Philadelphia Archaeological Forum

Historical Burial Places Map

 

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Go to Philadelphia’s Burial Places/Cemetery Issues

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About the Map

Beneath Philadelphia’s sprawling cityscape lies a hidden and largely forgotten city of the dead. Mirroring the size and scope of the overlying metropolis, the subterranean burial places that house the remains of those who built Philadelphia stretch, in patchwork fashion, from deep in South Philadelphia to the far northeast, and from Old City west to Cobbs Creek. These often forgotten, neglected, and overlooked places can tell us a great deal about the history of our city and about who we are as a people.

In 2017, in response to the threat of increased construction impacts on historic sites, including burial sites, the Forum began a project to gather information on the location and nature of the city’s historic burial places. In February 2018, PAF released a Graphical Information System (GIS) database and map that listed the location of more than 200 of Philadelphia’s cemeteries and burial grounds. The database, and resulting map, have been regularly updated and corrected since its initial release. As of January 2026, the map included 413 mapped locations.

The information in this database incorporates research conducted by multiple researchers stretching over more than 80 years. Much of the burial ground data presented here was drawn from the earlier groundbreaking research of historian Charles Barker, in the 1940s, and University of Pennsylvania graduate student Rene L.C. Torres, in the 1990s. Additional information was compiled by archaeologist Kimberly Morrell. She was also responsible for creating the original map of 125 burial sites on which this database is constructed. That data was incorporated into a GIS model developed and maintained by the Philadelphia Archaeological Forum, from which the public web map is derived. Since release of the first version of the map in 2018, additional research conducted by the Forum using information gathered from historic maps of Philadelphia, published histories, city directories, archaeological reports, and online newspaper archives has been used to expand the map.

The map, and underlying database, have grown to become a powerful tool that can aid in the study of the mortuary landscape of our city through time.  In the years since the map was publicly launched, it has been used by archaeologists, historians, urban planners, anthropologists, genealogists, and the general public. It can be an equally powerful tool for the preservation of the City’s cemeteries, graveyards, and burial sites, particularly the many sites which are unmarked and have been lost to public memory. Since the year 1800 there have been more than 85 separate, documented, incidents of unmarked burial sites in Philadelphia being disturbed by construction activities at 52 different historic burial grounds. Since 1985 alone, 20 unmarked cemeteries have been affected, and with the current fever pitch of development many more are at risk. PAF’s goal in making information about historic burial sites publicly available is to minimize future inadvertent and unintended impacts to these sites and to facilitate research on burial sites as an aspect of the built environment.

The map provides property owners and government agencies a convenient starting point for their due diligence efforts early enough in a development project to avoid, or plan for, impacts on unmarked burial places. It can reduce the inconvenience and cost of late discovery of these sites and ensure these special places are either protected, or that they are properly studied and that any burials encountered are responsibly relocated before destruction.

Using the Map

The burial map can be explored using the embedded version at the top of the page. The map view can be zoomed in or out using the buttons at the top left corner of the map, or by using the mouse wheel. The map can be panned in any direction by pressing and holding the left mouse button. The embedded map provides access to a limited subset of features and data provided by the full version of the map. Click on the link directly under the embedded map or click on the icon in the top right corner of the embedded map to access all of the features and data. This will open the full version of the map, hosted on NextGIS, in a new browser window.

Consideration for Use of the Map

While we have endeavored to make this database as inclusive and accurate as possible, people utilizing this map should keep in mind the following important caveats and considerations:

• This database is a work in progress and it will be updated with additional burial places and expanded information as more data is collected. Inaccurate information that may have been inadvertently included in the database will be corrected as it is identified or brought to our attention.
• The Forum has not attempted to conduct exhaustive research on each of the more than 400 sites now included on the map. Such a level of effort is beyond the scope and intent of the Forum’s mapping project.
• An expansive definition of a burial place has been employed for determining sites to include on the map. In addition to public, private and family cemeteries, we have also added additional sites where human burials have been encountered. This includes sites where human remains from established cemeteries may have been redeposited as a result of the disruption of an existing cemetery following construction or other activities, and sites where skeletal remains have been found and where the origin and reason for deposition of the remains is unknown.
• It is not possible for the map and database to encompass or contain information about every burial place that has existed in Philadelphia. An unknown number of burial sites— such as those created as private family cemeteries, those established by socially marginalized groups or communities, or which were in use for only short periods of time, may not have been well documented while they were in use, and therefore cannot be re-located and mapped today.
• Historic burial places have been mapped and represented as accurately as possible. However, the location and boundaries depicted for individual burial sites should not be considered as definitive. In many instances historical information is limited, inaccurate, or conflicting, and, therefore the true location, size, and boundaries of specific burial grounds may not be known with certainty.
• Where the map and database indicate that human remains were relocated from a specific burial ground, it should not be taken to mean that there are no longer any human remains or intact burials contained within that site. In numerous cases, archaeological investigations and historical documentation have established that past attempts to relocate a cemetery rarely, if ever, result in the recovery and complete removal of every burial on that site. The reasons for incomplete relocations are too numerous and varied to detail here.
• The fact that a property once used as a burial ground has been redeveloped and built upon should not be taken as proof there are no longer burials contained in that ground. Many burial grounds in Philadelphia extended deeply into the ground, therefore it is possible that intact burials could still be preserved below existing foundations and basement floors. Some cemeteries in the city have been documented to contain burials as deep as 15 to 20 or more feet below the current ground surface. The First Baptist Church Burial Ground, near the corner of 2nd and Arch Streets, contained burials that extended to 22 feet below ground surface. Burials can also be preserved in small spaces that were never built on. In the case of the 2nd Presbyterian Church Cemetery, at the site of the National Constitution Center, one small space (measuring just 5 by 25 feet) and preserved between later foundations, was found to contain 49 intact burials.
• Human burials are not property that can be indiscriminately dug up and disposed of by landowners or developers. Under current Pennsylvania law, unmarked burials and burial grounds are protected under the legal authority and jurisdiction of the Orphans’ Court Division of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. Historic burials can only be legally removed, relocated, or disturbed after the property owner petitions the Orphans’ Court and receives a written order from the court to do so.
• This database includes hundreds of properties and represents countless hours of research. But given the number of individual burial places involved, the time spent researching each individual site was limited. It is the responsibility of a property owner to complete comprehensive research before excavating or developing a property known or suspected to contain a burial site. This map and database is only a starting point.

Direct all questions, comments, or corrections to phillyarchaeology@gmail.com.

by Jed Levin