Grave concerns
at Laurel Hill

By William Kenny
Times Staff Writer

Cemeteries have always had a leg up on history books in at least one respect.
While the reference texts never seem to give females due credit for their contributions to society, any walk through a burial ground leaves no doubt that women are just as accomplished at death as their male counterparts are.
Connecting many of those deceased ladies with their underreported but truly significant legacies is the theme of an upcoming tour of historic Laurel Hill Cemetery in East Falls.
The cemetery’s friends group will present the Ladies of the Hill for the first time on March 24 in honor of Women’s History Month.
Led by guide Carol Yaster, a Friends of Laurel Hill member, amateur genealogist and longtime graveyard buff, the two-hour tour will be the fourth of more than 30 planned this year for the 78-acre, 171-year-old National Historic Landmark.
The tours are part of the friends group’s constant fund-raising efforts that it hopes will help preserve the site where many of Philadelphia’s — and the nation’s — most important 19th- and 20th-century figures are interred.
Laurel Hill is on the east bank of the Schuylkill River, bordered by Kelly Drive on one side and Ridge Avenue on the other. Because about 99 percent of the cemetery is already filled with graves and often extravagant memorials, funerals do not generate the funding it needs to survive.
Meanwhile, noted Yaster, touring the graves "is a way to remember people who otherwise may have been forgotten."
History consistently has forgotten many of its greatest women because they traditionally played a subordinate role to their husbands.
"Women were always addressed by their husband’s name — (they were) Mrs. Something — so it’s very hard to find information about them sometimes," said Yaster.
For example, it’s probably fair to say that Sarah Josepha Hale is just another name to most folks. She’s buried at Laurel Hill.
Hale was a very influential writer and journalist of the 19th century as editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book. Her series of editorials in 1863 prompted President Abraham Lincoln to declare a national Thanksgiving Day that November.
Though other Thanksgivings had been celebrated for generations before as one-off events, the 1863 observance triggered the annual tradition that continues today.
Hale’s story merely scratches the topsoil of the many personal histories lying dormant below the rolling green hills and towering stone monuments that characterize the cemetery’s landscape.
To fully understand the type of people buried there, one must know about the place itself. Laurel Hill was the city’s first "garden" cemetery, and perhaps the first of its kind in the nation.
According to Ross L. Mitchell, executive director of the friends group, Americans in the 1830s generally buried their dead in church-owned graveyards, private family lots or, in cases of the indigent, a so-called potter’s field. But with population burgeoning and industrialization on the doorstep, space became scarce and valuable in the city. Cemeteries were sold, moved, and in some cases simply paved over.
Founded on the former site of the Sims estate, Laurel Hill at the time was about four miles outside the city and easily accessible by river and rail. Best of all, it was to be undisturbed by urban sprawl.
As a non-sectarian facility and a for-profit business venture, its operators sought the region’s affluent of all faiths as patrons. The prosperous happily obliged.
Many of the earliest gravesites are plainly marked, if marked at all, because the occupants were Quakers.
Mercy Carlisle, a member of the Middletown Meeting in Bucks County, was the first person interred at Laurel Hill. Nothing marked her grave until more than a century and a half later when the friends group placed a small stone there.
Plainness was not a problem for post-Civil War industrialists like Matthias W. Baldwin and Henry Disston, who helped establish Laurel Hill’s Millionaire’s Row of graves in the cemetery’s highest-rent district.
While some chose to advertise their wealth in perpetuity with large mausoleums adorned with Tiffany and Co. stained-glass windows, many followed a common credo of the day that "taller is better."
They had stone obelisks erected dozens of feet toward the sky, likely inspired by the Washington Monument.
"There were no requirements for what kind of stone to put up," Yaster said.
In other cases, large sculptures were selected to mark family burial plots. Little information is available about a Lucy Winpenny beyond the numerous area charities that she patronized as a lady of means, but her family’s marker is truly noteworthy.
A statue of Ruth from the Old Testament sits atop a column rising some 30 feet high. The statue’s face is said to be that of Mrs. Winpenny.
Other women buried at Laurel Hill are notable more for their deeds in life than their accommodations in death. Sara Yorke Stevenson (1847-1921) was a pioneering academic who headed the archaeology department at the University of Pennsylvania and helped establish the University Museum there. She is credited with helping the museum establish its large collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts.
Frances Anne Wister (1874-1956) founded the Women’s Committee of the Philadelphia Orchestra, which served as a great fund-raising body for the world-renowned ensemble. She also founded the city’s Society for the Preservation of Landmarks, which helped save many important buildings in the years before governmental historic-preservation efforts.
Laurel Hill even has the grave of a famous fictional woman.
In Sylvester Stallone’s latest Rocky movie, the title character mourns at the resting place of his deceased wife, Adrian. The scenes were shot at Laurel Hill, which has Adrian Balboa’s gravestone on display in an otherwise unused space just inside the gate house.
"But Talia Shire is not here," Yaster insisted, referring to the actress who plays her. "I’ve had people ask." ••
For information about tours of Laurel Hill Cemetery, visit www.theundergroundmuseum.org or call 215-228-8200.
Reporter William Kenny can be reached at 215-354-3031 or bkenny@phillynews.com