Anyone who knows me knows that I have researched my family’s history for the last 35 years. By a striking coincidence, my recent interest in Cathedral Cemetery—located at 1032 N. 48th Street (Lancaster & Girard Ave)—led me to the very church where my 2x great-grandparents were married in 1884. In 1849, Bishop Francis Kenrick purchased 45 acres of farmland to build a Catholic cemetery for the influx of Irish and German Catholic immigrants who had recently made Philadelphia their home. The plan was to sell burial plots and use the proceeds to fund the building of the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul at Logan Square. At the time, a priest from the nearby St. John’s Orphan Asylum used to say Sunday Mass at the asylum for the orphaned boys and local residents. Noticing that the cemetery's gravediggers were unable to attend, he decided to convert a tool shed inside the cemetery into a makeshift chapel so he could say Mass for them. He called this chapel St. George. Over time, the little tool-shed chapel became so crowded that church leadership determined a proper church needed to be built. Consequently, Our Mother of Sorrows (Our Lady of Sorrows) was constructed in 1870 at the head of the cemetery. Bill and I research and photograph different places of interest, and I write their historical backgrounds. When we set out today, our primary interest was simply exploring the old cemetery. However, while driving through the grounds, we couldn't help but notice the two enormous spires atop the twin towers on both sides of the church building. I immediately hopped out of the car to take in the magnificent sight. Although the church closed its doors in 2017 after merging with St. Ignatius, the school remained open until the end of the school year in 2026. When I discovered the name of the church, I remembered that a set of my direct ancestors had been married in a church with a very similar name. As soon as I got home, I went back into my notes, and there it was in black and white: my paternal 2x great-grandparents were married in that exact church in 1884. At the time of Alexander Mervine and Maryann Hughes' marriage, Alexander lived on 61st Street and worked as a “mutton butcher.”Cathedral Cemetery (or Old Cathedral Cemetery) contains some fascinating headstones and holds about 300,000 burials, though many plots lack stones or grave markers of any kind. Notably, 50 members of the 69th Pennsylvania Infantry from the Civil War are interred in its grounds; the 69th famously fought at the Battle of Gettysburg. Alexander himself was a member of the 68th Pennsylvania Infantry. When Maryann died, she was buried in a Catholic cemetery in Camden, New Jersey. When Alexander passed away a few years later, he was buried in Odd Fellows Cemetery, which was located at 22nd and Diamond Street. However, Odd Fellows was closed in 1951 when the Philadelphia Housing Authority acquired the land to build the Raymond Rosen housing project. They moved and reinterred the bodies elsewhere. Through my earlier research on Alexander Mervine, I discovered that his remains were relocated to Lawnview Cemetery in Rockledge and interred in a mass grave with others from Odd Fellows.
