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

Odd Decision by the Odd Fellows Cemetery

Mount Vernon Cemetery in Philadelphia certainly has a look of abandonment about it. Locked gate, shoulder-high weeds, statues peeking out from the trees. Photographers have been trying to get inside for years, but it’s just been next to impossible. The absentee-owner seems to fear publicity and resists any request for entry unless you want to buy a plot. How the people who have loved ones buried here (and that includes the famous Barrymore theatrical family, among them actress Drew Barrymore’s grandfather) tolerate the conditions is beyond me.

So it was not a surprise when someone at a local photography show told me a few weeks ago that there was a “condemned” sign on one of the buildings. (People always come to me with juicy cemetery tidbits.) So a few days later, I zoomed up there (31^st Street and Lehigh Avenue) to check it out. I drove around the cemetery perimeter only to find the orange “Notice of Demolition” sign taped to the window of the gatehouse belonging to the cemetery next door, Mount Peace, sometimes known as the Odd Fellows Cemetery. 

A big old brick and wooden structure, the gatehouse seemed to be in much better condition than the actual inhabited row homes across the street. The sign said that demolition of the house would begin on or about July 31, 2012. The yard was dug up and “Caution” tape was strung across the front porch. The inside of the old house, which had been used as the cemetery office, was in obvious disrepair. A trailer sat in the yard, looking like the demolition work crew’s headquarters. (Here’s an old photo of the house on the Odd Fellows Cemetery website. 

Estate House at Odd Fellows' Mount Peace Cemetery, Philadelphia

From the Mount Peace website, a bit of history:

“The Odd Fellows Cemetery Company of Philadelphia was incorporated in 1849 when the population of Philadelphia was only 400,000. The original Odd Fellows Cemetery was located on Diamond Street, between 23rd and 24th Streets. Due to Philadelphia's population growth, in 1865 the Cemetery Company purchased grounds for a second cemetery. This 50 acre tract was purchased from an estate named "Mount Peace" and is located at what is now 31st Street and Lehigh Avenue. The cemetery maintained the estate name for Mount Peace Cemetery.”

One can assume the house was the original “Mount Peace” estate house, which means it was built prior to 1865. Though the house looked to be in great shape externally, what interested and concerned me at least as much as the house was the possible plight and fate of its surrounding ironwork – the black iron fencing, main gate, and “Mount Peace” sign. I hoped this would remain intact. Philadelphia is known for some truly magnificent historical ironwork, and this fencing must have quite an historical pedigree.

For intricate ironwork, the swirls on each side of the entrance pillars are nothing short of amazing. These and the wrought iron vertical extensions of the pillars (to which the cemetery name sign is connected) appear to be truly unique among Philadelphia cemeteries. I spent about an hour photographing just the ironwork.

The huge house appeared to contain the office, with a garage and extension off the back to hold construction equipment. I was curious as to what was going on so I phoned Lawnview Cemetery, who owns Mount Peace (also known as the old Odd Fellows Cemetery). I was told the house was indeed being demolished but the ironwork would remain. The trailer, according to the person to whom I spoke will replace the old house! Interesting how the company boasts "Historical Pride" on its website; however, I suppose there may be a good reason to wipe away all traces of the historic home.

Looking out cemetery gate onto Lehigh Avenue

A few days later, I posted a photo of the soon-to-be-demolished house on Facebook, and get a flurry of irate and incensed responses in the “How could they do such a thing?” vein. One person suggested I contact the Philadelphia Historic Commission and Preservation Alliance (for Greater Philadelphia). So I posted info on both their Facebook sites and received zero response. Quite a shame to lose this wonderful piece of architectural history.

References and Further Reading:

Mount Peace/Lawnview website
Read peoples' comments on Ed Snyder’s Facebook page 

Read peoples' comments on Ed Snyder’s StoneAngels Photography Facebook page 

2nd Anniversary of "The Cemetery Traveler!"

Well, it’s been two years since I began writing The Cemetery Traveler blog. That’s most of my two-and-a-half year-old daughter’s lifetime – a fact that puts all that work into startling perspective for me. I’ve posted 120 articles and have 144 regular subscriber/followers. I greatly appreciate the fact that you’re reading this and hope you will continue. 

Daughter Olivia at Laurel Hill Cemetery

After 120 blog postings, you might think I’ve run out of material, especially since these postings have not been just a photo and a few sentences. They’ve been more substantial than even I expected they would be. The articles began as short pieces, but then the content took on a life of its own. I began to get carried away – the blogs started to read like mid-career Dickens. Frankly I’m surprised they held peoples’ attention. But readers responded. In blog comments and private emails, they expressed opinions. Many of the most commented-on pieces were about abandoned cemeteries.

When I started The Cemetery Traveler, my intent was mostly to recount my past experiences traipsing through the graveyards of America (and Europe), camera in tow. However, through Facebook I’ve encountered new ideas, new friends, and made new excursions. I’ve written (or will write) about a variety of people with whom I’ve had interactions in reference to my blog – a psychic, a film maker, descendants of people whose graves I’ve photographed, Andy Warhol’s niece and nephew, Victorian-era and Civil War re-enactors, and fellow writers. I’ve also met new companion adventurers (or ‘gravers,’ as we’re sometimes called!).



Ed's photograph in "175 Years of Reflections"



On rare occasion, I actually wrote about photography (e.g. my blog about ‘painting with light’ in a cemetery at night). This past year saw the publication of the book, 175 Years of Reflections, Laurel Hill Cemetery, which one of my photographs was chosen to be in. The book celebrates Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery and its 175^th anniversary.

Abandoned Cemeteries

Probably one of the least expected results of the The Cemetery Traveler blog has been my interest in helping to restore abandoned and run-down cemeteries around Philadelphia .

Mt. Moriah Cemetery, Philadelphia

Initially, I started exploring and photographing them like they were carnival sideshow attractions. However, my postings generated quite a bit of heated discussion, mostly from the “how could they let this happen” crowd, but also from descendants of people buried in those cemeteries! I received messages like this (related to Philadelphia’s gigantic abandoned Mt. Moriah Cemetery):

"Mount Moriah holds different emotions for different people. I have family here. As a child in the 70s, I actually played and rode my bicycle with my friends in this place. The people buried here need people to speak for them and try to undo the damage that has been done to them. Help us to do that with your lens. And if you are adventurous, come to a clean-up. They are inspiring and lets those buried here that someone still gives a damn."

Primarily as a result of people commenting on my blogs, I have participated in several clean-up days, and the comment is correct – the work is inspiring.

Tombstone under Betsy Ross Bridge

I also received many comments and emails about the destruction of Monument Cemetery (Philadelphia, 1956), and the unceremonious dumping of its thousands of headstones into the Delaware River. I received dozens of emails from descendants, looking for traces of their ancestors. The stones can still be seen under the Betsy Ross Bridge (at low tide), so I photographed them, and added the names, dates, and photos of the stones to the online database at FindAGrave.com, as suggested by one reader, whose initial comment to me was:

"While their graves may never be found, their information would be of great interest to family, historians, and genealogists."

The majority of comments  related to the destruction of Monument Cemetery were of this nature:

"I came across your site while trying to locate this cemetery so I could visit my ancestors' tombstones, as many of them were buried at Monument. I feel a bit sick realizing they're now in a mass grave and their tombstones have been dumped like this."

"I join many of those who are horrified that this could have happened in Philadelphia during the 1950's.  It seems so disrespectful and almost sinister in that advertisements were not required to be made in the newspapers if relatives could not be reached.....I think my family, especially my grandmother would have rallied the family (a large one) to relocate the graves of her mother, aunt and grandparents.  I gave a presentation of our family history at our reunion a year ago and my generation was horrified at what we discovered about the cemetery."

  

Opinions on the travesty of Monument Cemetery ran to the other extreme as well:

"I understand that moving a cemetery for parking seems crass, but the world belongs to the living and the not-yet-living - and Temple [University] has been and remains the most-affordable, best-hope for higher Education in Philadelphia. Isn't that worth more than a decaying cemetery?"

Some people were upset that I wrote about the cemeteries in their neighborhoods in a sensationalistic way. It got peoples’ attention, though, didn’t it? I am sure it helped with public awareness and the need to restore, rehab, and care for what we have.

What’s on The Cemetery Traveler’s  event horizon?

So what is on The Cemetery Traveler’s event horizon for "Year Three" of the blog? Well, a few things.

• Publish a book of selections of essays from The Cemetery Traveler blog. I expect this to be available in about six months, with eBook versions on Nook  and Kindle. I have to thank the observant reader who commented on this photo a while back, “This photo screams ‘Book Cover’!”

• Pay closer attention to comments made and emails sent by my readers, as your feedback adds another dimension to my writing. That said,  I’ve not been prompt with my replies. I’ll do better – or at least the best I can with two-and-a-half year-old vying for my attention! 

• More travel! I plan to have a vendor table at the AGS (Association for Gravestone Studies) Conference in West Long Branch, New Jersey on June 22, 2012. Hope to become a member and interact with the conference attendees. I’m also planning to visit some of the historic cemeteries in Charlotte, North Carolina next month.

In Conclusion…

An advantage the living have over the dead:  we can go to sleep at the end of a long day, then wake up and do it all over again. So, shall I keep on writing? In the words of author/screenwriter S.J. Perelman, “To the fiery temperament, decision is consonant with action.” In other words, I intend to continue shooting off my mouth without thinking. Stay tuned – all shall be revealed.

Beachcombing in Hell – The Gravestones of Monument Cemetery

Well this is a new experience for me – I just uploaded twenty-five names and dates to the website "FindAGrave.com" for Philadelphia’s defunct Monument Cemetery. I’ll add photos of the headstones this week. 

I recently found myself in a strange situation - well, stranger than usual. After publishing two blogs last year about the remains of Philadelphia’s aforementioned (demolished) 28,000-grave Victorian-era cemetery, I received an overwhelming number of comments and questions. These ranged from anger and indignation at the very idea of paving over a cemetery, to pleas from readers looking for traces of lost ancestors. 

I’m not going to dwell on the how’s and why’s of that situation for this blog - you can read about all that in my previous postings (The Watery Remains of Monument Cemetery [April  2011] and How Monument Cemetery was Destroyed [May 2011]). The short story is that in 1956, Monument Cemetery was condemned and leveled by the City of Philadelphia so that Temple University could build a parking lot. Thousands of monuments, tombstones, and other grave markers were dumped into the Delaware River, later used as part of the foundation for the Betsy Ross Bridge. The human remains were re-interred in mass graves at Lawnview Cemetery, in the northeast section of the city.

Comments on my postings ranged from intense moral outrage to defense of the project by Temple sympathizers. There were questions about how to access the cemetery records (as I had done) at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and there were people wondering if I photographed any of their ancestors’ headstones. Regardless of your position or interest level, this heap of marble and granite at the river’s edge tells a very human story.

From a memorial at Lawnview Cemetery, Rockledge, PA

When I received the following comment from a reader, I realized that people might be interested in the names and dates on the stones piled under the bridge:

“While their graves may never be found, their information would be of great interest to family, historians, and genealogists.”

Betsy Ross Bridge

At one point during the year, a Facebook friend of mine posted three of my photographs on the “Find A Grave” website (which boasts records of 77 million grave records worldwide). To my surprise, someone had already taken the time to log in 747 names of those buried in Monument Cemetery, but unlike those of most other entries, none of these included a photograph of the gravestone.

Frankford Creek enters Delaware River

Therefore, I decided to make another trip, for the sole purpose of recording names and dates, and uploading them to “Find A Grave.” Names and photographs are important to people, they are tangible links to the past. So at the beginning of March, 2012, I trekked out to the Bridesburg section of Philadelphia near the Tioga Marine Terminal on the Delaware River.

To be honest, my first visit to the water’s edge was to gawk at the piles of tombstones like they were some sideshow attraction. Many people have. I even received one email from people who had “reached it via jetski rather than by land” - an adventure outing.  For a good idea of what you must go through to reach this remote and squalid area of riverfront, check out this YouTube video: The Local Frontier: The Lost Cemetery. I’m sure you’ll agree with the narrator, that “Death remains the final frontier.”

So armed with some cameras, a weapon, and my friend Bob, I parked outside the gate labeled “Private Property” and cut into the woods through a break in the fence. It’s about a fifteen minute walk through the thicket along the muddy Frankford Creek, opposite the abandoned PECO power plant.  The homeless have set up an encampment here. About six tarp-tents lay in our path, with a few people sitting in front of them. “What do you want?” asked one of them as we walked through their midst. “Just passing through,” was Bob’s reply, and to me, it seemed as though we would indeed be passing through a number of peoples’ lives.

It’s a chancy undertaking, this short journey to the water. You never know what, or who, you may run into. But as author Neil Gaiman says in his novel, The Graveyard Book, "If you dare nothing, then when the day is over, nothing is all you will have gained. When you get to the Delaware River, you must negotiate your way down the twelve-foot embankment, which is literally a jumble of granite monuments sticking out of the ground. You throw yourself against the big tree whose roots have grown around Dr. Charles Ayer’s headstone. You step on the bluish granite Lunney family grave marker as you maneuver yourself down to the water’s edge.

Monuments in foreground

It’s low tide, so you can see more of the Witham monument that is typically underwater. As you walk along the shore, you can easily lose your footing on pieces of wet marble monuments, bricks, iron fencing, and glass. Climbing around the five-hundred pound granite monument chunks, you catch glimpses of names on stones sticking out of the mire. Bob called it “beachcombing in Hell” as he picked up fragments of tombstones and bits of old funerary ceramic.

I spent about two hours photographing the faces of as many whole tombstones and monuments as I could find. The list below consists of 25 names that appear on 17 separate stones:

Ayers, Charles A. , M.D. (1851 – 1913)

Classey, Robert (Died Jan. 16, 1855) and Jane Classey (Died Dec. 12, 1888)(“Father and Mother”); James W. Classey (Died Aug. 5, 1891) (“Son of the Above, Brother”)

Cousley, Andrew (Born April 15, 1861 – Died Dec. 28, 1895) “Husband” and Cousley, Margaret (1856 – 1934) “Wife”

Eppelscheimer, Amanda, Died 1918 and Eppelscheimer, (Name obscured) Died 1924
Green, Bartholomew (1853 – 1906)
Heilman, William Henry (1846 – 1909) (“Late Captain 15th U.S. Infantry, Born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania”)
Heilman, Magdalena (1818 – 1906)
Irons, Mary H. (1823 – 1917) (“Wife of Capt. Babel H. Irons”)
Leeman, Adelia Harriet (1854 - 1901)
Leeman, Mary Ann (1829 - 1894)
Lunney, James, “Died 1883, Aged 67 Years” (1816 – 1883) and Mary, “Wife of James Lunney, Died 1892”

Mortimoore, Charles (July 17, 1817 – May 2, 1873) and Catharine (Feb. 9, 1818 – Jan. 11, 1889); Phoebe  “Born Dec. 26, 1789, Died Jan. 19, 1861.”

Platt, Mary Leeman (1857 – 1893) and Charles C. (1853 – 1929)
Sagee, Mary F. (1853 - 1931) (“Daughter of Francis and Anne J. Sagee” )
Stark, James, “Departed This Life March 9, 1890, Aged 42 Years” (1848 - 1890)
Witham, (Name obscured) (1840 – 1909)
Wright, Harrison G. “Husband, Died May 3, 1881, Aged 36 Years, Rest in Peace” (1845 - 1881)

Alas, I found none of the names that descendants had asked me to look for. The odds, of course, were not in my favor – 25 names out of the original 28,000 people buried at Monument is a drop in the bucket. But hey, these 25 names may be beneficial to someone someday, since I’ve just added them to the list of people in the Monument Cemetery section of the “Find A Grave” site (see link at end of article), which now totals  772 entries. Doing so also gave me an appreciation for the tremendous amount of work other people have exerted inputting all this data.

Author on Tombstones

Low tide was at noon that day, and a couple hours later, Bob was surprised to see the tide obviously coming in. And when I say “tide,” I mean the filthy, oil-slicked sluice of this River Styx.  He'd thought I was joking when I told him that we needed to be here at noon. Rivulets of dark water snaked in over the twenty feet of muck that temporarily separated land from sea.  It was like watching time leak through from the past. Soon the broken bottles, rusting bits of metal, and low-lying headstones would be covered. All these people have had their lives - these people whose names appear in chiseled stone. The names would be obscured until the next low tide, but because of current public interest in what happened to Monument Cemetery, their memory lives on in ways they never could have expected.

References and Further Reading:

Ed Snyder's blogs on Monument Cemetery:
The Watery Remains of Monument Cemetery [April  2011]
How Monument Cemetery was Destroyed [May 2011]

The Local Frontier: The Lost Cemetery (YouTube video)

Find A Grave website:  Listings for burials at Monument Cemetery, Philadelphia, PA

The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman