A Brief History of Philadelphia’s Early Parish Cemeteries

St. Augustine

St. Augustine Cemetery founded in 1801 was a small plot located next to the church building.  Records of internments were destroyed in the Riots of 1844.

Old St. Joseph’s

Parish Burial Ground (located near 4^th & Walnut St.) was a very small lot attached to the Chapel, and it probably operated from about 1729 until Old St. Mary’s opened its burial ground in 1759.  Burials from Old St. Joseph’s were then made at Old St. Mary’s and the two churches shared a joint sacramental register until the 1790’s. However, no cemetery records from this time period survive.

St. Joseph’s Cemetery, or Bishop’s Burial Ground (located at 7^th & Washington) opened in 1824. The bodies from Old St. Joseph’s small cemetery were transferred here.  The property was held in Bishop Conwell’s name and there was a long legal battle after Conwell’s death.  The cemetery closed in August 1893, and 1905 the property was sold and the bodies were removed to Holy Cross and buried in Section 13: ranges 11, 12 and 13.  No lists of the buried are available.  The Philadelphia newspapers carried this story in June and July 1905 requesting that relatives of those buried in the Bishop’s Burial Ground claim the remains or they would be removed to Holy Cross in August.

Old St. Mary’s

The early history of Old St. Mary’s parish cemeteries is complicated.  The parish had three distinct burial grounds.  The cemetery adjoining the church property on South 4^th Street is just one of those plots.

St. Mary Burial Ground (located on S. 4^th Street) opened about 1759 and remained active until the 1880s.  Inscriptions from tombstones were published in Vol. III of the Records of the ACHS.  A small section of this ground was used by Holy Trinity Church, but they kept a separate register.

St. Mary’s Cemetery (located at 13^th & Budd [Now Spruce] Street) opened in 1800 and remained active until the 1840s.  Records contained in the Burial Register volumes 1823-1843 and 1844-1850.  In May of 1899 this property was sold and those bodies not claimed by relatives were moved to the "New St. Mary’s" at 11^th and Moore.

New St. Mary’s Cemetery (located at 11^th and Moore Sts. in South Philadelphia) opened in the 1840’s, and remained active until about the 1880’s.  By 1910 the cemetery was overgrown and neglected and a fire at the cemetery destroyed any records held there.  Eventually, the bodies were removed to Holy Cross (date unknown) and re-interred in a mass grave.  In the 1950’s St. Maria Goretti High School was built on the site.  Some of the inscriptions from tombstones were transcribed into a handwritten bound copybook.  Also, the Burial Registers 1844-1850, 1851-1859 and 1859-1878 contain some burial records for this cemetery.

Philadelphia Archdiocesan Historical Research Center

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