The Origins of Laurel Hill Cemetery
“[T]he living population has multiplied beyond the means of accommodation for the dead.” So declared John Jay Smith (1798-1881) in late 1835. Recalling a futile attempt to locate his daughter’s grave in one of the city’s Quaker burial grounds, he vowed “to procure for the citizens a suitable, neat & orderly location for a rural cemetery, where each individual or family might have a lot in fee simple to bury their dead.” Former mayor Benjamin Richards harbored similar ambitions. After speaking to Smith, he invited China merchant Nathan Dunn and druggist Frederick Brown to join their enterprise.
The group reviewed a wide range of precedents. They knew that Boston, Paris, and London had all developed naturalistic, extramural cemeteries, but they paid as much attention to local habits and desires. Of particular interest were “country seats” along the banks of the Schuylkill River. Set apart from the city and associated with health, respite, and gentility, these villas and their grounds met most of the functional and symbolic requirements Smith’s cohort had in mind. From a business standpoint, however, it was an up-market version of the city’s “associate” cemeteries that proved most influential.
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James Reid Lambdin, artist. John Jay Smith (ca. 1875).
John Jay Smith built his life and career around two institutions: the Library Company of Philadelphia and Laurel Hill Cemetery. A Quaker antiquarian and would-be litterateur, Smith had tried his hand at the drug and newspaper businesses before becoming Librarian in 1829. Over the following decades, he gained national recognition as an editor, publisher, horticulturist, and cemetery manager.
Le Père Lachaise. Paris: Henry, ca. 1850. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
By the late 18th century, Paris's aging graveyards were overflowing. A novel application of naturalistic landscape design to an extra-urban cemetery, Père Lachaise won admirers at home and abroad. Among them was former Philadelphia Mayor Benjamin Richards, who went on to co-found Laurel Hill.
Frontispiece to Dearborn’s Guide through Mount Auburn (1851).
Mount Auburn, America’s first “rural” cemetery, opened in 1831. Carved out of a farmer’s woods in Cambridge and Watertown, Massachusetts, it received initial support from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, which hoped to run an experimental garden there.
D. J. Kennedy, artist. Pottersfield, West Side of Schuylkill River above Market Street in 1864. Watercolor. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Several vacant lots served Philadelphia as unofficial potter's fields before 1850. The fate of this one – dug up to build 30th Street Station's predecessor – mirrored that of many older urban graveyards.
Robert Crowell. Interment of the Dead. Andover, Mass.: Flagg and Gould, 1818.
Fear of bodysnatching haunted Americans who lived anywhere near medical schools or other sites of anatomical instruction. As talk of “natural affection” for the corpse increased, new cemeteries promised greater security.
D.J. Kennedy, artist. Friends Western Burial Ground, Feby. 22nd 1864. Watercolor. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
When local Quaker meetings developed burial grounds after 1800, they favored flat sites divided into rows. Each grave lot was big enough for one body, and tombstones were banned through mid century. It was here, at Western Burial Ground (est. 1818), that John Jay Smith failed to locate his daughter's grave – an event he would cite when founding Laurel Hill.
John Moran, photographer. View of Gloria Dei Church. Philadelphia, ca. 1862. Gift of John A. McAllister.
Home to a Swedish Lutheran congregation from 1700 until 1845, Gloria Dei (or “Old Swedes’”) buried dues-paying churchgoers and others whose friends or relatives made a good case. But freethinking (or truant) members of Old Swedes’ were among the first to establish an alternative: the Mutual Family Burial Ground Association (est. 1826).
Machpelah Cemetery. Charter and By-Laws. Philadelphia, 1832. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Machpelah was one of Philadelphia’s early “associate” cemeteries. The novelty of these non-sectarian institutions was blunted by their organizers’ use of religious iconography and biblical nomenclature; (“Machpelah” refers to the plot of land the patriarch Abraham purchased for his wife Sarah’s burial, as described in the book of Genesis).
Philadelphia Cemetery (1845). Frontispiece.
Laurel Hill was as entrepreneurial as it was philanthropic. In this respect, it differed from most American burial grounds but not from Philadelphia Cemetery, established by typefounder and venture capitalist James Ronaldson in 1827. Ronaldson's gatehouse contained a bier and bell for detecting life in the soon-to-be-buried corpse.
Detail from Philadelphia Cemetery.
Philadelphia Cemetery Gatehouse (ca. 1940). The Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Proposals for Erecting a Monument by Subscription in the Laurel Hill Cemetery. Philadelphia, 1836.
Appeals to science, civic pride, and historical memory energized the rural cemetery movement during its early years. In this pamphlet, druggist and Laurel Hill manager Frederick Brown joined two prominent doctors in urging fellow citizens to build a monument to Philadelphia’s scientific worthies. But the plan gained few adherents. Modeled on the main attraction in Rome’s Protestant Cemetery, the pyramid to “native genius and worth” remained on paper.
Atticus, pseud. Hints on the Subject of Interments within the City of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: W. Brown, 1838.
Composed by Quaker printer Isaac Collins and vetted by his friend and relative John Jay Smith, this pamphlet played on Philadelphians’ fears of “living surrounded by the dead.” But, in the tumultuous Age of Jackson, the urban dead were at risk, too. Where else but Laurel Hill might loved ones’ remains escape “the ruthless hand of speculation”?
Landscape Plan for the Preston Retreat. Attributed to John McArthur. Pennsylvania Hospital Archives (on long-term loan to the Athenaeum of Philadelphia through The Pew Charitable Trusts Museum Loan Program).
Serenity, sanitation, and seclusion: these were goals Laurel Hill shared with institutions like the Preston Retreat (est. 1837), a lying-in hospital for “indigent married women, of good character.” Both establishments had Quaker ties. Both featured landscaped, arboretum-like grounds – a melding of art and science that might be labeled the therapeutic picturesque.
