People of Mount Hope

Abstract

Mount Hope Cemetery, on the East Side of Youngstown, is surrounded by neighborhoods that started as rural outposts to a city, then expanded during the city's industrial age. Anchored to demographic statistics, event timelines, and national trends, cemeteries are a solid historic document. Mount Hope Cemetery reflects trends of the United States, in general, and the industrial rise of Youngstown, in particular. At the height of Youngstown's steel-based economy, the communities adjacent to Mount Hope became urban, working class neighborhoods. The ethnicity of the community started as a mixture of German, Italian and Slovakian cultures with a small contingent of African Americans. Subsequently, the population shifted to predominantly African American, with a significant Hispanic contingent. The decline of Mount Hope, as an active and fully maintained cemetery, mirrored the decline of the surrounding neighbors. Chapter One details the physical layout of the cemetery, and follows its history of ownership. Legal records, deeds, wills and topographic evidence are the foundation of Chapter One. Chapter Two is a detailed study of Mount Hope's interred. Information from headstones, grave markers, coupled with grave orientation and location, put each of the interred in proper context during the life of the cemetery. Chapter Three focuses on the neighborhoods adjacent to Mount Hope. Demographic changes in the neighborhoods were reflected by representation in the cemetery itself. Chapter Three documents the cemetery through categorization and grouping like elements within the cemetery. Chapter Four, the final chapter, is a look into the lives and circumstances of individuals interred in Mount Hope selected at random.