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Girard College Cemetery

Also known as Girard College Burial Ground

Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, USA

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  • Get directions South College Avenue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19121, United States
    Coordinates: 39.97315, -75.17633
  • This cemetery is marked as being historical or removed.
  • No longer accepting burials
  • Cemetery ID:
  • Additional information

    This now-defunct institutional cemetery should not be confused with the nearby Girard College Founder's Hall Museum, which contains the sarcophagus of Stephen Girard and remains to this day.

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Girard College was opened in 1848 under the auspices of a bequest from wealthy philanthropist Stephen Girard, who died in 1831. His will directed the trustees of his estate to establish a school for orphaned boys to offer them an education that would otherwise be unattainable to them.

Soon after the college was founded, around 1849, it became practice to bury the boys who died at the college, whose friends and families did not claim the remains, or who did not have any family to claim them, on the campus grounds. A small burying ground was thus established inside the walls of the College on top of a small hill near the extreme southwest corner of the college campus.

By the 1880s, an increase in enrollment and the need of greater facilities necessitated the removal of the burial lot from the college grounds. In 1881, the Board of Trustees purchased a large lot in the Central Laurel Hill Cemetery, and in 1882 the remains of 21 boys who died at the college were reinterred there in the Girard College Lot in Section U, Lots 8 to 15, 45 to 56, and 99 to 110.

No trace of the former burial ground remains on the college campus today.

The College Lot in Laurel Hill remains in active use to this day.

Girard College was opened in 1848 under the auspices of a bequest from wealthy philanthropist Stephen Girard, who died in 1831. His will directed the trustees of his estate to establish a school for orphaned boys to offer them an education that would otherwise be unattainable to them.

Soon after the college was founded, around 1849, it became practice to bury the boys who died at the college, whose friends and families did not claim the remains, or who did not have any family to claim them, on the campus grounds. A small burying ground was thus established inside the walls of the College on top of a small hill near the extreme southwest corner of the college campus.

By the 1880s, an increase in enrollment and the need of greater facilities necessitated the removal of the burial lot from the college grounds. In 1881, the Board of Trustees purchased a large lot in the Central Laurel Hill Cemetery, and in 1882 the remains of 21 boys who died at the college were reinterred there in the Girard College Lot in Section U, Lots 8 to 15, 45 to 56, and 99 to 110.

No trace of the former burial ground remains on the college campus today.

The College Lot in Laurel Hill remains in active use to this day.

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  • Added: 24 Mar 2025
  • Find a Grave Cemetery ID: 2825339