Philadelphia Graveyards and Cemeteries

Philadelphia Graveyards and Cemeteries

Author: Thomas H. Keels

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 9780738512297

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Philadelphia, the birthplace of America, is the final resting place of some of the nation's greatest citizens. The burial grounds of Christ Church hold the remains of Benjamin Franklin and six other signers of the Declaration of Independence. Philadelphia pioneered the development of the rural cemetery with the establishment of Laurel Hill, eternal home to Gettysburg hero George Gordon Meade and thirty-nine other Civil War-era generals. In Philadelphia's Jewish, Catholic, and African American burial grounds rest such notable figures as Rebecca Gratz, model for the Jewish heroine of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe; John Barry, Catholic father of the U.S. Navy; and Octavius Catto, an African American civil-rights leader of the nineteenth century. Finally, there are the vanished cemeteries, such as Monument, Lafayette, and Franklin. Transformed into playgrounds and parking lots, these cemeteries were obliterated with sometimes horrific callousness. Philadelphia Graveyards and Cemeteries tells the intriguing history of these burial grounds, whether revered or long forgotten.


Baton Rouge Cemeteries

Baton Rouge Cemeteries

Author: Faye Phillips

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 073859184X

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For many immigrants to Baton Rouge, being buried in the highlands of their European homes was a dream. Recognizing that this desire was unlikely to come to fruition, they christened the bluff above the Mississippi River south of the town as "Highland" and established Highland Cemetery in 1819. The military fort had a burial ground; churches established cemeteries; owners, family members, and slaves were buried on the plantations; towns offered municipal cemeteries and paupers' plots; and families distant from towns created family cemeteries. Magnolia Cemetery was established for white citizens in 1852. Sweet Olive and the Lutheran Cemeteries were for free people of color and slaves. St. Joseph's Catholic Cemetery, established in 1826, did not discriminate on race but on religious affiliation, as did the Jewish cemetery. Civil War Union soldiers were separated from Confederates buried in Magnolia Cemetery and interred in the Baton Rouge National Cemetery. In 1921, Roselawn Park Cemetery represented the beginning of cemeteries as business. Beautiful statuary, elaborate tombstones and memorials, unique monuments to the departed, and lush gardens accentuate Baton Rouge's cities of the dead.