Philly’s First Baptist Church cemetery remains — nearly 500 who died between 1707 and 1859 — were quietly reburied last week

The nearly 500 sets of human remains exhumed from the colonial-era First Baptist Church cemetery during the construction of an Old City luxury apartment building were reburied last week at Mount Moriah Cemetery, which stretches from Southwest Philadelphia into Yeadon.

The reburial marked the end of one chapter in the story of the remains that were uncovered seven years ago when construction equipment digging into the ground brought up skeletal remains at the site of the 218 Arch apartments at Second and Arch Streets. The discovery led to legal battles over who had the authority to remove them, study them, and rebury them. Philadelphia Orphans Court Judge Matthew D. Carrafiello presided over the case and determined the procedures the developer should follow for the reburial. He also decided that the remains could be studied by Rutgers University researchers.

» READ MORE: Nearly 500 souls were removed from Philly’s old First Baptist Church burial ground seven years ago. When will they be reburied?

The remains were reburied three days after The Inquirer reported that Rutgers scientists were waiting to hear when they could return the remains.

PMC Property Group, one of the largest apartment building developers in the city, was responsible for reburying the remains. It owns the property at 218 Arch St. and began building the 10-story apartment building at the site in 2016.

The bulk of the remains were removed over the course of several months in 2017 when PMC hired AECOM, a professional archaeological firm to exhume any other human remains in the footprint of the construction site.

Last week’s reburial “was exceptionally smooth thanks to the Rutgers students, alumni, and a few of my professional colleagues who volunteered to assist as well as the AECOM archaeologists in charge,” Kimberlee Sue Moran, an associate professor in anthropology at Rutgers University-Camden, told the The Inquirer in an email.

“It is our understanding that Mount Moriah Cemetery and the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia intend to have a ceremony at the time of or after the erection of the stone memorial marker to commemorate the over 400 historical FBCP individuals interred at Mount Moriah Cemetery. … That ceremony will be open to any interested members of the public,” Courtney L. Schultz, an attorney for PMC, said in an email on Monday.

» READ MORE: Nearly 500 souls were removed from Philly’s old First Baptist Church burial ground seven years ago. When will they be reburied

Moran said the remains were placed in biodegradable bags and marked with identification. A van carrying the remains left a Camden storage space about 7:30 a.m. Wednesday and arrived at Mount Moriah about 8:45 a.m., she said. The reburial took place from about 9 a.m. to noon, with help from Friends of Mount Moriah volunteers, Rutgers students, and some professionals who worked on the research project.

The bags were buried in eight vaults placed in two separate holes recently dug at Section 112, the First Baptist Church section, at Mount Moriah. She said four vaults were placed in each of the holes.

Because the remains were no longer in boxes, but in either paper or burlap bags, as many as 40 or more were placed in each vault.

Moran said some of the bags were very small and contained only a small number of bones because they has been destroyed during the apartment construction.

Experts several years ago had already used ground-penetrating radar to make sure the areas at Mount Moriah to be excavated for the new First Baptist reburials had enough empty space available.

» READ MORE: For years, family members have searched for the grave of Samuel Miles, one of Philly’s former mayors. Then they learned about remains uncovered in Old City.

Moran has reached out to about 15 people who are known to be descendants of the people once buried at the First Baptist cemetery, but they could not attend the Wednesday reburial. Some live in California.

However, she has invited those descendants to take part in planning an official commemoration ceremony for the First Baptist burials, either by November, or next spring.

“I was so impressed with how the reburial went,” Moran said in an interview Thursday. “Everyone worked well together. Everyone was focused and were very respectful.”

Last November, when Judge Carrafiello issued a decree granting PMC permission to rebury the remains, he wrote that PMC must publish legal notice of the reinterment once a week for two consecutive weeks, at least 30 days prior to the date of the reburial.

PMC published a legal notice on Dec. 15, 2023, that it was to rebury the remains on Jan. 19, 2024. The reburial was postponed because the proper vaults had not been ordered. There also had been a major storm around that date.

Mark Zecca, who had filed briefs on behalf of the nonprofit Philadelphia Archaeological Forum about the remains, said the reburial Wednesday may have violated Carrafiello’s order requiring PMC to file legal notice of the burial date.

The order “specified that there would be advance notice of the date of the reburial included in the notice,” Zecca wrote in an email last week.

“Therefore prior notices of the prior dates are not notice. So if there was no notice, then the decree was violated.”

Schultz, the attorney for PMC Property, said in an email Monday she disagrees with Zecca “that the lack of a new publication violated the November court order.”

“The November court order required that notice be published at least 30 days prior to reinterment; it did not require republication in the event of a delay,” Schultz said. “Following the publication of the notice, no member of the public reached out requesting information on the reinterment. The reinterment date was delayed beyond the date originally targeted earlier this year.

“All appropriate permits were obtained earlier this week and the remains were interred at Mount Moriah Cemetery, in Section 112 as intended, on July 24, 2024. The reinterment was completed in accordance with the November court order, followed all appropriate processes and procedures, and was overseen by Mount Moriah officials and Ms. Kimberly Morrell, RPA, of AECOM.”

» READ MORE: First Baptist Church has a very long history in Philadelphia. The rediscovery of its 300-year-old cemetery raises plenty of questions

The remains from the old First Baptist cemetery were supposed to have been relocated to Mount Moriah Cemetery more than 100 years ago in 1860, archaeologists said. That’s when officials of First Baptist, once located near 2nd and Arch streets, arranged to move the remains from its cemetery to Section 112 at Mount Moriah.

However, hundreds of remains were left behind at the cemetery, located across Arch Street from the Betsy Ross House.

Before PMC began construction, the site was a parking lot. The property had previously been a hat factory. Since the 1860s, the remains of those buried between 1707 and 1859 were underneath.