'Heartbreaking': Family Upset About Damaged Headstones At Pittsburgh Cemetery
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- A local family wants dozens of damaged gravestones at a Pittsburgh cemetery to be repaired.
"The whole cemetery, they are everywhere like this, there are a whole bunch of them that are broken," said Regina Powell from Shaler Township.
Powell and her cousins have been learning about their roots and created a family tree, which brought them to Voegtly Cemetery in Pittsburgh's Troy Hill neighborhood. But Powell was disappointed about what she saw.
"We came and found it in such disarray, it was just heartbreaking. I was almost in tears when I saw the condition of the knocked-over gravestones, the falling down gravestones, and all the brush that was on top of gravestones," Powell said.
She didn't just spot damaged and broken headstones. She also saw gravestones close to the edge of a cliff in the back of the cemetery.
"If this cliff keeps eroding, I'm not sure what's going to happen. They might go over the cliff," she said. "A lot of families, the stones say 1700s and 1800s and I don't know who's supposed to be taking care of it, but it's obviously been neglected."
Powell believes she has possibly six generations of relatives buried there. She showed KDKA-TV her ancestors' gravestones with the last names Fendrich and Voegtly. Of course, there is lots of history behind the cemetery as it's named Voegtly Cemetery.
"The Voegtlys go back to the early 1800s. They helped settle this part of the town," she said.
In 1987, the old Voegtly Evangelical Church's Cemetery was accidentally discovered on the North Side during PennDOT's construction project to link 279 to 28. Hundreds of coffins from the 1800s were exhumed from the churchyard, which used to represent a Swiss-German population in what was once called Allegheny City on the North Side. The coffins were eventually buried in the cemetery on Lowrie Street in Troy Hill, where they remain today.
Powell and her family don't want their ancestors to be forgotten again.
"I would like to see it all restored and repaired. The headstones are broken off from the granite, so they need to be cemented back on and all this brush and the garbage that's over there, that all needs to be cleaned up," Powell said.
Mount Royal Cemetery Park in Shaler Township said over the phone that it owns Voegtly Cemetery. CMS West Inc. is the broker for Mount Royal Cemetery Park.
The sign at the entrance of Voegtly Cemetery says "Owned and Operated by CMS West Inc. ... Inquiries about care and purchases may write or phone the CMS-West Offices at 412-487-5100."
KDKA is waiting for the owner to return our calls and provide information about maintenance and who is responsible for fixing broken headstones.
