Old St. Mary Cemetery

Old St. Mary Cemetery, opened as a burial ground for Catholics, contains graves that reflect the history of Philadelphia and the United States through lives associated with liberty and charity. The first burial appears to have been the infant Ann White. Those buried there include Commodore Barry and his family; Thomas Fitzsimons, a signer of the Constitution; Stephen Moylan, General Washington’s aide-de-camp; the French Major General Phillippe du Cudrey; Matthew Carey, a prominent publisher and pamphleteer; and the local soldier Emanual Holmes. The cemetery also holds the remains of prominent Philadelphians including George Meade, cabinet makers Michael Bouvier and Anthony Quervelle, Postmaster General James Campbell, Civil War heroes Major Henry C. Wheland and Colonel Charles Von Kusserow, children from St. Joseph’s Orphanage, the oldest Catholic orphanage started in 1797, innumerable victims of the yellow fever plagues of the last decade of the 18th century, American military personnel, and foreign dignitaries such as Don Juan Bernabeu of Spain and Manuel Torres of Columbia.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania · United States