Solving Puzzles

I like solving mysteries. The photograph above raised questions for many years. The two women sitting on a swing seat or hammock were the subject of a photograph in an album that dates from 1909. The simple question is - who are they?

The photo album is of various scenes around United Cemeteries. This was an amalgamation of three cemeteries in Ross Township, Allegheny. The Society took charge of the area in 1905. The cemetery was established on farmland and was next to an existing graveyard. This is where Charles Taze Russell was subsequently buried in late 1916. The cover of the photo album is reproduced below.

The middle picture is John Adam Bohnet who looked after the cemetery, and who later supervised the building of the pyramid on the Society’s plot. The bottom picture is of the main farm house and cemetery office. Familiar old pictures of CTR’s grave marker and the pyramid show this building from a different angle in the background, looking down the hill.

The rest of the 1909 album shows various views of the surrounding landscape. But it does include that picture of the two women on the swing seat or hammock which appears to be taken from the farm house looking up the hill.

So who were they?

The wonders of the internet and sites like Ancestry have yielded an answer. In the 1910 census of Ross Township there are four people living on the property. Their names are given below:

So there are Edward Hollister, Head, Male, White, aged 66. His wife, Jane, aged 62. His daughter, Clara, aged 28. And then Adam J Bohnet, Boarder, aged 52. Further along the same line we get their occupations. Hollister is Cemetery Superintendent, his wife is not officially employed, his daughter is the book-keeper for the business, and finally, John Adam Bohnet (rendered here as Adam J Bohnet). Bohnet is specifically Cemetery Superintendent for United Cemeteries.

The women therefore are mother and daughter, Jane and Clara Hollister.

At some point the Hollister family moved on, because Bohnet is afterwards given sole credit as cemetery manager. There are pictures of him supervising at the time of CTR’s funeral, his bald head clearly recognisable. Shortly thereafter the newspaper, St Paul Enterprise, contained advertisements from him asking for help - manual help from men and also clerical help from women, to run the business. However, if any responded their employment was only short-lived because the bulk of the land was sold off in 1917, and the Society only retained ownership of certain sections.

It is interesting to note that the Hollister family, Edward, Jane, and Clara (who subsequently married J C Jordan) were all eventually buried in the United Cemeteries. (Edward in 1920, Jane in 1933 and Clara in 1958). However, it is significant that none of them were actually buried on the Society’s plots.

But it IS nice to put names to faces.