Friends South-Western Burial Ground Records

Western District Monthly Meeting was set off in 1814. The first meeting house in that part of the City had been erected in 1685 -- the Centre meeting-house - probably near the southwest corner of Market and Broad Streets. This structure was abandoned at an early date, and the Twelfth Street Meeting house was not erected until 1812.

The first burial ground for Friends in Philadelphia was on a plot of land (the east side of 4th, south of Arch street) that was granted to Quakers by William Penn in 1701 "for a burying place;" it had, in fact, already been used for that purpose for several years prior to that date. So many people were buried there, Friends and non-Friends alike, that by 1794 there was very little room left. The Eastern Burial Ground was about 70 feet south of Arch Street above 3rd. The Western Burial Ground -- also called Sassafras -- comprised the entire block from 16th to 17th Street and Race Street to Cherry Street. Burials were recorded there from 1823 until 1884 when the site was taken over by Friends Select School. Friends also claimed title to the burial ground at Blockley (transferred to the Board of Health in 1819) and to a burial ground at Fair Hill which was retained by the Hicksites after the Separation. Members of Western District Monthly Meeting were also interred at Haverford.

In 1860, a joint committee made up of members of the four Orthodox Philadelphia monthly meetings could not agree on the purchase of a new burial ground. At that time, Western District Monthly Meeting went ahead and purchased a tract of land from Charles H. Wilbank and wife in Delaware County, Pennsylvania for its own use. This purchase, at 236 Powell Lane, Upper Derby, was bounded by Marshall Road, Sellers Avenue, and Spruce Street, close to the border of the City of Philadelphia.

Western District's tract was called Friends South-Western Burial Ground. It was laid out with both single graves in rows and family plots. In 1880, the other two Philadelphia Monthly Meetings jointly purchased part of the Friends South-Western property and established the Marshall Road Burial Ground on the same site. In 1915, the burials at Arch Street were disinterred and reburied at Friends South-Western. The remains at Western were also re-interred at South-Western.