Mary died on December 7, 1912, still in love with her first husband, Thomas. Though she had remarried by this time, she relayed specific instructions while lying on her deathbed: her body was to be buried alongside her second husband, but her heart was to be removed and interred next to Thomas at another cemetery.
Not much else is known about Mary C. Peterson.
Today, the granite stone above her heart has cracked from severe snow and rain, and her first name, carved in a gothic script, is the only word that remains. A lone fuchsia rose lies right by the crevice between the stone and the ground.
Unfinished stories abound in Laurel Hill Cemetery, a Victorian-style graveyard in Fairmount Park, home to nearly 100,000 bodies overlooking the Schuylkill River. The place stretches across 78 acres in the East Falls section of Philadelphia and is nearing maximum capacity, performing up to 15 burials per year - a job most cemeteries do in a week. A lot can cost between $2,500 and $5,000, and people are encouraged to be inventive with their markers.
Though Laurel Hill is a 45-minute bus ride away from campus, most students have not heard of this historic cemetery. But this necropolis is actually studded with Penn family dynasties, boasting tombstones and statues that memorialize founding leaders of the University and of Philadelphia. A wide lot, modest and simple in appearance, holds the Wharton family, celebrated for lucrative mining and steel companies, philanthropic activity and, of course, the founding of the Wharton School of Business. Nearby, it's a who's who of Quaker culture, with stones bearing names like Rittenhouse and Lippincott.
Relatives are grouped together, and where the ground swells and dips, a family tree forms as the names begin to change. Deeper into Laurel Hill, along the Schuylkill in the section known as Millionaire's Row, mausoleums and obelisks stand in eternal tribute to Philadelphia celebrities, like George Blabon, founder of the largest oil manufacturer in the world, and Henry Disston, of Disston saw blades.
In a few months, the family of Martin Meyerson will hold an unveiling at Laurel Hill for the former Penn president, who died last summer. The cemetery, with its rich architecture and proximity to the University, "seemed like the most logical choice" for a burial spot, says Margy, his wife. She's still waiting for his tombstone, which will read, "Gladly Learn, Gladly Teach," a reference to his book on education.
On the grounds, memories take form in words:
Elizabeth Adeline was "Called from Earth to Heaven."
Emmeline H. Rudd found "Peace at Last."
Ann Eliza Cole is "Requiescat in Pace."
An anonymous person is "Dancing in the Dark."
Susan C. Ewing "Died."
"Mother" Ellen.
But it's not all about language.
General Hugh Mercer is memorialized with a broken sword atop a white marble monument. The sword, dignified with a tassel on its handle, is crossing a scabbard. Set against a burst of light, the military image alludes to his death in the Battle of Princeton.
A few feet away, a cluster of terra-cotta rocks form the basis of the monument for Robert Ranston Stewart, who was killed by his manservant. There's a smashed urn and a broken column, which symbolize violent and early death. But there's also an ivy branch that weaves in and out: memories of loved ones, just like ivy, are always creeping in, growing and twisting.
Edging downward toward the water, William Emilin Crisson, an only child, is celebrated with a statue near a set of stairs. William loved to paint, so his parents erected a bronze little boy with a palette and brush in hand. Underneath his feet, William is described as a "Lover of Art." Rain has caused the bronze to oxidize, coloring the granite base underneath with swirls of shamrock and yellow green that seem intentional.
Some memorials are so low, it's almost easy to miss them.
The block of peppered marble on the floor is for Thomas Osborn, 40 when he died in 2005, and is covered with a few handwritten letters, the purple marker smudged from rain. A small Christmas tree, made out of wire and decorated with dried flowers, has been sitting there since December.
Joanna Lippincott Sorlien has a flat stone, the canvas for a black etching of a lighthouse with the words "peace and love" at the bottom. Someone periodically comes to switch the floral cup and saucer that sit on the edge, but no one knows why it's there.
The missing details remain underground with the sycamore roots.
These stories are a patchwork of tributes to men, women and children from disparate backgrounds who are now tied together in this labyrinth of tombstones, mausoleums and obelisks.
Laurel Hill contains over 11,000 family lots and 33,000 monuments. Among them are 40 Civil War generals, 20 Congressmen, six Titanic victims, all the mayors of Philadelphia until 1920, Penn's first provost, artists, architects, novelists, financiers, chemists and a circus owner.
But the more time you spend there, the less it is a place about death.
David Horowitz is an American history professor at the Community College of Philadelphia and a member of The Friends of Laurel Hill Cemetery, a non-profit organization that supports Laurel Hill. He spends between 40 and 50 hours per year giving tours, which range from birthday parties to Sunday excursions to the mandatory visits for his classes. He views Laurel Hill as a smorgasbord of Philadelphia's history, a colorful patch of its "urban fabric."
"Many of us are very casual [when] talking about death, not because it's morbid, but because it's the only exit door," says Horowitz. Among his students, he's known as "the guy who makes you go to the cemetery."
Like John Francis Marion, who founded the group in 1978, Horowitz says that once he can't give the tours, he'll be on them. At 66, he expects to be around for another 20 years, but he still secured a $2,500 lot 20 years ago. It's right next to Marion's.
"This is what they used to do," Horowitz explains, matter-of-factly.
In 2002, Horowitz added a granite obelisk, which visitors have already begun to adorn with fresh roses and a pink potted plant. He's proud of his epitaph - "Friend of Laurel Hill" - and is trying to convince his 92-year-old mother to be buried next to him. If that doesn't work out, he'll still have Jesse, his 17-year-old cat who died last year and is buried under her own obelisk next to Horowitz's.
It's a similar story for Mary Quinn, another FLHC member. A Philadelphia native, Quinn, now 55, grew "fascinated" with the cemetery every time she drove by as a teenager. She later found a way to combine her passions for costumes, history and architecture as a volunteer sewing elaborate, Victorian-style dresses to wear when giving public tours of the cemetery.
Quinn's face lights up when she talks about Laurel Hill - and the gown she is sewing for a September tour. Tears swell only when she speaks of the children who died from illnesses that have since been rendered harmless by modern medicine. Back then, she says, "people knew how to value life."
Like Horowitz, Quinn works an outside job, but they would quit if money weren't an issue. Is all this depressing for them? They both laugh, "definitely not."
Laurel Hill was started in 1836 by John Jay Smith, a librarian and editor interested in real estate. Smith's five-year-old daughter had been buried in the graveyard of Arch Street Meeting House. When the gravediggers lowered the coffin into the ground, water saturated the grave. A year after her death, Smith went to place flowers on the burial spot, but could not find it underneath heaps of mud. He wanted to spare others of these horrible memories and acquired the cemetery shortly thereafter.
Today, Friends of Laurel Hill hosts over 30 tours per month, which doesn't include the private or impromptu ones. They draw anywhere from two to 50 participants: a 10-year-old girl researching the Civil War, a middle-aged man who sings at funerals, an elderly couple curious about the Victorian era. Guides navigate this maze without maps, and they can rattle off names, dates and epitaphs on command.
There's the one about Elisha Kent Kane, who proposed marriage to Maggie Fox by showing her a plot of land where the two could lay together one see page 12
day.
Despite his gesture, the two never married. On February 16, 1857, Elisha, 37, died suddenly on an Arctic expedition. Maggie, who fell into a life of poverty as an alcoholic, later published their love letters. In his final message to his sweetheart, Elisha promised, "I will never cease to watch over you, to love and guard you." But Maggie, unable to afford a spot on Laurel Hill, wound up in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, N.Y. Elisha rests in the spot he originally chose on Laurel Hill.
Around the bend, another tomb bears the inscription, "Always Kiss Me Goodnight." It's waiting for Margaret Sadley, who is still alive. The modest block of granite stands inches away from her husband, Robert, who died in 2006. His epitaph reads, "Beyond the Blue Horizon," a nod to the boxing arena where he worked.
In 1998, Laurel Hill officially became a destination spot for the dead and the living, when the National Park Service named it a National Historic Landmark. Of the 2,444 landmarks in this country, including the White House, Reading Terminal and Central Park, Laurel Hill was the first cemetery in the nation to attach its own cachet for being, well, just a cemetery.
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The cheaper lots in Laurel Hill face Ridge Avenue, a two-way street whose other side is occupied by a strip of red and beige houses, built close enough to each other to share walls.
Lillian Conboy has been living in one of these houses for 55 years. A widow whose husband worked as a funeral director, she raised seven children and one niece. The kids used to go sledding along the cemetery's hilltops and, when they got older, throw parties there. Sometimes, when they visit Conboy, they all reminisce about a pink bench located somewhere among the graves. "Maybe it was a meeting place," Conboy, 84, laughs.
Conboy's refrigerator door is hidden by a montage of photos: a baby's chubby cheeks, a grandson who died two years ago in Iraq, her daughters, all in their sixties, camping in the woods, a child's drawing of a horse and a birthday card that twists a Dr. Seuss poem to poke fun at the elderly. Potted plants sit in descending order alongside the kitchen sink, and a small placard says, in dotted script, "Grandchildren are God's reward for not killing your kids."
Conboy doesn't venture across the street very often - "that place is old hat" - and she already has a grave waiting for her next to her husband's in Westminster Cemetery.
But Conboy isn't tired yet, and Laurel Hill seems to make her retirement better. "The dead make damn good neighbors," she says in between cigarette puffs. "I've had enough noise all my life"
