The Odd End to Philadelphia's Odd Fellows Cemetery

William Dick Elementary School, Philadelphia (former site of Odd Fellows Cemetery)

Coffin piece from Odd Fellows Cemetery?

A few weeks ago I received an email from a woman who was wondering about the resolution of this situation. In December of 2013, wooden coffins were surprisingly unearthed under a schoolyard in north Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Water Company was digging under the playground at the William Dick Elementary School (shown above) when caskets and other remains were found. When the story hit the news on Dec. 4 (see links at end), there was much media coverage. I went to the site to check it out. As far as I can tell, none of the graves that were excavated at that time were moved - seems like the Philadelphia Water Company just did their piping work and filled the ground back in. There were pieces of old pine board laying around in the mud of the site, one of which I picked up. Possibly part of an old pine box.

I lost track of the story and began wondering myself whatever became of this find. I see no further mention of it on the Internet. At the time of the incident, I missed an email from a reporter asking me to comment on the situation. Had I made the interview, I would have suggested he contact The Odd Fellows Cemetery Company in northeast Philadelphia for comment. The site in question (24th and Diamond Streets), was originally the site of Odd Fellows Cemetery, which had been established in 1848.

Latest occupant of the land once occupied by the Odd Fellows Cemetery

About a hundred years later, in 1951, the City of Philadelphia displaced Odd Fellows Cemetery and used the space to build a housing project and this public school. About 80,000 bodies were supposedly moved to Lawnview Cemetery in Rockledge (a Philadelphia suburb in Montgomery County), and Mount Peace Cemetery, at 3111 West Lehigh Avenue, Philadelphia. Both locations were, and are still, owned by the Odd Fellows Cemetery Company. The woman who wrote to me had a vested interest in the situation. It seems that many of her ancestors had originally been buried at Odd Fellows Cemetery.



Ironically, a few months prior to the unearthing of the coffins at Odd Fellows' original site, she had requested copies of her ancestors' burial records from the Odd Fellows Cemetery Company in Rockledge. Her ancestors had been buried there in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s. She received the records, which were stamped "Moved to Lawnview in 1951," complete with lot numbers of the graves. She had accepted all this as fact until the coffins were discovered. Now she's not so sure.

Plaque on monument in Odd Fellows Cemetery

When a cemetery or graveyard is moved, those in charge most likely try to move all the bodies. However, its fairly common that stragglers are left behind, and found years later by accident. But if stragglers are later found, should they not be relocated as well? The Philadelphia Water Company temporarily halted its work in December 2013 so archaeologists could examine the findings. As I was doing research for this article, I did see that an attempt was made by Philly.com to contact Odd Fellows Cemetery Company at the time of the schoolyard excavation. Calls were not returned.

Lawnview Cemetery field where tens of thousands of bodies were reburied

Why the name "Odd Fellows?"

"The Independent Order of Odd Fellows began in 18th Century England, it was deemed odd to find people organized for the purpose of giving aid to those in need without recognition and pursuing projects for the benefits of all mankind." - http://www.ioof.org/

Plaque at Odd Fellows Cemetery

Odd Fellows began as a fraternal organization in America in 1819, and continues to this day. Currently, the organization sees itself as a "...family of Odd Fellowship, composed of Men, Women, and Youth, believing in a supreme being, the creator and preserver of the universe, who have come together in our local communities having the same beliefs and values as others, that; Friendship, Love and Truth are the basic guidelines that we need to follow in our daily lives"(ref.). Friendship, Love and Truth are usually symbolized by the three chain links seen in the photo at left; sometimes the letters F-L-T are written within the links.

Sidewalk at 24th and Diamond Streets

The photo at right was taken in April 2016. It shows the new sidewalks at 24th and Diamond Streets which were poured after the opened graves had been filled back in, subsequent to the Philadelphia Water Company finishing its work. The fence encloses the playground of the William Dick Public School. There is no memorial plaque or anything to indicate that portions of the Odd Fellows Cemetery still exist under the playground.

Lawnview Cemetery, Rockledge, PA

Lawnview Cemetery has been the recipient of tens of thousands of relocated graves over the years, from other cemeteries besides Odd Fellows. The most notorious being the twenty thousand graves from Philadelphia's Monument Cemetery, which was razed in 1956. The rumor was that all these bodies were dumped into a mass grave. If you talk to the people at Lawnview, they tell you that they have a record showing the actual plot where each body was buried. No reason not to trust that, except that, as people found out in north Philly in 2013, not all the graves (from Odd Fellows) were actually moved.

If you drive through Lawnview Cemetery, there is a vast field with no grave markers. This is where the burials from Monument Cemetery and Odd Fellows Cemetery are. There are no monuments, headstones, or markers of any kind because most of them were dumped into the Delaware River (you can read about that here). Some markers from Odd Fellows Cemetery remained, albeit buried, at their original location. News reports say that marble headstones were found during the Philadelphia Water Company's excavation in 2013. If you drive through Lawnview, I will tell you that the sight is a bit unsettling. The field in question looks flat at first glance. But if you drive, the lateral view you get is a decidedly unflat grassy field. The peaks of the many trenches they must have dug to accommodate the tens of thousands of bodies are quite obvious.

Fields of Graves - Lawnview Cemetery, Rockledge, PA

I realize that I've posed more questions than answers in this blog post. If anyone can shed light on the topic, please post a comment here or email me at mourningarts@yahoo.com.

References and Further Reading:

Lawnview and the Odd Fellows Cemetery Company Website
http://thecemeterytraveler.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-monument-cemetery-was-destroyed.html
Odd Fellows organization on Wikipedia
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Caskets-Found-Underneath-School-Playground-234493631.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/coffins-uncovered-playground-project-article-1.1538662 
http://thecemeterytraveler.blogspot.com/2012/03/beachcombing-in-hell-gravestones-of.html

Bloody Cemetery Apparition

People ask me if I see ghosts in cemeteries. I see and hear weird stuff from time to time, but it doesn’t always manifest itself in any clear way. In other words, its not like seeing Casper floating above a headstone.

Back in 2003 I had an interesting experience at Geno’s Cheese Steak restaurant in South Philly - the last place you'd expect to see a ghost. However, the realization of what I had seen only became evident to me last week (November, 2011), a full eight years after the occurrence!

As I was writing last week’s blog, Thanksgiving and Abandoned Cemeteries, I mentioned Capitolo playground in South Philly, and how it used to be a cemetery. I didn’t know this until a year or so ago when I heard the current owner of Pat’s Steaks (I think he’s the grandson of the founder), talk on the radio about how his grandfather used to play baseball with his friends in the old, run-down graveyard. They’d jump over the broken headstones (I can picture them using broken pieces for bases). The cemetery was condemned and plowed over in the mid-1940s so the city could build an actual park and athletic field.

Basketball by night in Capitolo Playground

Capitolo playground is next to Pat’s and Geno’s, the famous cheese steak emporiums in south Philly. The fast-food mavens face each other with folded arms at Ninth Street and Passyunk Avenue. In the summer of 2003, I had taken my thirteen-year-old son Christopher to Ozzfest and on the way home we stopped at Geno’s Steaks for some fries and a cheesesteak. Directtly across the street from Geno’s outdoor picnic table seating area is the Capitolo Playground. Although it was midnight, the basketball courts were lit up and games were in progress. It’s not unusual to have to stand in a line of twenty people to get waited on here this time of night.

Geno’s is a neon nirvana, a colorful Las Vegas Strip sort of thing. Chris and I found one unoccupied sidewalk picnic table, made ourselves comfortable and began to chow down. We sat across from each other, chatting about the concert. Me trying to subtly elicit an agreement from him that he doesn’t necessarily have to tell all his friends about the topless girls in the audience, him still wide-eye and wired from the experience. I wondered how long it would take this information to get back to his mother and resigned myself to the fact that I would never receive any sort of “Father of the Year” award.

Then the old guy sat down next to me. Not sure where he came from, just off the street on the playground side, out of the dark. I glanced at him and as I said “Hey,” noticing with some horror that he had dried blood all over his suit coat, as well as on his face. His hair was slicked into an old style and his dark suit was way outdated. I looked back at my son and attempted to resume our conversation. Chris would glance at the man, then at me with a slight grin on his face, like “What the F…?”

We continued eating our cheese fries and steaks as the neon glared around us. The man never said a word, just stared ahead. People walked by the condiment station, never once acknowledging the strange guy sitting next to me. Basketball games continued across the street, no one in the line of people at the ordering window not so much as glancing our way. He got up after maybe ten minutes. Chris and I both looked after this tall, thin guy as he slowly walked off into the street, disappearing into the crowd. The clean, old-fashioned yet well-pressed suit, splattered with blood, stands out in my mind more than his face. Can’t much recall what he looked like. Chris and I discussed the weirdness of his presence and wondered what it was all about. Then I forgot about the incident for eight years.

It was a year ago that I discovered the playground across from Pat’s and Geno’s was once a cemetery. Now, sixty-five years later, the site is a full city block comprised of baseball and soccer fields, basketball courts, a little kids’ playground (my two-year-old daughter Olivia loves it), an arts center, and a community garden (ewww…). It wasn’t until I was writing last week’s blog that it dawned on me that the bloody guy may have been one of the restless souls from what used to be called Lafayette Cemetery.

Lafayette Cemetery before demolition, c. 1946

In 1946 the city condemned Lafayette Cemetery as part of a multimillion-dollar playground-building project, which ultimately amounted to a huge real estate swindle. The guy with whom the city contracted to remove the bodies and rebury them in the suburbs, didn't actually do what he was supposed to do. The object was for the city to pay him about about $100,000 to do this, then allow him to sell the land back to the city at a $50,000 profit! In 1946, you can imagine that this was an enormous amount of money.  Until 1988, no one really knew (or apparently cared) what he did with the bodies.

Lafayette Cemetery AFTER demolition, c. 1947

I'm going to make you tune in next week to find out what happened to the bodies, but in the meantime, savor this account from the article, "Lafayette Cemetery," published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, October 9, 1988: 

“Joe Giunta, who grew up on the 1300 block of Passyunk Avenue, remembers when, around the time those interred were removed, "a processional with hundreds of men crying" came through the streets. He believes the ceremony was held to honor those who would find final resting places at Evergreen [Cemetery] -- or so many thought.  …The investigation revealed that Lafayette bodies were dumped in unmarked trenches on the Evergreen site, which Bensalem [Pennsylvania] officials said bore little resemblance to a cemetery as most people know it, the article said. The final resting place of many of the original Lafayette inhabitants remains unknown to this day.” (ref)

My guess is that there are a lot of disturbed spirits hanging out around Capitolo Playground - maybe 47,000 of them. One of them, the bloody guy, may have made himself visible to my son and I that night in 2003. Why, I wonder? Catch my blog next week as I continue to unravel the mystery of Lafayette Cemetery.

References:
Temple University Urban Archives
Philadelphia Graveyards and Cemeteries, by Thomas H. Keels

How Monument Cemetery was Destroyed

Concrete crypt being removed from Monument Cemetery, 1956

By the summer of 1956, the job of clearing Monument Cemetery was well under way. Bodies had already been removed from one section of the old grave yard. At that time, the University referring to it as PROGRESS, stated that "the old cemetery...will provide much needed parking space by fall." - Things that Aren't There Anymore

Betsy Ross Bridge in background

After my photo excursion to find the last remains of Philadelphia’s Monument Cemetery, I was overwhelmed with questions – my own as well as those posed by my readers. Questions like, how could some entity (Temple University, in this case) just buy a cemetery and build a parking lot over it? Was the cemetery actually abandoned?  Supposedly, all the bodies were removed, but how did they do that? And the families were okay with it? When this happened in 1956, the cemetery was over a century old – did they contact the relatives of the 28,000 people buried there? Why were all the monuments and headstones dumped into the Delaware River? I get a weird feeling now whenever I drive over the Betsy Ross Bridge, like its somehow sacrilegious that granite tombstones are part of its foundation.

They say the universe is finite, contained, and searchable, so, in an attempt to find answers, I paid a visit to the Pennsylvania Historical Society in Philadelphia. I knew from past visits here and to the Library Company of Philadelphia next door, that they had certain records related to area cemeteries. Once I got into the Historical Society to begin my research, I was amazed to find hundreds of bound volumes (handwritten as well as copied) of burial records and tombstone inscriptions from more cemeteries than I thought existed, along with all their original deeds, charters, and annual reports. There were also vintage brochures and guidebooks (c. 1850) printed by the large Victorian garden cemeteries for advertising purposes. You can actually peruse these wonderful parchment-like and very fragile volumes from the Laurel Hill, Woodlands, and Mt. Vernon cemeteries in Philadelphia. Wonderful lithographs of monuments, chapels, and gatehouses adorn the pages, many of which are either no longer in existence or are so weather-worn as to be barely recognizable. It’s obvious that such documentation is necessary for accurate restoration of cemetery sculpture and monuments. After about half an hour of searching, I came upon a three-volume set of documentation related to Monument Cemetery.

In the set of burial records were tombstone inscriptions, an alphabetical listing of those interred, and legal documentation for the property. At the end of Vol. I, there were dozens of copied newspaper clippings related to the battle to close the cemetery (mid-1950s). As I read through these clippings, certain things became clear – I better understood how a cemetery could be made to disappear.

In a nutshell, the cemetery had not been abandoned, it was destroyed. Bodies were reinterred elsewhere and most of the tombstones and monuments were dumped into the Delaware River, to be used as foundation rock for when the city built the Betsy Ross Bridge. In my previous blog, “The Watery Remains of Monument Cemetery,” I wrote about my excursion to find the stones, which are visible at low tide. Visible with a bit of work, that is. You can’t just look down into the water and see them as you drive across the bridge.

How did Temple University acquire Monument Cemetery?
 

As the universe expands, so do universities. In the 1950s, Temple was developing itself into a commuter school, and needed more parking – and those 15 acres across the street were just being wasted on a cemetery. They’d actually been trying to acquire the cemetery since 1928, but continually met with resistance from the cemetery’s owners. 

 

Nearly bankrupt cemetery railroaded into oblivion?

According to records, the owners of Monument Cemetery only had about $11,000 in assets by 1953. This was barely enough income for the owners to provide necessary maintenance to the buildings and upkeep to the graves. With no new plots sold since 1929, there had been little income for 24 years (the only available burial space was in lots that had been previously sold). The cemetery had been in business for 114 years, and its 15 acres were filled to capacity with 28,000 graves. As a result, the cemetery physically deteriorated to the point where it invited vandalism. The owners were actively trying to sell it, but were “insensed” at potential buyers’ (including Temple) plans for the land. Eventually Temple lobbied the city government to condemn it, and ended up acquiring it after that occurred. According to the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin of May 28, 1953, public hearings were held in which “a number of persons” testified that “the cemetery was now a haven for rats, criminals, tramps, and sex offenders.” (Kind of sounds like the North Philly that we know today.)

It appears that legal title passed from the owners of Monument Cemetery to the City of Philadelphia, but I could find no record of the amount the owners were compensated. Once a government determines that private property is needed for the completion of a public project (Temple is a public, i.e. state school), that property is likely going to be lost (ref). The property owner is entitled to fair compensation for the loss, but it appears that Monument’s owners received far less (if anything). Kind of like when my grandmother's house was taken through "eminent domain" by a local municipality so that a playground could be built. 

Estimated value of the land in the part of Philadelphia in which Monument Cemetery was situated was about $40,000 per acre, making the cemetery’s 15 acres worth about $600,000. Temple had previously stated that it could not afford to buy the land at that price. As Lawnview Cemetery (in Rockledge, a Philadelphia suburb) was later awarded a $700,000 contract by the city for “the transfer and perpetual care of the bodies,” I find it hard to believe the city paid Monument’s owners anything for the land.

 
Did they actually remove the bodies?

Well, if you can believe the newspapers, yes. But who knows? The crane in the top photo shows a concrete crypt being hoisted out of the ground, but what of the thousands of older burials that only had wooden coffins? I began to wonder what sort of notifications were sent to families whose loved one were buried there… eviction notices? Did they board up the periphery of the cemetery so people couldn’t see the coffins coming out of the ground? Did people care? I had to find out, and as I could find nothing on the topic online, I hoped the Historical Society would provide. 

The dozens of newspaper clippings mentioned above cover the final two years of the cemetery’s existence – from 1954 (when its fate was mired in political intrigue) to 1956 (when the cemetery was condemned, given to Temple, and dug up). During the time that the cemetery’s owners were trying to sell it in above-board fashion, Temple had made low offers, and was turned down. In its relentless quest for the land, Temple resorted to political tactics to have the ground condemned, while maintaining an air of empathy by declaring that if it acquired the cemetery, it would also have to dig up Temple's founder, Dr. Russell Conwell, and his wife, who were buried there. In the end, they moved those graves across the street near Conwell Hall (where I used to go to pay my daughter’s tuition).

How were lot holders notified?

Apparently, the majority were not. But first, let’s do some math. In 1954 when the cemetery owners sent out mailings to lot holders announcing the likelihood that graves would have to be moved when the cemetery was sold, they only had reliable contact information for 748 families - out of 28,000 burials. Of these 748, only 400 lot holders responded to mailings – 300 of whom met to vote on which cemetery they would want their ancestors moved to. Two cemeteries bid on the contract − Lawnview Cemetery and Philadelphia Memorial Park in Frazer, PA. Lawnview was chosen after a nine-month debate, mainly because it was closer to Monument Cemetery (more convenient for the lot holders) and it would charge less for removal of the bodies.  

So only 300 family plots were moved to Lawnview along with their monuments and headstones. I would assume that some of the remaining 100 of the contacted lot holders had their loved ones moved privately to different cemeteries at their own expense. But the vast majority of the 28,000 bodies, it seems, went unclaimed! 

In order to clear the land of human remains and stonework, 28,000 bodies had to be re-located, about 20,000 of which were unclaimed. These 20,000 – a staggering number − were the ones that were quietly dumped into a large mass grave at Lawnview Cemetery. Their monuments and any of the elaborately carved stonework that hadn't been claimed by relatives were sold to developers, and hauled to the river to be used as part of the foundation to build the Betsy Ross Bridge (construction was completed in 1976). Monuments, including major works of art by 19th century sculptors, were dumped into the river to be used as “riprap” (granite or concrete rubble from building and paving demolition commonly used to protect shorelines from water or ice erosion).

Did the public care what was going on?

Historian Tom Keels says, “…in the 1950s it was, 'This is an old moldy Victorian cemetery. Who cares.'"

“The way cemeteries and their occupants were treated after World War II was shocking. The city was in flux. It was losing jobs, it was losing people and there was a decision early on that the city was going to redevelop at least its central area. It was going to reinvent itself as a neo-colonial city. Society Hill and Independence Mall were constructed, while hundreds of Victorian buildings were razed ‘because 18th century was good, Victorian was bad.’ Unfortunately, this extended to many Victorian cemeteries. – Tom Keels

Forgotten graves?  Not totally.

But what of the people whose loved ones were buried at Monument, who were not aware of its closing? Many of my current readers are appalled by what happened to this cemetery, shocked by the callousness of a modern society. Looking back, it seems that it all occurred precisely because of the modernism of our society and how we value “progress.” It all sounds like Temple and the City of Philadelphia tied up Monument Cemetery in a neat little package and everyone was happy. Today, it’s a different story, as I come upon these chilling posts on the reader forum of Geneology.com:

"they say there is a mass grave .. where is it and where are the babies that were buried there as there was so many of my family buried there too..why didn't anyone fight it and how could they get away with this? i can't believe the things i read about it as i look for my family .."

"hello thank you i went to find a grave and lawnview and typed in my family name but nothing..came up. do they have a list from monument and where all the people from monument were reburied. at least they could have done that. so many of my family was buried there. a lot of babies from years ago. a few made it to arlington but not many. thank you and i don't know how they could do things like this ..isn't anything sacred..? i sure appeciate your help. thank you again  -alice"

"Monument Cemetery. This is where my ancestors-Wareham- had a large family plot. It was removed and built over by Temple University. What a shame ! If you are connected to this family, please reply. Jeanie "

More about the 1956 dumping of tombstones into the river.

As I mentioned in my previous blog posting, “The Watery Remains of Monument Cemetery,” my friend Leo and I trekked out to the river last month and found the site of the discarded tombstones from Monument Cemetery. We only actually found about 50 exposed whole grave markers, so the rest must must be either buried, drowned, or reduced to rubble. When you think about it, roughly twenty thousand bodies were unclaimed, so there had to be several thousand gravemarkers discarded.

Sartain Monument (Univ of Penn)

Supposedly, John Sartain's Egyptian-style monument was dumped into the Delaware and is now part of the bridge. Sartain was one of the original designers of Monument Cemetery; he and his family were buried there. Sartain’s is not a name with which I was familiar, but to whom the literary world owes a debt of gratitude. He was Edgar Allen Poe’s friend, colleague, and publisher while Poe lived in Philadelphia.

John Sartain was a true renaissance man – publisher, engraver, artist, and architect. He was responsible for the design of Monument Cemetery’s gatehouse and the cemetery’s immense (over 70 feet high) central monument to George Washington and General Lafayette (seen at left being dismantled). According to Sartain’s autobiography, The Reminiscences of a Very Old Man, “Monument Cemetery” derived its name from this monument. Sartain’s own memorial (seen above in front of the base of the Washington monument in a 1954 photograph) lives with the fishes - supposedly dumped as unceremoniously as the rest of the stones.

Sartain's Union Magazine featured the first publication of Poe’s haunting poem, Annabel Lee, which is about a rivalry that resulted in a watery death. Makes you wonder what horrors Poe could have conjured with the idea of unearthing 28,000 graves and dumping their tombstones into the river. But then he probably would never have conceived of anything so bizarre – or did he?

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea. 

- from Annabel Lee, by Edgar Allan Poe



 

References for Further Reading:

The Watery Remains of Monument Cemetery

Temple University Photo Archives

Pennsylvania Historical Society Monument Cemetery For Sale

Geneology.com

The Reminiscences of a Very Old Man, by John Sartain (1808-1897)

Things that Aren't There Anymore - Temple University Edition

John Sartain Bio, Encyclopedia Britannica 

End of the Road-Philadelphia Graveyards