Eden Cemetery | |
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Details | |
Established | 1902 |
Location | 1434 Springfield Road, Collingdale, Pennsylvania |
Country | United States |
Type | private |
Size | 53 acres |
No. of graves | 93,000 |
Website | Official website |
Find a Grave | Eden Cemetery |
Eden Cemetery | |
Coordinates | 39°55′20″N75°16′24″W / 39.92222°N 75.27333°W |
NRHP reference No. | 10001031 [1] |
Added to NRHP | December 13, 2010 |
Eden Cemetery is a historic African-American cemetery located in Collingdale, Pennsylvania. It was established June 20, 1902, and is the oldest existing black owned cemetery in the United States. [2] The cemetery covers about 53 acres [3] and contains approximately 93,000 burials. [4]
Jerome Bacon, an instructor at the Institute for Colored Youth (the precursor to Cheyney University), led efforts to create a cemetery for African-Americans who had been buried in cemeteries in Philadelphia that were being condemned by the city in the early 20th century. [5] The cemeteries included Lebanon Cemetery (condemned in 1899 – closed in 1903), [6] the Olive Graveyard (closed in 1923), [7] the Stephen Smith Home for the Aged and Infirm Colored Person's Burial Ground and the First African Baptist Church Burial Grounds. [4] The bodies buried in these cemeteries were disinterred and re-interred at Eden Cemetery. [8] The oldest reburial in the cemetery is from 1721. [9]
After litigation from Collingdale, Pennsylvania opposing the creation of an African-American cemetery in the township, a charter for the creation of Eden Cemetery was granted by Pennsylvania on June 20, 1902. Fifty-three acres of land previously part of Bartram Farms were selected for the creation of the cemetery.
The first meeting of the cemetery charter committee was held on August 9, 1902, and included prominent members of Philadelphia's black community in the following roles:
The first interment at the cemetery was delayed until nightfall due to local white protestors who blocked the cemetery entrance during the day. [10] The headline of the Chester County Times the next day read "Collingdale Has More Race Troubles, Town Council Has No Use for a Colored Cemetery, No African Need Apply." [5]
On May 30, 1919, a memorial was erected to commemorate the colored soldiers from Pennsylvania who fought and died in France during World War I from 1917 to 1918.
In 1986, five child victims of the 1985 MOVE bombing were interred in two unmarked graves at Eden Cemetery. [11]
In July 2008, vandals toppled over 200 headstones in the cemetery, including that of Octavius Valentine Catto, one of the most famous burials at Eden Cemetery. [10]
In 2010, Eden Cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. [1] It is still in operation and maintained by a group of volunteers. [5]
In 2015, a monument to Pauline Oberdorfer Minor was erected in Eden Cemetery by the Philadelphia Alumnae chapter of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority [12] She was one of the 22 founders of the Sorority but was working as a housekeeper when she died and was interred in a pauper's grave alongside three other people. [13]
In January 2024, the skulls of 19 unidentified black Philadelphians were interred in two mausolea in Eden Cemetery. The skulls were part of the Penn Museum collection and were most likely from enslaved persons from the 1830s and 1840s. The skulls were collected by Samuel George Morton, a scientist who supported scientific racism. [14]
Collingdale is a borough in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 8,908 at the 2020 census.
Laurel Hill Cemetery, also called Laurel Hill East to distinguish it from the affiliated West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd, is a historic rural cemetery in the East Falls neighborhood of Philadelphia. Founded in 1836, it was the second major rural cemetery in the United States after Mount Auburn Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.
Philadelphia National Cemetery is a United States National Cemetery located in the West Oak Lane neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was established in 1862 as nine leased lots in seven private cemeteries in the Philadelphia region. The current location was established in 1881, and the remains of soldiers were reinterred from the various leased lots. It is administered by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, and managed from offices at Washington Crossing National Cemetery. It is 13 acres in size and contains 13,202 burials.
Octavius Valentine Catto was an American educator, intellectual, and civil rights activist. He became principal of male students at the Institute for Colored Youth, where he had also been educated. Born free in Charleston, South Carolina, in a prominent mixed-race family, he moved north as a boy with his family. After completing his education, he went into teaching, and becoming active in civil rights. He also became known as a top cricket and baseball player in 19th-century Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A Republican, he was shot and killed in election-day violence in Philadelphia, where ethnic Irish of the Democratic Party, who were anti-Reconstruction and had opposed black suffrage, attacked black men to prevent their voting.
Mount Moriah Cemetery is a historic rural cemetery that spans the border between Southwest Philadelphia and Yeadon, Pennsylvania. It was established in 1855 and is the largest cemetery in Pennsylvania. It is 200 acres in size and contains 150,000 burials. It differed from Philadelphia's other rural cemeteries such as Laurel Hill Cemetery and the Woodlands Cemetery in that it was easily accessible by streetcar; allowed burials of African-Americans, Jews and Muslims; and catered to a more middle-class clientele.
Greenwood Cemetery is a historic cemetery in the Frankford neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It was established in 1869, is 43 acres in size and contains approximately 20,000 graves.
Pauline Oberdorfer Minor was an American teacher, singer and composer who was one of the 22 founders of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.
David Bustill Bowser was a 19th-century African-American ornamental artist, portraitist, and social activist. He designed battle flags for eleven African-American regiments during the American Civil War and painted portraits of prominent Americans, including U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and abolitionist John Brown. Politically active throughout much of his adult life, he was a contributor to the Undergrounds Railroad and also helped to secure the post-war passage of key civil rights legislation in Pennsylvania.
The Philadelphia Pythians was one of the earliest Negro league baseball clubs, founded in 1865. African-American leaders Jacob C. White Jr. and Octavius V. Catto established the team. The Pythians were composed of primarily business and middle class professionals from the surrounding areas of Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and New York City. Just two years after the Civil War ended, in 1867, the Pennsylvania State Convention of Baseball, located in Harrisburg, denied the "Pythian Base Ball Club" out of Philadelphia. The team dissolved after Catto's death in 1871 and a new team formed under the Pythian name in the National Colored Base Ball League in 1887. The new team's first season went 4–1. Due to financial troubles it folded after only one season.
Sarah Mapps Douglass was an American educator, abolitionist, writer, and public lecturer. Her painted images on her written letters may be the first or earliest surviving examples of signed paintings by an African American woman. These paintings are contained within the Cassey Dickerson Album, a rare collection of 19th-century friendship letters between a group of women.
John Pierre Burr was an American abolitionist and community leader in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, active in education and civil rights for African Americans. He was an illegitimate child of Aaron Burr, the third U.S. vice president, and Mary Emmons, a Haitian governess who may have been born in Calcutta, India.
John C. Bowers, Jr. was an African American entrepreneur, organist and vestryman at St. Thomas African Episcopal Church, and a founding member of the first Grand United Order of Odd Fellows for African Americans in Pennsylvania. He was active in the anti-slavery movement in Philadelphia, and involved in the founding of several organizations including the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. "A fervent abolitionist and outspoken opponent of colonization, [he] was much in demand as a public speaker."
The history of African Americans or Black Philadelphians in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has been documented in various sources. People of African descent are currently the largest ethnic group in Philadelphia. Estimates in 2010 by the U.S. Census Bureau documented the total number of people living in Philadelphia who identified as Black or African American at 644,287, or 42.2% of the city's total population.
Jacob C. White Jr. was an American educator, intellectual, and civil rights activist. Born to a successful and influential businessman, White received the finest education afforded to African-Americans of the time and became intertwined in the dealings of Philadelphia's most prominent black leaders. The first black man in the city to be appointed as a school principal at Roberts Vaux Consolidated School. During his tenure between 1864 and 1896, White reformed the institute and became the leading figure in the field of urban education in Philadelphia. Alongside his academic endeavors, White was significant in the sports field: he helped establish the Philadelphia Pythians, an early black baseball club. Following the shooting of his friend and fellow activist Octavius Catto in 1871, White became the top civil rights activist in the city, and remained active in the community until his death in 1902.
Henrietta Duterte was an African-American funeral home owner, philanthropist, and abolitionist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was the first American woman to own a mortuary, and her business operated as a stop on the Underground Railroad.
Emilie "Emily" Frances Davis was a free African American woman living in Philadelphia during the American Civil War. She wrote three pocket diaries for the years 1863, 1864, and 1865 recounting her perspective on the Emancipation Proclamation, the Battle of Gettysburg, and the mourning of President Lincoln. These diaries are unique in their depiction of 19th century life of urban African American women and reactions to the events of the Civil War.
Lebanon Cemetery was an African-American cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, established in 1849. It was one of only two private African-American cemeteries in Philadelphia at the time. Lebanon Cemetery was condemned in 1899. The bodies were reinterred in 1902 to Eden Cemetery in Collingdale, Pennsylvania and the cemetery was closed in 1903.
Benjamin Banneker Institute was a literary society for African Americans established in Philadelphia in 1854. Members lectured and debated on various subjects. It was named for Benjamin Banneker.
Caroline Rebecca Le Count was an American educator and civil rights activist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is often compared to later activist Rosa Parks for her early efforts to desegregate public transportation.
A Quest for Parity: The Octavius V. Catto Memorial is a group of sculptures designed by Branly Cadet memorializing Octavius Catto in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It was unveiled in 2017 and is the first monument on Philadelphia public property to commemorate a specific African American.
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