongahela was a freshman third baseman for Penn State and about to play an away game against Princeton.
While being given a tour of the New Jersey campus, one of the Princeton teammates pointed to the school’s mascot, a Bengal tiger, “as an indication of the merciless treatment (Penn State) could expect to encounter on the field,” a story about the exchange on Penn State’s website indicates.
Mason responded by saying “we have a Nittany Lion that’s never been beaten,” while also making a reference to Mount Nittany, the region in central Pennsylvania where Penn State was established, said George Eckert, a member of the cemetery’s anniversary committee.
Penn State went on that day to beat Princeton 8-1.
A few years later Mason wrote an unsigned letter to himself while he was the anonymous editor of the school magazine urging the student body to adopt the Nittany Lion as the official symbol of Penn State, Eckert said. The students followed Mason’s lead and the creature first appeared in the school yearbook in 1908.
Mason went on to become a freelance newspaper writer in the Pittsburgh area and also worked in Ebensburg for the state Bureau of Highways before dying of a heart attack Oct. 9, 1948. He was then buried in a plainly marked grave under an old-growth oak tree in a family plot of graves.
“We are very proud to have the final resting place of Joe Mason,” Cattaneo said.
This cemetery was organized in a town meeting on a Good Friday that fell on April 3, 1863, in response to rapid growth in this small city attributed to all the major, local wagon trails having passed through its downtown during America’s Western Movement, Cattaneo said.
“All roads led through Monongahela,” he said.
There is a popular myth that the cemetery was created in response to a overriding number of Civil War deaths, he said.
“It’s not true.”
All of the cemeteries in Monongahela at the time were privately owned, and the city needed one that would be secular and nondiscriminatory.
The cemetery’s first board of directors sold grave subscriptions to earn the money to hire Pittsburgh architect John Chislett, who designed a park-like setting for Allegheny Cemetery as its first superintendent, to design a similar setting for Monongahela.
Chislett was given just two instructions: Give Monongahela Cemetery a fountain square and a circular drive name Prospect Circle. He gave the city a Gothic setting for burials, a quaint stone chapel and planted a large variety of trees in a design that would earn the cemetery a listing on the National Registry of Historic Places in 2001.
“He saw rapid encroachment on rural areas and he preserved a parklet setting for Pittsburgh and repeated that here,” Cattaneo said.
When the older section began to fill in the early 1900s, Hare & Hare of Kansas City was hired for an expansion project that would give the upper section of the cemetery a lawn park design with wider roads to accommodate the automobile. Today, less than half of the 173-acre cemetery is filled with 35,909 graves.
Earlier, the cemetery established an impressive section for the burials of Civil War veterans guarded by three Parrott rifles, muzzle-loading pieces of artillery with barrels that were notorious for exploding when fired, Cattaneo said.
“I’ve always referred to them as silent sentinels,” he said.
Just 102 of then cannons are known to have survived the war, and the cemetery is home to the third one out of the production line.
Joe Mason was probably the most famous person to have been buried here among common folk and members of the area’s wealthier families, including the Bentleys and Finleys, whose names were attached to the nearby towns of Bentleyville and Finleyville.
Another grave, though, still sparks controversy 150 years after it was created for Civil War veteran Lt. Henry W. Clark of Monongahela, whose massive tombstone indicates he death resulted from injuries he suffered in July 4, 1863, while harassing Confederate wagon trains during the Battle of Gettysburg.
That battle, though, officially ended July 3, 1863, but history was still being written when Clark died while serving with the 1st West Virginia Cavalry, Cattaneo said.
The cemetery will celebrate its 150th anniversary with a weeklong schedule of events during the last week of June, including tours, a picnic, band concerts and a recognition of Penn State.