Two Interesting Gravestones

Call me morbid if you wish, but I've always enjoyed visiting cemeteries.  On a number of occasions when I've been researching some historic personage, I've been able to augment what I've learned about them by means of information on their gravestone.  Here are photographs of a couple of gravestones that you also might find interesting and informative.

The first is the grave of Bishop Joseph S. Glass, who was our second bishop (1915-26).  Cathedral rector Msgr. Joseph M. Mayo found the grave recently during a visit to Los Angeles and provided me with this and two other photographs.  The inscription contains no new information, but the grave is interesting to me because Msgr. Mayo is one of the very few Utahns who have ever visited it, and to my knowledge these are the only photographs of it available in this state.

Since bishops are usually buried within the last diocese they served, the question might occur why Bishop Glass is interred in Los Angeles.  The answer is that he was a member of the Vincentian order, the Congregation of the Mission (C.M.), so he is buried in their cemetery rather than ours.  Bishop Glass was, to date, our only bishop to have been a member of a religious order.

The other is a photo of the grave of Nora Gleason in Mount Calvary Catholic Cemetery.  Faithful readers of these stories (and I hope there are a few!) will recognize her as the organist and choir director at the Cathedral of the Madeleine during Bishop Scanlan's time (see "Two Organists").  The large gravestone pictured here is over the remains of her mother, Honora, while the two stones set into the ground on either side are the graves of Nora (L) and her younger sister Elizabeth (R).  The stone is so weathered the inscription is all but illegible in this photograph, but it says, "Elizabeth A., daughter of P. L. and Hanora [sic] Gleason.  Born at Silver City, Nev. Aug. 5, 1877.  Died Jan. 9, 1884."  On the other side it reads, "Honora, wife of P. L. Gleason.  Died March 12, 1910." This gravestone contains the only real information we have about Nora's unfortunate little sister who died at age six, for she is listed in the 1880 census only as "E. Gleason."

Patrick L. Gleason was an Irish immigrant who worked in the Nevada mines and continued to do so after he sent his family to Salt Lake City to seek greater opportunities under the patronage of Bishop Scanlan.  He is presumably buried somewhere in Nevada.  Why his remains were not brought here is unknown.

Nora died in 1918, so she was presumably the one who designed the grave markers.  One wonders if she noticed that the stonecutter misspelled her mother's name on the side facing the camera!