10/04/2026
An Unexpected Baer Connection at Allegheny Cemetery
While exploring historic Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, today, one monument stopped me immediately. Across the enormous granite base was a name that’s obviously very familiar to me:
BAER
The monument belongs to Charles C. Baer (1840–1894) and his wife, Elvina Frances Wood Vandergrift Baer (1843–1911).
Charles was born May 17, 1840, near Mount Pleasant in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. His parents, Christian and Catharine Baer, were German immigrants who had come to America during the 1830s.
Charles’s story is pretty remarkable. At only about 11 years old, he went to work as an errand boy for a Pittsburgh to***co and cigar business. Rather than remaining an employee, he worked his way through the business and eventually became a partner. Following the death of the original owner, Charles continued the operation, and by the 1860s he was running the business himself in downtown Pittsburgh.
From an immigrant family and an 11-year-old errand boy, he had become a successful Pittsburgh businessman.
Charles was also heavily involved in Freemasonry. Historical records from the Scottish Rite Valley of Pittsburgh list Charles C. Baer, 33°, from 1882 through 1894.
In 1875, Charles married Elvina Frances Wood Vandergrift. They lived for many years in what was then Allegheny City, now Pittsburgh’s North Side. The couple had no children. Charles died on March 28, 1894, at only 53 years old. Elvina lived another 17 years, passing away on May 2, 1911.
Today they rest together beneath this impressive granite monument at Allegheny Cemetery.
But there’s another reason this particular monument caught my attention.
My own Baer/Bär family has deep Pennsylvania roots, including connections to Western Pennsylvania and Westmoreland County. Through genealogical research, our Baer line can be followed much farther back through Germany and, before that, the Zürich region of Switzerland.
Charles’s family was also part of the German-speaking Baer/Bär migration into Pennsylvania, and there are enough similarities in the names, geography, migration history and time period that I believe there’s a good possibility Charles belongs somewhere within the extended Baer family tree.
I haven’t found the final genealogical link yet, so I’m not going to call the relationship 100% proven. That’s going to require some more digging through both family trees. But considering the overlapping history, it’s certainly something I’m going to continue researching.
That made stumbling across this monument especially interesting. I originally stopped because I saw BAER carved across a massive piece of granite. I walked away knowing the story of a man who started working at 11 years old, eventually owned the Pittsburgh business where he’d begun as an errand boy, became a prominent 33° Scottish Rite Mason, and may even turn out to be part of my own extended family history.
Charles C. Baer
May 17, 1840 – March 28, 1894
Elvina F. W. Vandergrift Baer
March 26, 1843 – May 2, 1911
Allegheny Cemetery — Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
One of the things I enjoy about visiting old cemeteries is that monuments like this are more than pieces of stone. Every one of them represents a person, a family and a story—and sometimes you unexpectedly stumble across a story that may connect with your own.
