On these pages, we hope to record some of the many histories of the Burying Ground and School House, from 1693 to the present.
Upper Burying Ground-overview | Concord School House-overview | Sources
The Upper
On these pages, we hope to record some of the many histories of the Burying Ground and School House, from 1693 to the present.
Upper Burying Ground-overview | Concord School House-overview | Sources
The Upper Burying Ground: A Brief HistoryThe earliest records of the Germantown settlement refer to the creation, in November 1693, of two public spaces set aside for use as burying grounds. The land parcels, each one half acre, were granted to the Corporation of Germantown by Paul Wulff in exchange for other land. These cemeteries still exist today as the Lower Burying Ground or Hood Cemetery (4901 Germantown Avenue) and the Upper Burying Ground (6309 Germantown Avenue).
The stone wall along Germantown Avenue in front of the Upper Burying Ground was constructed in 1724 and repaired in 1776. John Frederick Ax cared for the cemetery from approximately 1724 to 1756: hence, in the eighteenth century, the site was sometimes called “Ax’s Burying Ground.”
No formal list of burials was kept until 1756—the only evidence for burials before this date comes from tombstones. According to these, the oldest known burial in the graveyard is Cornelius Tyson (Teison), one of the first Germantown settlers, who died in 1716. The last burial, according to records, took place on June 25, 1907; however, the headstone of Margaret B. Crout is dated 1912. Notable citizens buried in the Upper Burying Ground include members of the Rittenhouse family; Christian Lehmann, an early surveyor of Germantown; members of the Knorr family, including Jacob Knor (Knorr), the builder of the Concord schoolhouse, of Cliveden, and of Germantown Academy; Zachariah Poulson, publisher of an important newspaper, Poulson’s Daily Advertiser; members of the family of George Lippard, the nineteenth-century Philadelphia novelist; and descendants of Francis Daniel Pastorius.
We believe that over 1300 persons may be buried in the Upper Burying Ground. However, only slightly over 300 tombstone inscriptions are recorded. Why are there so few headstones? Some may have disappeared, but most burials were of poor people or children whose families could not afford stones. Some blacks were buried in the Upper Burying Ground in the early and mid-1700s: for example, in 1758