Christ Church Burial Ground | |
Location | 5th and Arch streets, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
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Coordinates | 39°57′07″N75°08′55″W / 39.95194°N 75.14861°W |
NRHP reference No. | 71000062 [1] |
Added to NRHP | June 24, 1971 |
Christ Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia is an important early-American cemetery. It is the final resting place of Benjamin Franklin and his wife, Deborah. Four other signers of the Declaration of Independence are buried here, Benjamin Rush, Francis Hopkinson, Joseph Hewes, and George Ross. Two additional signers of the Declaration of Independence, James Wilson and Robert Morris, are buried at Christ Church just a few blocks away.
The cemetery belongs to Christ Church, the Episcopal church, which was founded in 1695 and served as a place of worship for many of the most notable participants in the American Revolution, including George Washington. The burial ground is located at 5th and Arch streets, across from the Visitors Center and National Constitution Center in Center City Philadelphia. The Burial Ground was opened in 1719, and is still an active cemetery. The Burial Ground is open to the public for a small fee, weather permitting; about 100,000 tourists visit each year.
When the burial ground is closed, one can still view Benjamin Franklin's gravesite from the sidewalk at the corner of 5th and Arch Streets through a set of iron rails. The bronze rails in the brick wall were added for public viewing in 1858 by parties working at the behest of the Franklin Institute, which assumed the responsibility of defending Franklin's historic ties to Philadelphia after prominent Bostonians criticized the city's maintenance of the grave and erected a Franklin statue there. [2] Leaving pennies on Franklin's grave is an old Philadelphia tradition.
Other famous people buried at Christ Church Burial Ground include:
Francis Hopkinson was an American Founding Father, lawyer, jurist, author, and composer. He designed Continental paper money and two early versions of flags, one for the United States and one for the United States Navy. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence in July 1776 as a delegate from New Jersey.
Thomas Mifflin was an American merchant, soldier, and politician from Pennsylvania, who is regarded as a Founding Father of the United States for his roles during and after the American Revolution. Mifflin signed the United States Constitution, was the first governor of Pennsylvania, serving from 1790 to 1799, and was also the state's last president, succeeding Benjamin Franklin in 1788.
George Clymer was an American politician, abolitionist and Founding Father of the United States, one of only six founders who signed both the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution. Clymer was among the earliest patriots to advocate for complete independence from Britain. He attended the Continental Congress and served in political office until the end of his life. He was a Framer of the Constitution where he attempted unsuccessfully to regulate the importation of slaves. Clymer was himself a minor slave owner, at least briefly when seven years old through inheritance.
The Founding Fathers of the United States, often simply referred to as the Founding Fathers or the Founders, were a group of late-18th-century American revolutionary leaders who united the Thirteen Colonies, oversaw the War of Independence from Great Britain, established the United States of America, and crafted a framework of government for the new nation.
The parish of Trinity Church has three separate burial grounds associated with it in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The first, Trinity Churchyard, is located in Lower Manhattan at 74 Trinity Place, near Wall Street and Broadway. Alexander Hamilton and his wife Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, Albert Gallatin, and Robert Fulton are buried in the downtown Trinity Churchyard.
The Granary Burying Ground in Massachusetts is the city of Boston's third-oldest cemetery, founded in 1660 and located on Tremont Street. It is the burial location of Revolutionary War-era patriots, including Paul Revere, the five victims of the Boston Massacre, and three signers of the Declaration of Independence: Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Robert Treat Paine. The cemetery has 2,345 grave-markers, but historians estimate that as many as 5,000 people are buried in it. The cemetery is adjacent to Park Street Church, behind the Boston Athenæum and immediately across from Suffolk University Law School. It is a site on Boston's Freedom Trail. The cemetery's Egyptian revival gate and fence were designed by architect Isaiah Rogers (1800–1869), who designed an identical gate for Newport's Touro Cemetery.
John Morton was an American farmer, surveyor, and jurist from the Province of Pennsylvania and a Founding Father of the United States. As a delegate to the Continental Congress during the American Revolution, he was a signatory to the Continental Association and Declaration of Independence. Morton provided the swing vote that allowed Pennsylvania to vote in favor of the Declaration. Morton chaired the committee that wrote the Articles of Confederation, though he died before signing.
Charles Willing was an English-born merchant and politician who twice served as the mayor of Philadelphia, from 1748 until 1749 and again in 1754.
Philip Syng was, like his namesake father, Philip Syng, Sr. (1676–1739), a renowned silversmith who created fine works in silver and sometimes gold for the wealthy families of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1752 he created the Syng inkstand, which was used to sign the 1776 United States Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution in 1787.
Pennsylvania was the site of many key events associated with the American Revolution and American Revolutionary War. The city of Philadelphia, then capital of the Thirteen Colonies and the largest city in the colonies, was a gathering place for the Founding Fathers who discussed, debated, developed, and ultimately implemented many of the acts, including signing the Declaration of Independence, that inspired and launched the revolution and the quest for independence from the British Empire.
Samuel Powel was a colonial and post-revolutionary mayor of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Since Philadelphia's mayoral office had been abolished early in the revolutionary period, Powel was the last colonial mayor of the city and the first to serve after the United States gained independence from Great Britain.
The Reverend Jacob Duché (1737–1798) was a Rector of Christ Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the first chaplain to the Continental Congress.
Christ Church is an Episcopal church in the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1695 as a parish of the Church of England, it played an integral role in the founding of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. In 1785, its rector, William White, became the first Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church.
St. Peter's Church is a historic Episcopal church located on the corner of Third and Pine Streets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It opened for worship on September 4, 1761 and served as a place of worship for many of the United States Founding Fathers during the period of the Continental Congresses. The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1996. The church remains an active parish; the current priest-in-charge is the Rev. Dr. Clarke French.
The Common Burying Ground and Island Cemetery are a pair of separate cemeteries on Farewell and Warner Street in Newport, Rhode Island. Together they contain over 5,000 graves, including a colonial-era slave cemetery and Jewish graves. The pair of cemeteries was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a single listing in 1974.
Joseph Hopkinson was a United States representative from Pennsylvania and a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Events from the year 1790 in the United States.
The signing of the United States Declaration of Independence occurred primarily on August 2, 1776, at the Pennsylvania State House, later renamed Independence Hall, in Philadelphia. The 56 delegates to the Second Continental Congress represented the Thirteen Colonies, 12 of the colonies voted to approve the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The New York delegation abstained because they had not yet received instructions from Albany to vote for independence. The Declaration proclaimed the Thirteen Colonies were now "free and independent States", no longer colonies of the Kingdom of Great Britain and, thus, no longer a part of the British Empire. The signers’ names are grouped by state, with the exception of John Hancock, as President of the Continental Congress; the states are arranged geographically from south to north, with Button Gwinnett from Georgia first, and Matthew Thornton from New Hampshire last.
The Memorial to the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence is a memorial depicting the signatures of the 56 signatories to the United States Declaration of Independence. It is located in the Constitution Gardens on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The memorial is accessible to the public by crossing a wooden bridge onto a small island set in the lake between Constitution Avenue and the Reflecting Pool, not far from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Elizabeth Willing Powel was an American socialite and a prominent member of the Philadelphia upper class of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The daughter, later sister and then wife of mayors of Philadelphia, she was a salonnière who hosted frequent gatherings that became a staple of political life in the city. During the First Continental Congress in 1774, Powel opened her home to the delegates and their families, hosting dinner parties and other events. After the American Revolutionary War, she again took her place among the most prominent Philadelphian socialites, establishing a salon of the Republican Court of leading intellectuals and political figures.