Strange Goings-on at United Cemeteries

 The Watch Tower Society owned a cemetery for a number of years in the latter days of CTR. Originally purchased in 1905 it covered around 90 acres and was a combination of three original cemeteries, named Rosemont, Mount Hope and Evergreen. Much of the land was never used for burials but included farmland on which, at one point, the cemetery supervisor John Adam Bohnet grew Miracle wheat.

Most of the land was sold off at the end of 1917 to a neighboring cemetery concern, leaving only certain small areas for Watch Tower adherents. The most famous of these areas had a 7 feet high pyramid in the center designed to list on its sides all the names of those interred. Although the pyramid has now gone, the grave marker of CTR is still a feature of the site.

Because it was a commercial operation originally and anybody could purchase a plot, the site sometimes featured in news items quite unconnected with the Watch Tower Society. Here are a couple of examples.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper for 3 March 1908 carried the headline “Mourners Roll Down Steep Hill.”

It should be noted that the driver’s injuries were not serious, although one of the horses had to be destroyed. The site is quite hilly and a funeral party took a road turn awkwardly and literally did roll down the hill – fortunately not adding to the fatalities.

Then the next month, on 3 April, 1908 attempts to rob the stables of an adjoining farm for valuable harnesses resulted in shots being fired. A news item on 15 April 1915 noted that burials had now reached 1,700.

However, what was probably the biggest news story of all to feature the cemeteries was on 12 April 1914 when the front page of a newspaper carried a photograph of an exhumation taking place. There can only be one thing worse than a burial in the pouring rain and that is an exhumation in the pouring rain.

Pictures reproduced with permission from newspapers.com

The headline across the page read “Body Disinterred in United Cemetery Identified as That of Mrs. Myrtle Allison.” The sub-heading read: “Damning Evidence Given up by Grave – Scandal Still Grows.”

Some papers carried Mrs Allison’s picture with the story.

This was not the sort of publicity United Cemeteries wanted, although no blame could be attached to them.

In early 1913 a divorcee named Myrtle Allison, who ran a boarding house in Wilkinsburg, was referred to a Dr Charles Meredith and his “private maternity hospital” in Bellevue, Pittsburgh. There, in March 1913, she had what was forever after referred to by the press as “an illegal operation.” This had to be an abortion. Discharged, she presented herself to another doctor who diagnosed septicemia. He contacted Meredith, who arranged for her collection back to his hospital. She then disappeared.

Shortly afterwards there was a burial at United Cemeteries in the name of Daisy Davies. Over a year later a general investigation of Dr Meredith caused this very public exhumation reported on by the newspaper. At one point, a familiar name, J. A. Bohnett (sic) cemetery superintendent, was mentioned as guarding the opened grave.

Although Daisy had been buried in a cheap wooden coffin with a liberal application of quicklime, it was possible to identify from dental evidence that this was, in fact, Mytle Allison. A post mortem identified the results of “an illegal operation.” There were several arrests, but fortunately for Dr Meredith, the medical evidence cleared him of the charge of murder. He was sent down for five years convicted of performing a “criminal operation.” He claimed parole on the basis that he’d been promised a lighter sentence of only around two years if he pled guilty, but was turned down in December 1914. This time the charge was finally spelled out as “abortion.” Further attempts at parole were opposed by the Medical Board. On his release, he forged a new career in the lumber industry, but when he died in 1959, aged 92, his Find a Grave entry reinstated him as Dr Charles C Meredith.