Carnegie Library's Lawrenceville site is resting place of many long departed

Henry Snowden Jr. of Lawrenceville has endured many slights in his life and his afterlife.

To begin with, he died at the tender age of 15 months from an unknown cause in 1830. Then in the 1880s, his body was exhumed and reburied to make way for a school, and later a library. His tombstone became separated from his remains, making it a stone without a tomb.

Lacking a normal home, the stone has been displayed as long as folks can remember in the Lawrenceville Library, where librarians and residents have regaled youngsters with tales of the building, built on part of an old cemetery. The headstone and the library's cemetery roots have enhanced its ghoulish reputation. It even earned a spot on ghostvillage.com , a Web site of the paranormal.

Now, the gravestone's final resting place is marked for closure by the board of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, along with four other branches, because of a bare-bones budget.

"Lord knows what would happen to it," Allan Becer, 58, a Lawrenceville historian, said about the headstone. "That is the only tombstone from the Lawrenceville Burying Ground."

The 16-by-22-inch headstone, roughly in the shape of Ohio, weighs about 50 pounds and occupies the corner of a bookshelf in the main room.

Becer co-authored the book, "Monster on the Allegheny and Other Lawrenceville Tales," which included a chapter he wrote that details the history of the stone.

It began in 1814 when Lawrenceville founder William Foster, father of the famous composer, donated 1.25 acres for a cemetery to honor the local war dead. Known as the Lawrenceville Burying Grounds, it became the resting place — though not final resting place — for 500 bodies.

At the urging of residents, Foster in the 1820s reluctantly agreed to allow a school to be built in the cemetery. By the 1880s, the cemetery had deteriorated. Officials sought to move the bodies and build a new school.

Citizens were outraged, and a lawsuit was filed. One newspaper even called the school board "educational ghouls." Another complained of a "resurrection of bodies" in the graveyard.

In the end, the parties compromised, and residents were warned to claim the bodies of loved ones. The 70 unclaimed bodies were dumped into two ditches behind what is now the library, and a granite monument was erected to honor them.

"It was a mess," Becer said. Coffins reportedly spilled out, including a skull with two bullet holes.

The library was built in 1898. No one knows for sure when or why it got the headstone. The school closed in 1939.

The gray slab is so badly weathered and flaked that only about half of its epitaph is legible. In fact, the boy's identity was not traced until 1993 when Becer cracked the case after a lot of research.

The boy was the son of Henry Snowden, an Irish immigrant, grocer and self-described "gentleman." The family's remains, including those of little Henry and five brothers and sisters who died in childhood, were moved to Allegheny Cemetery in 1882.

"There's stones for the other Snowdens, but not for Henry," Becer said.

Calvin Broge, 21, learned of the branch's prominent tombstone and cemetery past as a child growing up in Lawrenceville when librarians would recount the story on Halloween.

On a recent visit to the library, Broge said he wasn't worried about any spirits in the building.

"I don't really believe in ghosts," he said.

If the branch is closed, Becer contends the Lawrenceville Historical Society or the Heinz History Center should get the gravestone.

Carnegie Library spokeswoman Susan Thinnes said it will decide the stone's fate by the middle of next summer when the branch is scheduled to be closed.

"It is part of the Carnegie system and the city," she said. "We want to make sure it has a respectful place, a proper place, and we put some thought into it."

She adds, "I don't think that we will have a curse put upon us from closing the library."

Maybe not. But library officials might heed the warning placed on a wreath of dried flowers on the base of the monument behind the library 126 years ago:

"Blest is the man, who spares these stones.

"And curs't be he that removes these bones."