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Wednesday, October 02, 2002

By Mary Niederberger

Some of the missing pieces of a puzzle are starting to come together for military veteran John Kovach in his efforts to identify and restore old grave sites at the Bethel Cemetery in Bethel Park.

He suspected a vacant section of the cemetery near its entrance held graves whose markers either were lost or buried over the years. Furthermore, he has a hunch that some of those buried there could be veterans of the Civil and Revolutionary wars.

Kovach's initial suspicion was confirmed two weeks ago when ground-penetrating radar equipment detected the presence of gravestones a short distance under the ground surface and the presence of what appeared to be graves farther below.

The radar services were donated by West Penn Service Group of New Kensington, whose owner, David Campbell, is a Bethel Park resident.

Based on the radar scan, Kovach started to dig and found the tombstone of a John Douglass, who was born in 1845 and died in 1863. That information was included in an article in the Post-Gazette's South edition last week, prompting a call to Kovach from a descendant of Douglass.

Elizabeth Waite Prine of Mt. Lebanon said John Douglass was the elder brother of her maternal great-grandfather, Milton Andrew Douglass.

Although Kovach initially pondered whether John Douglass could be a Civil War veteran who died in the course of duty, Prine said the young man was killed when a tree fell on him.

"As far as I know, it happened while they were cutting down a tree, while working like they did on the frontier," Prine said.

But the information that most excited Kovach was Prine's contention there could be as many as four generations of the Douglass family buried in the cemetery -- most likely close to the John Douglass grave -- and that some of them fought in the Revolutionary War and the Whiskey Rebellion.

As luck would have it, Prine has a family genealogy. But it's packed away temporarily, as she is moving. She and Kovach plan to get together in several weeks and go through her records.

In addition, Kovach plans more digging at the cemetery.

"I want to find out what's there, and he wants to find out too," Prine said.

Mary Niederberger is a free-lance writer.