Over the years, a number of efforts have been made to document the locations of Philadelphia’s numerous potter’s fields used to bury the indigent and the unknown. The work of many over the years has uncovered the majority — but as in any large project, a few always fall through the cracks.
These are those that were missing — now found.
The Oxford and Lower Dublin Poor House Burial Ground
In the days when Pennsylvania was a colony, and on after independence into the 19th century, individual townships were responsible for the upkeep and care of the poor who resided within their boundaries. Accordingly, on April 11th, 1807, the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed an act “to provide for the erection of a poor house, for the better relief and employment of the poor in the townships of Oxford and Lower Dublin, in the county of Philadelphia.” The law authorized the two townships, then in a largely rural, but nevertheless populous, part of the county, united as the Directors of the Poor, and the House of Employment for the Townships of Oxford and Lower Dublin, to purchase land for a poorhouse, hire stewards, matrons, physicians, and other staff, and levy taxes to support their almshouse.
And so that same year, the Directors of the Poor purchased a 145-acre tract of land in Lower Dublin Township and established the poor house, which included a self-sufficient farm. Even following the 1854 Act of Consolidation, which rolled governance of the townships and boroughs in Philadelphia County into a unified city government, some of the former townships, which became districts, were permitted to maintain their own alms houses — including Oxford and Lower Dublin, Roxborough, and Germantown (which also included Bristol township).
This maintenance included a burial ground on the institution’s grounds for the deposition of those who died there and whose remains were otherwise unclaimed.
In 1907, the poorhouse celebrated its centenary, by which time the village of Holmesburg had grown rapidly around the old institution. But its days were numbered. Efforts to abolish the institution ramped up in the 1920s, and in 1937, the state passed a law stating that “in every city of the first class, the offices of poor director and of poor auditor of each poor district created by local law or remaining in existence as a former borough or township poor district are hereby abolished, except to the extent necessary to liquidate the affairs of the district.”
The poor house was no more, and its inmates were transferred to the Home for the Indigent in Holmesburg. The grounds were immediately put to use for city purposes, including as a children’s home and to house police horses in the old institution’s stables. A caretaker was appointed to maintain the property, and in 1946 the majority of the grounds were sold to the Board of Education for the erection of a junior-senior high school, with a portion going to build housing.
The former burial ground does not appear to have even been moved, even after the construction of three schools on the site. It is unknown what, if any traces, remain today.
Those burials that have been identified have been added to FindaGrave.
The Old Roxborough Poor House
Before the year 1832, the poor in the township of Roxborough had been boarded out in local homes. But as the number of poor increased, the township established a poor house in the old Plow Tavern on June 15, 1833 and purchased 21 acres of land for a self-sufficient poor farm.
On that property, on the corner below what is known locally as “Bucky’s Hill,” the Roxborough Directors of the Poor established a potter’s field for the burial of its indigent dead. The burial ground was laid out in a boulder-strewn ravine or hollow where cultivation was impossible.
In 1847, the Borough of Manayunk was formed out of Roxborough Township, and for a time, until Roxborough established a new Poor House on Livezy’s Mill Road (now Henry Avenue), Roxborough’s poor were boarded here in what became, after the division, the Manayunk Poor House.
Following the Consolidation Act of 1854, in which the townships in Philadelphia County were consolidated into the City and County of Philadelphia, the old poor house was vested in the City, closed, and sold in 1859. The old poor house was demolished in 1901. Long neglected and unused for over half a century, in 1907, the ravine and the old burial ground were buried under hundreds of tons of earth, ashes, and refuse to level out the ground for building purposes.
In the late 1920s, after the land was subdivided, about 15 skeletons were found during residential construction activities. Later, in 1953, two more skeletons were found during excavations on Salaignac Street and were removed to the City Morgue.
The site today is wooded and largely occupied by housing.
Unfortunately, the most accessible form of burial records–death certificates–do not exist for this era, as pre-consolidation Roxborough Township did not keep records like the City of Philadelphia. Perhaps, somewhere in the municipal archives, a dusty ledger book contains the names of the dead who once reposed here.
The New Roxborough Poor House
Around the year 1833, the Directors of the Poor of Roxborough Township in Philadelphia County established a poor house. However, in 1847, the Borough of Manayunk was established out of the township, and the old poor house found itself within the boundaries of that municipality, and so Roxborough was compelled to establish a new institution to house its poor. And this they did around the year 1853, purchasing a substantial building on Livezey’s Mill Road and the 42-acre farm on which it sat.
Following the Consolidation Act of 1854, in which the townships in Philadelphia County were united into the City and County of Philadelphia, some municipal districts elected to continue caring for the poor within their former boundaries: Germantown, Oxford and Lower Dublin, Byberry and Moreland, and Roxborough. And so, Roxborough continued to maintain its poor farm, and there established a new burying place for its dead.
As at the old burying ground, the potter’s field at the new poor house was likely established on a non-arabale corner of the property (23 of the 42 acres were woodland), probably on a hill on the southern corner. Due to the relatively modest nature of the institution, few burials are thought to have occurred there over the decades, many of its residents being buried at other local cemeteries as funds permitted.
The well-kept, 16-room building and farm were used for decades, and local residents fought to keep it open in spite of city proposals to turn it into a home for consumptives and other plans to use the grounds. But in 1938, the duties of the local poor boards were abolished by an act of the Pennsylvania legislature, and Roxborough’s poor were moved to the Home for the Indigent in Holmesburg. The former poor house served as a time as a convalescent home before finally closing for good.
The grounds of the of former poor farm were split up, some going to Fairmount Park, and some being used to build the Walter Biddle Saul High School of Agricultural Sciences.
It is unknown if any traces of the old potter’s field survive today.
Those few identified burials I have added to FindaGrave.
The Philadelphia House of Correction Burial Ground
An act passed by the Pennsylvania Legislature On April 28th, 1854, provided for the establishment in the City of Philadelphia of a “House of Correction and Employment.” By the provisions of the act, those sent to the Blockley Almshouse were to be evaluated, and those who were able would be moved to a separate house of employment.
Those liable to be forwarded to the House of Correction were to be classified, generally, as vagrants, able-bodied paupers, habitual drunkards, and other “disorderly persons” who would otherwise have filled the city jails and the almshouse. It was not until 1874, however, that a separate institution was built on the banks of the Delaware River at Holmesburg.
Housing men, women, and children, the House of Correction served to house low-level offenders and the homeless who would be otherwise housed and put to work. Many would be brought up the Delaware and delivered to the institution by tugboat. However, a number of those committed to the institution were sick, and those that died who were not otherwise sent to the Philadelphia medical colleges for anatomical study were interred in an institutional burial ground on a spit of land near the mouth of the Pennypack Creek.
Used for over 20 years, the burial ground fell into disuse as most of its deceased inmates were sent to the State Anatomical Board beginning in the late 1880s and into the 1990s. Though the institution was rebuilt in 1927, the burial ground was not touched.
Today it still remains, untended and largely forgotten, an island in the marshes in the Pennypack on the Delaware Park. Nearly 70 identified burials here have been added to FindaGrave.
Jonathan Hoppe 