Mount Calvary Cemetery
A Final Resting Place for 43,000
– A 175th Anniversary of the Diocese Story:
Before the diocese was established Wheeling Catholics buried their loved ones in available plots around the valley and hilltops. In 1850, when the Diocese of Wheeling was founded, Bishop Whelan bought land in the Manchester section of Wheeling, Virginia – on the hillside of Rock Point Road which was across Big Wheeling Creek from 17th Street. Irish and German Catholic families moved their dead to the Catholic Cemetery with the blessing of their priests and Bishop Whelan. However, within 20 years, the “Old Manchester Catholic Cemetery” was full.
Bishop Whelan prioritized the purchase of 39-acres four miles east of Wheeling on National Road in 1872, for a new reverent Catholic cemetery. He personally oversaw the Mount Calvary Cemetery’s layout and design and made sure the bodies in the Manchester area cemetery were reinterned to Mount Calvary.
Since then, the property underwent many beautification projects.
The Bishop’s Chapel was built in 1879, and a house for the sexton (caretaker for the graveyard, chapel, and any other buildings on the grounds) was added in 1883. A dedicated section of the cemetery was set aside for priests who served the diocese, other areas were designated for religious men and women.
Mount Calvary is where the largest mass burial in Wheeling ever took place.
Marking tragic history, 119 men and boys lost their lives as a result of two explosions within the Wheeling Steel Coal Mine in Benwood on April 28, 1924. While the miners were from all over the surrounding communities on both side of the Ohio River, the majority were immigrants from Poland, Greece, Italy, Hungary, Russia, Serbia, Croatia, Lithuania, and Ukraine. Notably many were also Catholic, belonging to St. John Parish in Benwood and St. Ladislaus in South Wheeling. In all 72 miners are buried at the Catholic cemetery, of those 65 were buried at the mass grave, where priests conducted the service in three languages. The seven other miners were buried in other areas, including three Hungarian immigrant friends, whose families chose to have them buried together.
Twentieth Century Improvements
As the decades passed, the cemetery’s sacred landscape grew. The McFadden Memorial Entrance was dedicated in 1954; the Crucifixion Shrine followed in 1964; and new burial areas were opened to meet the needs of the faithful. In 1975, Bishop Joseph H. Hodges dedicated the Resurrection Chapel Mausoleum, home to 1,624 crypts and graced by a radiant stained-glass image of the Risen Christ—an enduring sign of the Christian hope in life everlasting.
Today, Mount Calvary Cemetery stands as a quiet, steadfast witness to Catholic history—a place where faith is remembered, sacrifice honored, and the promise of resurrection proclaimed.
