Pandemic of the Past
In a woodpecker-infested plot of woods in rural Winfield Township lie the remains of an unknown number of European immigrant men who fell victim to another worldwide pandemic a century ago.
Known as the Black Cross by county residents of a certain age, the spot is the mass grave of a wagon load of bodies that were riddled with the Spanish flu of 1918.
According to information researched and compiled in the early 2000s by the GFWC Saxonburg District Woman's Club, the men worked as laborers at the limestone mine, sand plant, and salt and tile works in West Winfield.
The men had emigrated from Slovakia, Poland and other Eastern European countries to earn money to bring relatives to America or to send money home. Most of the men had emigrated recently and did not speak English or have any family or church affiliation, so their identities were known only to God.
Local legend repeats that the wagoner was on his way to St. Joseph Catholic Church in Coylesville, Clearfield Township, but his wagon became stuck in the mud and the farmer who owned the land at the time allowed the bodies to be buried there at the intersection of Cornetti and Sasse roads.
Historical records say some were in pine board boxes, while others were wrapped in blankets because the virulent flu that terrorized the county for about a month caused a shortage in caskets.
“No records have been found that identify who or how many are buried there,” according to the information the women's club gleaned from the county Historical Society.
A large, rugged cross made of railroad ties was erected atop the mass grave, and many European families probably never learned what happened to their sons, brothers, husbands and friends.The cross deteriorated over the years and the grave was all but forgotten, with the possible exception of youths of decades past who utilized the spot as a place to carouse.Then in 2002, women's club members Doris Herceg and Drenda Gostkowski decided to take on the task of researching the grave and installing some kind of commemoration to the lives of the laborers.As a result of their two years of hard work, a roadside marker was installed in 2002 detailing the fate of the immigrants.By that time, the wooden cross had rotted, so a pedestal with a concrete cross was placed in the exact spot where the wooden cross once stood.“There was an indentation in the ground from the wooden cross,” Herceg said.The women's club also arranged for a Ukranian Catholic blessing ceremony, which was conducted by a priest from Pittsburgh.
The Rev. Wayne Gillespie of St. Luke's Lutheran Church also offered a prayer, according to information from the Saxonburg Historical Society.“We did it so the people would be aware that (the Spanish flu epidemic), which was worldwide, had an impact that was so very local,” Herceg said.In 2017, a national film crew working on a show about the Spanish Influenza for the Smithsonian Channel brought ground-penetrating radar to the site to find the reported five mass graves there.The machinery was able to find one mass grave with a possible eight bodies stacked atop one another.Jackie Bice of Clinton Township, who was the president of the women's club in 2002, thinks the others were not found because of the passage of time and growth of trees at and near the site.“I feel really bad for those people, to be in a strange place without friends and trying to make a living so you could send money home or bring people over, it had to be a very hard and strange time,” Bice said.She said the men probably lived in impossibly close quarters, which likely allowed the pandemic to rampage through their ranks.“We're going through that now with the coronavirus, but we have houses that we live in,” Bice said. “They were probably living in shacks.”
Once the illness began infecting the men, there was probably no way for them to get medical help.“We get outside help,” Bice said. “They got sick and didn't get to see a doctor. It's very heartbreaking.”Herceg said she feels the long-overdue orthodox blessing service sufficiently sanctified the hallowed ground 99 years after the hapless souls were buried there.“(The pastors) gave a beautiful blessing over the grave,” Herceg recalled. “I'm sure nobody probably went up there to give them their final blessing at the time.”Fred Caesar, curator at the Saxonburg Museum, said the video crew in 2017 revealed some interesting information during their work at the mass graves.“They indicated to us that they thought it's the only monument to a grave, such as it is, in the country to victims of the Spanish flu,” Caesar said.
According to county assessment maps, a small chunk of land at the site is separate from the massive surrounding property owned by the Armstrong Cement and Supply Corp.The owner of the property on the online map is listed as “cemetery.”An official at the county mapping department said many small parcels exist throughout the county that were separated from the surrounding property for a cemetery or church.Those parcels, including the Spanish flu grave in Winfield Township, really have no official owner.Today, a small pull-off on Cornetti Road at the end of Sasse Road allows visitors to park and visit the grave, which is now missing the concrete cross.Coins have been placed on the concrete pedestal, plastic flowers are stuck in the ground and a decorative red ribbon was tied around an overhanging tree limb in memory of the unfortunate immigrants who, like 675,000 others across the U.S., lost their battle with the Spanish flu in 1918.
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