The discovery of human remains at Temple is a reminder of Philly’s history of careless cemetery removals
Some were shocked by the find on the university's campus during a construction project. But the often-rushed demolition of burial places from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries is well-documented.
Many Philadelphians were shocked last month by the news that human remains had been uncovered during construction on Temple University’s campus, but for local historians, it came as no surprise.
We’ve long known about the careless, politically corrupt removal of cemeteries across the city from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries, including Monument Cemetery at the site of the university.
Founded in 1837, Monument is where my ancestors — and those of countless other Philadelphians, both famous and obscure — were buried. In the 1950s, Temple worked with city officials to have the cemetery condemned to make room for campus expansion.
What followed was what can only be called a rushed, disrespectful exhumation. The remains were dumped into a mass grave, and the gravestones were broken up and discarded into the Delaware River, where some are still visible at low tide.
This travesty is all the more pointed because one of those disturbed graves belonged to someone who arguably helped inspire the founding of Temple.
I don’t mean Russell Conwell, whose remains were moved to a memorial garden on campus, but his Sunday school student, Hattie May Wiatt.
The remains were dumped into a mass grave, and the gravestones were broken up and discarded into the Delaware River.
Hattie couldn’t attend Conwell’s classes regularly because the room was too small, so she began saving her pennies to help build a bigger church. When she died of diphtheria at age 6, her mother found a purse under her pillow containing 57 cents, and at her funeral gave the coins to Conwell, who shared her story with the congregation.
He began selling her pennies for donations toward a bigger church, setting off a movement inspired by Hattie’s generosity. That building, called “The Grace Baptist Temple” at Broad and Berks Streets, grew into today’s major institution.
Conwell declared that this congregation of thousands was born out of Hattie May’s small investment, declaring that “she is happy on high with the thought that her life was so full, that it was so complete, that she lived really to be so old in the influences she threw upon this earth.”
I discovered Hattie’s story by chance after ordering my ancestor’s burial record and noticing her name among the others in the same plot.
I curiously looked up her name online and was stunned by the largely forgotten tale it revealed. In 2011, I visited the section at Lawnview Cemetery in Jenkintown where her remains were supposedly reinterred after Monument’s destruction in 1956, which appears to be nothing more than a grassy field.
I walked out paces to estimate the seventh grave in the 76th row, then began probing the soggy ground. A few families were able to purchase bronze plaques bearing only surnames to mark their ancestors’ alleged spot in the mass grave, but due to constant flooding over the years, most have sunk deep over time.
I dug until I uncovered a plaque caked in mud — the letters B, A, and two Ls emerging: the last name of Hattie’s grandmother, who was buried with her. I had found Hattie’s forgotten grave, and based on its condition, was probably the first person to do so in decades.
I had found Hattie’s forgotten grave, and based on its condition, was probably the first person to do so in decades.
How could the innocent girl whose 57 cents helped launch Temple be left in such obscurity — her name missing from even a simple marker, her original headstone likely sunk in the Delaware?
When I made the discovery a decade ago, I contacted several people at Temple to call out this injustice, but received no reply. The university is spending more than $100 million to build cutting-edge facilities atop the cemetery site, yet hasn’t spared even 57 cents to honor the young girl who helped make it all possible — or the countless other Philadelphians displaced from their graves to make way for it.
Now, as bones resurface on campus, the ghost of Monument Cemetery returns to haunt the campus, 70 years after it was erased. Wasn’t it Ben Franklin who said, “Show me your cemeteries, and I will tell you what kind of people you have”?
Paul Vartan Sookiasian is a native of Philadelphia currently working as a journalist at CivilNet in Yerevan, Armenia. He is also a historian who researches the long and rich history of Philadelphia’s Armenian community.