I’d like to wrap up my series on St. Lawrence Cemetery by showing you some more of the monuments and markers that got my attention while I was wandering around.

The one that got me the most excited was this one. Seeing an Abrams cast iron grave cover is like winning a lottery in my world. I let out a shriek of joy in my car when I caught sight of it.

You may remember I did a post on Joseph R. Abrams, inventor of the cast iron grave cover, a few years ago. I first saw one in Fairburn City Cemetery and have delighted in discovering them ever since.

A successful businessman, Abrams designed and received a patent for a unique cast iron grave cover in the 1870s. They’re usually found in Southeastern states but you can occasionally find one in Texas or the Midwest. Abrams spent his last years in Alabama and is buried there in Greenville Cemetery, where you can see a big collection of these markers. He died in 1880, only a few years after his patents were granted. They were made mostly for children’s graves because of their smaller size.

What sets this one apart is that it’s painted a coppery color, which I’ve never seen before. I don’t know if it was this way originally or if someone painted it later. It certainly made it easier to spot from my car.

These graves covers, when originally made, had a name plate attached to the back. Because of the nature of the metal aging over time, most have broken off. The only identification is the name R.C. Millings on the plot border. Born in 1833, Richard Millings was a Charleston merchant who sold various items over the years, from boots/shoes to furniture.

I don’t believe this is the grave of Richard Millings but for one of his children. These covers were manufactured in the 1870s and early 1880s. Millings died at the age of 80 of dysentery in 1905, long after these stopped being made. His wife, Emma, died in 1913 and is buried in a different plot with her own slab marker. It’s possible he is buried beside this child in this plot, but I don’t know for sure.

One of the more unusual monuments was for Barnard Fitzsimons, erected by his sister Mary Ann. I had little idea that there was quite a story behind the settlement of his estate. There’s even a clue on the monument itself.

Barnard Fitzsimons and his sister, Mary Ann, were natives of County Down, Ireland. They came to America as children and were living in Charleston by 1850. Barnard was a successful saddler, operating a harness store. Sometime between 1850 and 1859, Barnard (then in his 30s) married Pamela Carre (or Carrie) from Augusta, Ga. Their only daughter, Eugenia, was born in 1857.

The trouble started after Barnard died in 1859 at the age of 42 (according to his death records, it was from “brain compression”). His will left his entire estate to Mary Ann and Eugenia, even leaving the young child in her care. As this was on the eve of the Civil War, the timing was unfortunate. Pamela took Eugenia and headed for Augusta before settling in Savannah to live with family. Needless to say, Mary Ann was not happy with her sister-in-law.

Mary Ann filed a lawsuit against Pamela that reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1867. Being that Confederate bonds backed the estate, who got what became even messier. After reading the case report a few times, I still don’t understand what the result was.

From what I can gather, Eugenia remained with her mother in Savannah and never lived with Mary Ann in Charleston. Mary Ann is listed in the 1879 Charleston directory as living alone. In the 1880 U.S. Census, Eugenia is listed as living in the household of her aunt and uncle along with her mother. Pamela died in 1900 and is buried in Savannah’s Catholic Cemetery. Eugenia never married and died in 1935. She is buried beside her mother.

Mary Ann must have smarted over the loss of her brother and felt animosity toward her sister-in-law. That can be inferred from an inscription on the side of Barnard’s monument in which she claims it is erected “By the only surviving relative to mourn his loss. A most devoted sister.” She died of typhoid in 1889 in Charleston and is buried at St. Lawrence but has no marker of her own. I suspect she is buried beside her brother.

By contrast, the grave of little Alice Croak is quite humble. It is a metal enclosure with a simple battered sign on one end. She does have a stone beside it that I think came later. The child of New York natives James Croak (a pipe fitter in a shipyard) and Jenny Connor Croak, she only lived about a year before she died of “general biliary tuberculosis.” I’m thinking her father, skilled in working with metal, might have made this simple marker for his little girl.

I didn’t get a picture of it, but Alice had an older sister named Agnes who is also buried at St. Lawrence. Born in 1911, she died five years after Agnes in 1920. Her cause of death is listed as “encephalitis lethargica”.

The term puzzled me until I learned that Agnes was one of about a million people around the world affected by the malady known as “sleeping sickness” between 1915 and 1926. A third died in the acute stage of the illness. It often started with an influenza‐like illness, followed by increasing drowsiness and confusion, progression to continuous sleep, stupor and finally coma. If you saw the 1990 movie “Awakenings” starring Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro, you have some idea of what it was.

This unusual mosaic-tiled obelisk marks the grave of immigrant Pietro Celotta. Born in 1861 in the Northern Italian village of Vodo Cadore, he arrived in New York in 1885 with his father, Michelangelo, and brother, Constantine. The ship’s manifest lists them as bound for Alabama.

At some point, Pietro moved to Charleston and worked as a confectioner. He had only been living there for 19 months when he contracted influenza and died in 1891 at the age of 30. He never married.

I was drawn to Fannie Moore Bickley’s grave for its beautiful profusion of blowers beneath a dove. The detail is stunning. The wife of John Bickley, Fannie died in 1895 at the age of 31. She suffered from Bright’s Disease, a kidney ailment.

The craftsmanship of this old iron gate to the Henry Oliver plot caught my eye. Despite the fact it is 118 years old, it has aged fairly well all things considered.

This final monument I included because I’ve seen one quite like it in Augusta, Ga. at Magnolia Cemetery (not the Magnolia Cemetery next door). They were actually carved the same year, 1888. The two women died about two months apart. The extreme draping, held by an angel, must have been a popular motif at the time.

Here’s the one I saw in Augusta. Notice that the draping covers Maude Mathewson’s last name. I had to look it up on Find a Grave to find out what it was.

In this case, because her husband John’s name is inscribed in full below hers, we know that Henrietta’s last name was Murray. That’s a lot more helpful (in my mind) than what the carver did on Maude’s monument. The intricacy of the draping is more elaborate than Maude’s as well, detailed with lots of fringe and a tassel.

So it’s farewell to St. Lawrence now and hello to Edisto Island, an hour’s drive from Charleston…

When we were last at St. Lawrence Cemetery in Charleston, I shared stories about some of the more wealthy and successful Catholic residents of the city. This week, the pendulum swings in the other direction.

It’s not unusual to see a lot of children’s graves at an older cemetery like St. Lawrence. Child mortality rates were sky high before the advent of antibiotics. But I noticed that in more than one place, there were specific plots filled with small stone crosses. I believe they mark the graves of children whose parents probably couldn’t afford a marker for them.

The first plot I saw was near the front gates. These crosses have no names attached to them. I saw a few regular children’s markers (with names) mixed in with them. Most of the names on the markers around them appears to be of Irish origin.

Closer to the middle of the cemetery to one side, I found another plot of similar crosses. I’m not 100 percent sure they are all children, but that’s my guess.

In this plot, I noticed a handful of metal crosses with only numbers on them. I don’t know when these were placed. Part of me wonders if these were from the local Catholic orphanage. The only other time I’ve seen numbered crosses was at a cemetery for a mental institution.

The last children’s plot is located in front on a group of nun’s graves.

The tall white markers behind the little crosses represent the nuns in service of Our Lady of Mercy (OLM), once simply known as the Sisters of Mercy. They started burying the nuns at St. Lawrence in 1854, not long after it opened. This group in the photo are more recent burials. The group buried to the right of them (past my red CRV) include some of the first nuns that were part of the order.

The actual order was established years before St. Lawrence opened. The story begins in 1829, when Bishop John England traveled from Ireland to Charleston to begin a ministry for orphans. The frequent yellow fever epidemics left many children without parents. But Bishop England soon realized he needed help.

While in Baltimore, Md., Bishop England met Irish nuns (and literal blood sisters) Honora and Mary Joseph O’Gorman. With them was their niece, Mary Teresa Barry, who was only 14 at the time. Bishop England invited them to join him in his work in Charleston. Their main goal was to open schools for orphans. Thus was started what is now known as the Sisters of Mercy of Our Lady of Mercy (OLM).

In 1830, the Sisters established the Academy of Our Lady of Mercy in Charleston, a day and boarding school that offered a basic education along with music, art, and embroidery. Students of all faiths were welcome. The Academy operated until 1929.

Bishop England also wanted “to have a school for free colored girls, and the religious instruction of female slaves.” This objective was achieved in part in 1835 when he established a school for free colored children in Charleston. Two students from the Diocesan Seminary were placed in charge of the boys and two OLM Sisters were assigned to teach the girls. In a few weeks, they had over 80 children in the school. Unfortunately, pressure from outsiders forced the closing of the school within months.

In 1841, Bishop England tried again to open a school and put Sister Teresa Barry in charge. The school was initially located on Queen Street opposite the Medical College. Later, it was moved to the grounds of the OLM Motherhouse on Queen Street. In 1844, the OLM Sisters elected Sister Teresa to be their Mother Superior.

In November 1844, at the request of Bishop Ignatius Reynolds (who established St. Lawrence Cemetery), the OLMs moved the school from Queen Street to rented rooms on King Street where it remained until it was closed in 1848. However, Catholic almanacs from 1849 through 1853 show that the Sisters gave instruction to “colored persons” four evenings a week. After the the Civil War in 1867, Mother Teresa wrote to the current bishop with hopes of reopening a free school for black children but was denied.

It wasn’t until 1904 that the OLM Sisters were again able to teach black children. They taught at the  Immaculate Conception School operated from 1904 to 1917 (along with a school at St. Peter’s, a church for black Catholics). In 1917, the Oblate Sisters of Providence of Baltimore were invited to take over teaching duties at St. Peter’s and Immaculate Conception Schools.

During the Civil War, Mother Teresa and five OLM Sisters traveled to Greenbrier White Sulphur Springs, Va. to staff a Confederate military hospital. As the Union Army advanced in May 1862, the hospital moved to Montgomery White Sulphur Springs. When the war ended, there were more than 300 soldiers in the hospital. Despite shortages, the Sisters stayed until the patients were discharged or died.

Mother Teresa died in 1900 at the age of 86. Father Patrick Duffy, pastor of St. Joseph’s Church, called her “a valiant woman, tender mother, courageous to suffer and quick to sympathize.”

When the OLM celebrated its 100th birthday in 1929, its numbers included 86 professed sisters and four novices. Today, there are only about a dozen OLM sisters still living, all of them elderly.

However, the efforts of the OLM are still felt in Charleston. Our Lady of Mercy Sisters of Charity convent on James Island runs the Neighborhood House, which has a daily soup kitchen to feed the poor and offers education classes to help people receive their GEDs.

I’m not quite done with St. Lawrence yet, too many unique monuments to talk about and stories to share. Stay tuned for Part III.

 

So I’m still in Charleston, this time at St. Lawrence Cemetery. Located next to the massive Magnolia Cemetery (I’ll be writing about that one later) and just down the street from Bethany Cemetery. There’s a Jewish cemetery to the right, but it was locked up the day I went to visit. Maybe I’ll get a chance at it this summer.

A note of caution. St. Lawrence Cemetery is located in front of a large housing project, not exactly the safest part of town. I advise anyone to do what I do at every cemetery I visit. Leave your valuables at home and not in your car. The day I was there, two police cars were parked across the street from the cemetery entrance as I drove in. When I drove out later, they were handcuffing someone.

According to Find a Grave, St. Lawrence has about 8,000 recorded burials. As the third Catholic cemetery established in Charleston, it came from the initiative of Ignatius Reynolds, second bishop of Charleston. Prior to establishing St. Lawrence Cemetery, interments were either at St. Mary of the Annunciation burial ground, established in 1793, or St. Patrick burial ground, often referred to as the Catholic burial ground, established in 1831.

Due to overcrowding, Bishop Reynolds purchased 18 acres from Edward Tharin at a cost of $2,500 in 1851. Reynolds officially opened St. Lawrence Cemetery in 1854.

So while St. Lawrence is not exactly huge, it’s worth a look. The variety of monuments and the history they reveal is stunning. Some Catholic cemeteries I visit are often a little dull because they stick to featuring the Saints and that’s about it. St. Lawrence is not like that at all.

When you drive in, you cannot miss the iron cross smack dab in the middle of the drive, which apparently is still a plot. Under it are the remains of German native Christopher Werner and his wife, Isabella. She provided it to the cemetery to use as her husband’s monument when he died in 1874. Christopher had created it himself.

A native of Munster, Germany, Christopher came to America sometime in the 1830s and became a citizen in 1839. The son of a blacksmith, he learned the trade from his father. In Charleston, he was known as a blacksmith, carriage maker, wrought iron worker, and a skilled businessman. He married Isabella, a native of England, in 1841 and they had six children together, one dying in childhood.

With a foundry located on the corner of Cumberland and State Streets, Christopher’s business expanded from carriage making into a large, diverse enterprise throughout the state. He had a reputation for quality work and was sought after for his skill. I was thrilled to learn that some of the beautiful wrought ironwork over at Bethany Cemetery was done by his hand. You can still see it all over Charleston today.

One example of Christopher’s work is the Palmetto Regiment monument that still stands at the South Carolina courthouse grounds in Columbia. He created it to honor the Palmetto Regiment of Volunteers of South Carolina, an infantry regiment that participated in the Mexican American War (1846-1848).

According to a 1907 newspaper report, Werner’s ironwork could also be seen at Mayor R. Goodwyn Rhett’s house on Broad Street in Charleston, now the John Rutledge House Inn (Rutledge built the house for his bride in 1763) when Werner did the wrought ironwork for then-owner Thomas N. Gadsden. You can see it there today.

Christopher Werner died in 1874. Father Daniel J. Quigley, a priest from Charleston’s Roman Catholic Cathedral officiated at the funeral. Isabella died in 1894 and is buried with him. According to Find a Grave, when the monumental cross was dismantled to be restored, the remains of both were found.

You may remember last week I featured the monument of Behrend Hollings, a German immigrant turned successful grocery merchant. I found one of his sons, Edward, buried at St. Lawrence. An attorney, he was married to Anna O’Rourke in 1886 and had two children. He died at the age of 39 of malarial fever.

There are several Irish families buried at St. Lawrence. The Darcy monument says “erected by their sister” and I’ve deduced that it must be the latest name on it, Margaret Darcy Sheridan, who died in 1910. A large marker simply reading “sister” is next to it. John, Tim and Patrick are also listed on the other sides. All hailed from Tipperary, Ireland.

Tim and John died in their 20s and 30s but Patrick lived into his late 60s, a long-established owner of a shoe and boot store on King Street. He also owned several properties in Charleston when he died in 1906.

Several Italian families are also buried at St. Lawrence, including 24 members of the Sotille family. Descended from five brothers (Giovanni, Nicholas, Santo, Albert, and James) who emigrated to Charleston in the 1880s from Gangi, Sicility, there are still Sotilles living in the area today. Their mausoleum is lovely.

As president of the Pastime Amusement Company, Albert Sotille built what was originally called the Gloria Theater in 1922. With 2,000 seats, the Sotille Theater was the largest of its kind in the state and also served as a vaudeville house. The South Carolina premiere of “Gone With the Wind” was held there with most of the cast present. After closing in 1975, the Sotille Theater was eventually purchased and restored by the College of Charleston. It now hosts a wide variety of performing art events.

Another mausoleum for an Italian immigrant got my attention. It’s quite different from the polished Sotille family tomb. This one houses only one person, Rosa Cervetti. She was a native of Chavari, Italy and born in 1834. I don’t know her maiden name but she married Angelo Cervetti in 1870. His profession is listed in some places as a cigar maker or shoe retailer, and as a fisherman in others.

Rosa died in 1907 at the age of 73. I learned that Angelo remarried to a woman named Nellie. But Angelo’s demise is shrouded in mystery. By doing a search, I was surprised to find a “missing” poster seeking his whereabouts. You can even purchase this notice on eBay or Amazon.

I don’t think Angelo and Rosa had any children and if they did, they are not listed as being buried at St. Lawrence. Angelo is not listed on Find a Grave. So if he ever did come home to Nellie, it was never reported.

The last mausoleum I wanted to share is for the Hunt family. It has no door on it so you can actually walk right in, a rarity in my experience. The last interment was 1982. While it was a treat to be able to go inside, it worries me that the stained glass is exposed to the elements and possible vandalism.

The son of Massachusetts native Nathaniel and Anne Rivers Hunt, Nathaniel A. Hunt was born in South Carolina in 1842. He married Catherine Goodrich in 1872 and they had at least two children, Florence and Alvah. Like Patrick Darcy, he did well as a wholesale shoe merchant and at some point, was vice president of a bank. Son Alvah was an 1894 graduate of the College of Charleston and also attended Yale.

Catherine died of tuberculosis in 1902 at the age of 52. Nathaniel died in 1918 of kidney disease. Their son, Alvah, died the same year in October of tuberculosis. His occupation is listed as “retired” on his death certificate. His wife, Emily, may have remarried since she is not buried in the mausoleum with him.

Next time, I’ll share the story of the Sisters of Mercy buried at St. Lawrence Cemetery.