Oak Grove Cemetery has a very proud history
Cemeteries are many things to many people. When it comes to Oak Grove Cemetery in Uniontown, the word that comes to mind is historical
As a repository of the past, Oak Grove is special. It contains the graves of so many people who led consequential lives or who were just plain interesting. Standing on the cemetery hillside facing away from busy Business Route 40 — the National Road — it’s possible to imagine the sweep of history, and not just local history, although there is plenty of that.
George Titlow was buried at Oak Grove in 1940. A barkeep, Titlow was on the verge of playing host to Teddy Roosevelt (the former president was running late, so he was unable to be on hand for a reception in his honor) when the Rough Rider came to Uniontown for a political speech in 1914.
Titlow was the founding proprietor of the bar-restaurant-hotel that still bears his name on Main Street.
The cemetery on West Main Street holds the remains of Thomas Semans, one of several brothers in business with J.V. Thompson during the halcyon days of coal and coke.
By all accounts, Thomas Semans was a warm family. One of his seven sons — the late Dr. James Semans of Durham, N.C. — revealed just how indulgent his father was: he always made sure his adult children had cash in hand.
In retirement, Thomas loved nothing better than chauffeured drives about town and through the countryside. For this purpose, he employed the renowned Indy race car driver Omar Toft.
Lying next to Thomas is his wife Virginia, a champion golfer at the Uniontown Country Club in the 1920s.
Not far away is the couple’s only daughter, Virginia Semans Stone. As a youngster, Virginia wrote her father, on a business trip, urging him to return home, since his wife was “getting more than a little gay,” stepping out to parties, “some of them in the evening.”
The Semans family lived in a rambling two-floor house on West Berkeley Street. The house, with its long front porch, is still there.
J.V. Thompson is buried at Oak Grove. Fabulously wealthy, J.V. built the estate west of town that since its purchase in the early thirties has been cared for by the Sisters of St. Basil. The sisters rechristened Oak Hill. It’s known today as Mt. St. Mariana.
James Hustead lies beneath the sod at Oak Grove. A Civil War cavalry officer, Hustead was an eyewitness to the battle of New Market, Va., in which the boy-students of the Virginia Military Institute fought off a large Union force.
Later, Hustead made it a point to encourage Uniontown lads to attend VMI. George C. Marshall, a VMI graduate, recalled being invited to Hustead’s Fayette Street residence to give a full accounting of his school activities.
Hustead “took great pride in the fact that I gradually went up (the ranks) until I was first captain,” Marshall remembered.
There are dozens of Civil War soldiers at Oak Grove whose graves are placed around a tall obelisk bearing witness to their service.
It’s not the cemetery’s only soaring remembrance.
An inscribed stone pillar captures the pride and heartbreak of the Stewart family. Navy Lt. Commander William Francis Stewart was lost when the USS Oneida went down in Yokohama Bay, Japan, in 1870. It sounds like quite a story.
Andrew Stewart, buried nearby, is a story all to himself. A congressman, Stewart was nearly nominated for vice president, in which case he would have succeeded to the White House. The president elected in 1848, the year Stewart came close to the nomination, was Zachary Taylor, who died in office.
William Crow died in office, too. U.S. Sen. Crow was buried at Oak Grove in August 1922, barely a year after succeeding Brownsville native Philander Knox, who also died in office.
Crow was sick his entire term, and spent long months in a Pittsburgh hospital. Brought to his Chalk Hill home to die, he was visited by President Harding over the July Fourth holiday in 1922.
Some 300 cars forming a line three miles long made their way to Oak Grove on the day Crow was laid to rest, a plot or two away from another member of the Senate from Uniontown, Daniel Sturgeon.
“The two Senators will sleep their last sleep together,” a newspaper of the period told readers.
Hundreds and hundreds of people and scores of families are buried at Oak Grove. Hopwoods, Ewings, Cochrans, Beesons, members of the Barnes family, the Princess of Thurn and Taxis Lida Nicolls Fitzgerald, state Supreme Court justice Stephen Mestrezat, the mother of novelist William Styron, among them.
The saddest to contemplate are the babies and young children buried there. They never had a chance at life.
It’s good to know the old burial ground, after verging on bankruptcy, is doing well again. It has a dedicated corps of supporters, including Gary Brain, Janice Marker, and Dave Ewing.
It takes a lot of hard work and money to keep up with the care and maintenance Oak Grove both requires and deserves. It’s a treasure.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — “Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation” and “Our People.”He can be reached at grandsalutebook@gmail.com.