Monument Cemetery, Philadelphia

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA
Surname/tag: Irvin

== Introduction ==

The story of Monument Cemetery and the violence that was done to our ancestors resting place.

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Monument Cemetery

I was on my way back home from the grocery store when a funeral procession came by going in the other direction. Like all the other cars in my lane I pulled half off the road and stopped until the hearse with its long procession of cars had passed. Despite two cartons of ice cream quickly melting in my rear seat I would not have dreamed of proceeding on until the last mourner had gone by.

Stopping for a funeral procession is a rural southern tradition that I love. It is an acknowledgement and a show of respect for strangers who have suffered a loss.

So, maybe it is living in the south where they have such a reverence for their dead, but I really believe that anyone who cares about history would be horrified at that what happened to Monument Cemetery in Philadelphia.

It was not only the complete removal of a cemetery where thousands of people had laid to rest their loved ones, it was the heartless and wholesale destruction of historic tombstones and subsequent burial of thousands in a mass grave.

From the blog Urban Oasis we find a short description of Monument Cemetery and its destruction.

A major landmark in rural North Philadelphia was Monument Cemetery. Opened in 1837, it was the second rural cemetery built for Philadelphia (the first being Laurel Hill). Encompassing close to what would become four square blocks of North Philadelphia between Broad and 17th and Norris and Montgomery, Monument cemetery would become the eventual resting place for thousands of Philadelphians, including Russell Conwell, founder of Temple University, and his wife. Despite its prominent place in the landscape of that part of the city, the cemetery no longer exists. With the expansion of Temple University in the 1950s, the university acquired permission to remove the graves and turn the area into sports fields and parking lots. Many of the headstones became the base of the Betsy Ross Bridge.

At least three of my grandfather's young brothers were buried in Monument Cemetery. One of those brothers carried his name and died at the age of eleven months in April of 1889 before my grandfather was born in September of 1891. All of these three young boy's death certificates show Monument Cemetery as what was suppose to be their final resting place. Where are these boys today? They are probably in a mass grave, no longer with any acknowledgement of their short lives.

Monument Cemetery was a Victorian Cemetery of over 14 acres holding the remains of over 28,000 people. Most of those people ended up thrown together in one large grave. One of the saddest parts of the story is that all the historical tombstones and even large significant monuments where thrown in the river. You can see them today under the rippling waters and along the river shores.

The story of the hard breaking destruction of this historical cemetery is told in a blog by The Cemetery Traveler on a page called How Monument Cemetery was Destroyed. It is worth a read. When I finished reading it my emotions ran from sadness to real anger. How does it make you feel?