I did not get to process the Philadelphia Memorial Park records at Chester County Historical Society, but I wish I could have. Aside from the fact that it is a collection of old dusty volumes (which are always fun!), I love this collection because it evidences a fascinating aspect of our culture — that nothing, not even the promise of eternal rest, stops “progress.”
Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the developed portions of the City of Philadelphia expanded greatly, and areas once wide open and rural were swallowed up by the growing city. In addition, lots within existing city neighborhoods were re-purposed as community needs changed overtime. Frequent victims of this evolving urban landscape were the city’s many cemeteries. Whether privately owned or religiously affiliated, burial grounds that stood in the way of progress were frequently lost or relocated. Philadelphia Memorial Park in Frazer, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia, was one destination for numerous city cemeteries during the twentieth century.
Philadelphia Memorial Park was established in 1929 as an independent burial ground. It was created as a “no monument” cemetery, representing a shift in preferred burial ground aesthetics from the “gloomy, depressing and neglected condition [of the typical graveyard] into a beautiful garden-like park with exquisite landscape gardening and noble memorial architecture,” (Downingtown News, 1932). In place of traditional tombstones, bronze tablets set flush with the ground were used to mark graves in order to preserve the continuity of the landscape. The graves from at least four inner-city burial grounds were relocated to Philadelphia Memorial Park during the mid-twentieth century: the American Mechanics and United Daughters of America Cemetery, German Lutheran Cemetery, Union Burial Ground and Belvue Cemetery.
In researching this collection to write the processing plan and historical note, I learned that this is no uncommon thing — cemeteries are moved all the time, for all kinds of reasons, and it is not necessarily ancient or abandoned cemeteries being evicted. That graves are dug up and re-buried miles away just so that a new strip mall could be built, to be frank, makes me quite sad. Though an incredibly morbid thought, I cannot help but think that the one thing we are all guaranteed in life is eternal rest in death, and that, as it turns out, is not even a real guarantee.
The collection itself is comprised of burial and financial records pertaining to the individual burial grounds prior to their removal — obviously an excellent genealogical resource. Some of the volumes also note cause of death.
