Cemetery Project – Laurel Hill Cemetery

Here’s another rewrite (04-23-2022) in the series of old cemeteries. I will continue to post a series of both regular and infrared photographs that I have taken at Laurel Hill Cemetery and Mt. Moriah cemeteries, because it takes a lot of time to process IR, I will post more this week and continue till I get caught up. Thanks for visiting with me as we wander through the tomb stones in the IR world, I hope to capture some ghosts some day. Please leave comments. Thanks in advance.

In late 1835, John Jay Smith, a Quaker and librarian, recorded in his diary: “The City of Philadelphia has been increasing so rapidly of late years that the living population has multiplied beyond the means of accommodation for the dead…on recently visiting Friends grave yard in Cherry Street I found it impossible to designate the resting place of a darling daughter, determined me to endeavor to procure for the citizens a suitable, neat and orderly location for a rural cemetery.”

Smith’s very personal experience ultimately had very public implications, as less than one year later, this grieving father founded Laurel Hill Cemetery with partners Nathan Dunn, Benjamin W. Richards and Frederick Brown. When Smith conceived of Laurel Hill, he envisioned something fundamentally different from the burial places that came before it, and the site has continued to hold an important place of distinction as one of the first cemeteries of its kind. Key concepts to Laurel Hill’s founding were that it had to be situated in a picturesque location well outside the city; that it had no religious affiliation; and that it provided a permanent burial space for the dead in a restful and tranquil setting.

In an era when the city suffered from crowding, disease and scarcity of public space, Laurel Hill offered an “alternative environment.” Previously, churchyards were the only places available to bury the dead, and they were often as crowded and unsanitary as the streets that bordered them. Worse yet, rapid industrialization and population growth commonly led to the disinterment of burial grounds to make way for roads and buildings. Laurel Hill’s founding is deeply rooted in the cultural history of Philadelphia’s urbanization, and in the simultaneous development of crafted, suburban sanctuaries of nature and retreat just beyond the city’s limits. Laurel Hill was not only established as a permanent, non-sectarian burial place for the dead, but also as a scenic, riverside sanctuary for the living.

The laurel hill cemetery

Indian Ann Burial site

TABERNACLE CEMETERY – RESTING PLACE OF INDIAN ANN

tombstone-horizion

Bethesda Church, Cemetery

Mt. Moriah Cemetery

Mount Moriah Cemetery is a historic rural cemetery that spans the border between Southwest Philadelphia and Yeadon, Pennsylvania. It was established in 1855 and is the largest cemetery in Pennsylvania. It is 200 acres in size and contains 150,000 burials. Wikipedia

Friends of mount moriah cemetery.org