Saturday Adventures: Mount Moriah Cemetery

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Kingsessing Rd. is a not far from the Philadelphia Airport.

Mount Moriah Cemetery

Philadephia, PA

That is where Indy-Anna Bones found what remains of Mount Moriah Cemetery.

Mount Moriah lays across the border of Philadelphia and the nearby borough of Yeadon.

Eerie statues and skeletal branches loomed all about her.

Nature fought to reclaim the grounds.

The cemetery is owned by the Mount Moriah Cemetery Association, a not-for-profit organization that is technically defunct after the last member died in 2004.

No notification was provided to the City of Philadelphia until 2011 that the cemetery had ceased operations and was essentially abandoned.

Mount Moriah Cemetery was opened in 1855, the the area had been a burial ground since the Revolutionary War.

While only covering 54 acres when it opened, Mount Moriah is now believed to cover between 200 and 380 acres, depending on sources.

Once a prominant Civil War cemetery, many tombstones are now broken and crumbling.

Inside the privately (un)owned Mount Moriah are two military burial grounds that are operated and maintained by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Mount Moriah has the distinction of being one of the few cemeteries in Philadelphia to accept Muslim burials.

In the years of neglect, headstones have toppled and broken, and graves have begun to cave in.

Indy Anna did find signs of life.

Mount Moriah was once the resting place of Betsy Ross, designer of the US flag, but her body is beleived to have been moved in the 1970's.

The St. John Circle has been nicknamed "The Mason's Circle," because of the large number of 19th-century Masons buried here.

In 2011, the "Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery" was organized as a 501c3 not-for-profit dedicated to upkeep of the cemetery.

The organization sponsers cleanups, resetting toppled tombstones and beating back years of neglect.

Progress has been slow, and much work remains.

Local colleges, such as Villanova, have pitched in with student volunteers to aid in the process.

On their website, the Friends keep a collection of Before and After photos that show the cemetery completely engulfed in forest, with only the tallest obelisks poking above the trees and brush.

Before she left, Indy Anna took a moment to relate on the sad fate of a once beatiful space.

The Friends are expected to assume ownership of the cemetery, but not until Philadelphia establishes protection from the liability of the previous owners.

Until then, the cleanup of Mount Moriah Cemetery remains a labor of love.

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