Green Mount Cemetery

01/24/2026

John Rogers Phelan is remembered with a cenotaph in his family’s lot at Green Mount Cemetery.

TODAY IN HISTORY: Inspired by a Greene County, Pennsylvania sailor, this research remembers the tragic loss of the USS Oneida and at least 115 of her crew on January 24, 1870. Among those lost was John Rogers Phelan [1846-1870], who was born and raised in Waynesburg, and is memorialized by a cenotaph in his family's lot at Green Mount Cemetery.

Follow these links to learn about this local history connection to national and international events:

🔗 TODAY IN HISTORY (Library of Congress) - Sinking of the USS Oneida: https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/january-24/ -of-the-uss-oneida

🔗 BLOG (Library of Congress) - John Phelan and the Sinking of the USS Oneida: https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2023/09/john-phelan-and-the-sinking-of-the-uss-oneida/

🔗 JOHN ROGERS PHELAN (Greene Connections Archives) - https://hub.catalogit.app/greene-connections?query=%22Phelan%2C%20John%20Rogers%20[1846-1870]%22

🔗 PHELAN FAMILY (Greene Connections Archives) - https://hub.catalogit.app/greene-connections?query=%22Phelan%20family%22

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Image Credits:

ℹ️ John Rogers Phelan [1846-1870] in his United States Naval Academy uniform (Class of 1866) - son of John Phelan and Jane Walker; circa 1864-1865, image by Wallace & Craig, Waynesburg, Pa.; item no. WAYN-AN008-0045, Waynesburg University Paul R. Stewart Museum Collection, Greene Connections Archives Project (GreeneConnections.com). GC Archives entry: https://hub.catalogit.app/greene-connections/entry/8bed4040-d62c-11ed-8a69-3dfc6f959c3f

ℹ️ Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, "The sinking of the United States steamer Oneida off the port of Yokohama, Japan, [Monday, January 24] / from a sketch by a survivor." 1870. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

ℹ️ “Erected in the Memory of Lieut. John R. Phelan, U. S. N., Aged 23 Years & 4 Mo., who was lost on board the USS Oneida by a collision with the British steamer Bombay on the 24th day of Jan. 1870 in the Bay of Yokohama, Japan.” -- Phelan cenotaph, Section B, Lot 39, Green Mount Cemetery, Waynesburg, Pa.

01/23/2026

Take a look at the Green Mount maps. 🪦🗺️

400+ CEMETERIES IN GREENE COUNTY, PA: All WPA Maps for Greene County, Pennsylvania cemeteries are now posted at https://greeneconnections.com/cemeteries/

RESEARCH CONTINUES to accurately match (1) WPA Cemetery Plats created in the 1930s with (2) Dorothy Hennen, Cemetery Records of Greene County, Pennsylvania, 12 volumes (Waynesburg, Pennsylvania: Cornerstone Genealogical Society, 1975-1979), which is available to view or buy at the Cornerstone Genealogical Society, and (3) Find a Grave cemetery entries curated by volunteers.

Numerous cemeteries in Greene County have the same name, are known by assorted names, or have no name at all. In order to distinguish each one, research is ongoing as we examine property ownership and associations through courthouse records, maps, and more.

If you have information that will help to improve a cemetery description, please email [email protected]

09/12/2023

One of the LIbrary's genealogy specialists was struck by reading the elaborate inscription on a 19th-century cemetery marker in her hometown. It spurred deep research and an extensive Library research guide into the 1870 sinking of the USS Oneida, costing the lives of 115 sailors, including the youn...

01/10/2021

Photo of Green Mount featured by Cemetery Conservators For United Standards.

08/04/2020

Morford and Nancy (Simpson) Throckmorton, Congressman Jesse Lazear and his wife, Frances (Burbridge) Lazear, as well as their daughter, Lucy, among others pictured in this collection are at rest in Green Mount Cemetery.

62 PHOTOS ADDED - Some of the oldest, identified images in the GC Archives are included in the Dr. Jeannette Franc Throckmorton Collection.

In 1914, Jeannette took the family's one-of-a-kind daguerreotypes and ambrotypes, dating from the 1840s-1860s, along with later images from the 1870s-1900s, to a photographer studio. She had professional reproductions made so that those unique images could be shared among her family. She assembled the images with her genealogy research into a book that she gave her sister that year for Christmas. Relatives in possession of the original book have digitized Jeannette's entire work into a downloadable PDF that is linked to each item's page in the GC Archives. Special thanks to Shannon Riddle for this labor of love and wonderful contribution. We are very excited to have these wonderful old images, including such local notables as: Jesse and Frances (Burbridge) Lazear, Francis and Mary (Crow) Lazear, Morford and Nancy (Simpson) Throckmorton, and Michael Crow Jr., added to GC.

VIEW THE COLLECTION: https://hub.catalogit.app/4150/search/%22Dr.%20Jeannette%20Franc%20Throckmorton%20Collection%22

04/09/2020

Sarah and her family (Minors, Cosgrays, and Millers) are at rest in Green Mount Cemetery.

Sarah Cosgray Minor [1898-1941] in Red Cross uniform - daughter of William Evans Minor & Harriet Miller. This picture was probably taken in Pittsburgh, circa 1918-1920 during the flu epidemic.

BRIEF BIO: "SARAH COSGRAY MINOR was born 29 May 1898 in Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania and died from heart failure that resulted as a complication of advanced bone cancer in her leg 15 April 1941, at the age of 42, in Pittsburgh. She was buried 16 April 1941 at Green Mount Cemetery in Waynesburg, Greene County, Pennsylvania.

As a small girl, Sarah contracted whooping cough. During her illness she burst both ear drums causing deafness. A special education enabled Sarah to read lips and to speak. Later in life, she utilized one of the earliest hearing aids, which was a large apparatus with a battery strapped to her thigh and a cord that ran up to a device at her ear." - Candice L. Buchanan, "A Waynesburg College Family: The Legacy of Alfred Brashear & Margaret Kerr (Bell) Miller" (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: CreateSpace, 2015), page 44.

PHOTO LINK: https://hub.catalogit.app/4150/folder/entry/9b567240-248b-11eb-873e-dd7c1bb6fdb2

PHOTO SOURCE: Item no. MERR-AN004-0002-0036, Robert Silas and Eva Mae (Christie) Merrick Collection, shared by Peter Merrick, Greene Connections Archives Project (www.GreeneConnections.com).

03/30/2020

Margaret (Bell) Miller and Alfred Brashear Miller rest in Green Mount Cemetery. Their tombstone was provided by their students.

03/27/2020

Green Mount is the resting place of the young Holder couple remembered in the following post, as well as a number of others including World War I fallen soldiers who lost their lives to the flu epidemic.

WE ARE LIVING IN TOUGH TIMES AND WE HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE: The decision to share this post has been debated and postponed. We are enduring a difficult time and it is generally our preference to share history that distracts us all in positive ways right now. However, as we navigate each day finding ways to feel fellowship while maintaining a safe distance - all out of love and hope for helping one another - we have decided to share this post. We certainly encourage you to scroll past it if it is too hard to read. Our motivation is to share and learn from our history in the hopes that we may feel further fellowship through the bond to our ancestors and the people of our community's past. That through the tragedy of the words below and the way they will resonate right now, we can feel kinship to those who endured and kept keeping on. We are here today because they survived their hard days.

Influenza Epidemic - 10 October 1918 - WAYNESBURG REPUBLICAN newspaper, Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, page 1, columns 3 and 4.

*Teacher's Institute Postponed

*40 cases in Waynesburg

*All churches, theaters and moving picture places have been ordered closed on account of the Spanish influenza.

This is just a small clipping printed from the newspaper microfilm at the Cornerstone Genealogical Society. It is a mere snapshot of a much bigger impact felt by our community a century ago. This particular section was printed for our files because the next column over announced the deaths of three Company K soldiers during World War I. What a trying time.

In his "History of Greene County, Pennsylvania," Dr. G. Wayne Smith tells us (pages 695-696): "By the end of October, all Greene County schools were closed, and parents were ordered to keep their children at home. The Waynesburg Hospital was filled to overflowing. An emergency hospital with 30 cots was opened on October 20 in the Ross Building [where Groovy's and Hot Rod's restaurants were later housed] on Morris Street where three nurses and fifteen local Red Cross workers ministered to the sick and dying." He goes on to explain that "there were flu patients in almost every home at Wind Ridge, with seven ill in one home alone." Hardest to read is that "at least fifty-five died in Greene County due to the epidemic during the winter and spring of 1918-1919, and scores of others were seriously ill."

In Green Mount cemetery, near the brick road entrance off of Morris Street in Waynesburg, is the tombstone of James Albert and Katherine Elizabeth (Summersgill) Holder. The young couple died within days of each other in April 1919, leaving behind their little daughters. All ages were affected from infant to elderly. Soldiers were hit particularly hard due to their close quarters in training, camps, and transportation.

The Holders' double obituary on the front page of the Waynesburg Republican, 24 April 1919, opens: "Not in this generation, during a single year, has such a heavy weight of sorrow and bereavement been felt by the people of Greene County, as they have been called upon to bear during the past twelve months."

03/14/2020

Green Mount Cemetery is home to the memorial honoring those buried in the abandoned East End / Hookstown / Methodist Cemetery. Learn more by following the links below.

EAST END / HOOKSTOWN / METHODIST CEMETERY - Petition to Vacate (1961)

This map is one of the excellent exhibits in the "Petition to Vacate the East End Cemetery" presented to the Greene County Court in the early 1960s.

*View the entire Petition: https://bit.ly/hookstown-petition

*On petition entry, scroll down to WEB LINKS for high-resolution downloads of tombstone inscriptions, maps, letters from relatives, and property details.

See more photographs and documents about this cemetery and the people buried there by visiting: https://bit.ly/hookstown

11/29/2019

Sponsor wreaths for our local veterans in Green Mount Cemetery and Rosemont Cemetery. And join the ceremonies and wreath laying volunteers in Greene County on December 14th.

The national “Wreaths Across America” program will once again be offered in Greene County this coming holiday season.

The annual program will be held nationwide on Saturday, Dec. 14, and in Greene County, volunteers from Greene County will join over 2 million volunteers across the country in placing remembrance wreaths on veterans’ headstones, to honor our service men and women and their families.

The goal of the program is to “remember, honor and teach … remember the fallen, honor those who serve and their families and teach the future generations about the sacrifices made to preserve our freedom,” according to the Wreaths Across America website, www.wreathsacrossamerica.org.

Greene County Composite Squadron 606 of the Civil Air Patrol, United States Air Force Auxiliary, will have volunteers placing wreaths on veterans’ headstones at 12 p.m. on Dec. 14 at two locations: Green Mount Cemetery in Waynesburg and Rosemont Cemetery in Rogersville.

We were also informed that, for the ninth consecutive year, the Carmichaels Women’s Civic Club, along with the American Legion Post 400 and the Carmichaels Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3491, is participating in the Wreaths Across America campaign.

Wreaths will be placed on veterans’ graves at the Laurel Point Cemetery in Carmichaels on Dec. 14, and a remembrance ceremony will be held at 12 p.m.

11/07/2019

Sponsor wreaths to honor the veterans of Green Mount Cemetery.

This is a wonderful annual event courtesy of Squadron 606 Civil Air Patrol.

Follow the link below to learn more and order wreaths.

http://squadron606.us/index.php/squadron/wreaths-across-america

11/07/2019

One of our own. Quite a story for Veterans Day.