Families of recently reburied Colonial-era Philadelphians came from across the country for a Thanksgiving memorial service — 240 years later

Kathryn Hartmann‘s voice was clear and strong as she told the story of Benjamin Britton, her sixth great-grandfather who died in Philadelphia in 1782 at age 78.

A strong wind gusted over the graves at Mount Moriah Cemetery on Nov. 23 as Hartmann talked about Britton, a Colonial-era baker and prosperous landowner who had been a member of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia.

The first time Britton was buried, it was 242 years ago in the First Baptist cemetery at Second and Arch Streets.

However, the remains of Britton and nearly 500 other people were unearthed in 2017 during the construction of a luxury apartment building at 218 Arch St.

First Baptist Church was founded in 1698 and moved into a former Quaker meeting house in Old City in 1707.

“In his lifetime, Benjamin Britton operated a thriving commercial business, owned farm land, and was a landlord and a lease holder, and employed indentured servants and other laborers,” Hartmann told a crowd of about 40 people who gathered on Saturday in the Yeadon section of Mount Moriah Cemetery. Some of Britton’s laborers were enslaved, Hartmann added.

In July, Britton’s remains along with the remains of others from First Baptist were buried again, this time at Mount Moriah off Cobbs Creek Parkway — seven years after most of the remains were excavated from the construction site in 2017.

“He was prosperous, educated and well off,” said Hartmann, a retired corporate accountant who came from Huntington Beach, Calif., to participate in a memorial service for those whose graves had been disturbed by the construction.

When First Baptist church moved from Old City in the 1850s, it made arrangements for the graves in the cemetery to be relocated to Mount Moriah in 1860. While many were moved, the construction that began in 2016 made it clear that the remains of as many of 1,000 or more were left behind.

The Philadelphia Archaeological Forum advocated for a respectful exhumation of those graves and reinterment. The forum had encouraged Philadelphia city officials to put a halt to construction, but the city refused.

Eventually, an official from the city’s Licenses and Inspections Department persuaded PMC Property Group, the developer of 218 Arch St., to seek a court order to remove the remains so they could be studied by scientists at Rutgers University-Camden and the Mütter Research Institute. The researchers wanted to learn more about diseases and other ailments that affected Colonial-era Philadelphians.

PMC eventually hired AECOM, a professional archaeological firm, to remove the remains in 2017 and transport them to Rutgers in Camden.

Kimberlee Sue Moran, a forensics scientist at Rutgers-Camden, along with the Friends of Mount Moriah Ceremony and Rev. James Williams of First Baptist Church of Philadelphia, organized the memorial ceremony, calling it, “A Service of Thanksgiving and Commemoration.”

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

Although Hartmann was an accountant, she also was a history major who enjoyed researching her family genealogy.

She only learned about the First Baptist cemetery excavation last year while randomly researching Britton’s name. A trove of stories about the Arch Street Project and the research on the Colonial-era remains came up.

Her own search of Philadelphia records — deeds, probate records, maps, and other documents — showed that her grandfather’s bakery was located at 4th and Chestnut, next door to what is now the Second National Bank of the United States.

Britton’s first wife died and left him with a small child, Hartmann said. He and his second wife, a widow with children from her first marriage, moved their blended family out of Philadelphia to Oxford Township not long after Independence Hall was completed in 1753.

In 1777, Britton signed an oath of allegiance to the newly formed United States of America.

“Benjamin Britton was eyewitness to the formation of our great nation at a time of great political rebellion,” Hartmann told the crowd at Mount Moriah. “He experienced the oppression, invasion, and occupation by a powerful country — Great Britain — and most likely suffered the vagaries of agricultural production and the effects of inflation, social unrest, and rising taxes. All of these events are relatable to our lives in the 21st century.

“It’s my hope in sharing a few details of Benjamin Britton’s life with you, we find a sense of kinship and connection and humanity to all those we honor today.”

Hartmann’s brother, Gregory Pyle, who lives in Florida, also attended the memorial service. Hartmann and Pyle had grown up in Colorado, far from their Philadelphia ancestor’s hometown.

George Cornelius traveled from Helena, Mont., to honor his fourth-great-grandparents: Kaziah Cornelius, who died in 1798 at age 33, and her husband Matthew Cornelius, a bricklayer, who died around 1799 at age 32.

“They both died from Yellow Fever,” Cornelius said.

His great-grandparents left four young children, two boys and two girls, who were taken in by members of First Baptist Church. That led both of the boys to grow up to become Baptist ministers.

While neither of the girls married or had children, Cornelius said, the two sons each married, and he is a descendant of one of them.

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

Andrea Miles, of State College, spoke at the ceremony about Col. Samuel Miles, her seventh great-grandfather. He had been a mayor of Philadelphia, a judge, and an American Revolutionary War officer who corresponded regularly with then-Gen. George Washington.

Letters between Samuel Miles and George Washington are preserved at the National Archives in Washington and at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.

In 1791, Miles co-founded the Centre Furnace iron works in State College and started another iron works at Harmony Forge, now known as Milesburg.

“This was not an easy journey for those who were trying to really make sure to show dignity and respect for our family,” Andrea Miles said Saturday. “I know it was a difficult road and a hard road. It was a lack of support and money. They had to put jobs aside, and they dropped everything they were working on … to make this possible for our families to be laid to rest properly.”

» 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, the Rutgers-Camden forensics professor, thanked PMC for providing a new stone marker for the 500 recently reinterred within Section 112 of Mount Moriah, where all of the First Baptist graves were supposed to have been moved in 1860.

“This was really our closing chapter of all the public outreach and public-facing side of the project,” Moran said on Monday. “Now, we will focus on all the information we’ve gathered over the years and make sense of it and publish reports. We want to put out into the public sphere what we’ve learned from all these individuals.”

At the end of the service on Saturday, two musicians wearing Scottish kilts played “Going Home” on bagpipes as the descendants laid red carnations at the marker.

Hartmann wiped tears from her eyes.