Reviving Philadelphia’s Forgotten Mount Vernon Cemetery with Brandon Zimmerman

Brandon Zimmerman shares the fascinating history and challenges of Mount Vernon Cemetery, a hidden gem in North Philadelphia. Established in 1856, this 28-acre cemetery became a predominantly German burial ground, home to over 33,000 graves. Despite its historical significance, Mount Vernon has faced decades of neglect, transforming into an overgrown, derelict site. Today, the cemetery is an ecological marvel, with wildlife like deer, foxes, and native birds thriving amidst invasive overgrowth. 

Brandon highlights Mount Vernon’s potential as a green space for the surrounding Strawberry Mansion neighborhood, an area in need of accessible natural spaces. Brandon hopes to reconnect the cemetery with the local community, fostering inclusivity and turning it into a space that serves as both a historical landmark and a neighborhood asset. Listeners will gain insight into Mount Vernon’s rich past, its present challenges, and the efforts to restore its dignity while embracing its wild, natural beauty. 

The Mount Vernon Cemetery interment cards, a vital historic resource, were thought lost until a second, incomplete set was discovered in 2023. These 30,000+ cards, now being transcribed and digitized, are the only reliable means of locating burials at MVC and hold immense genealogical and historical value. 

The Friends of Mount Vernon Cemetery are seeking $5,000 to complete this critical initiative, which will preserve this information for descendants, property restoration, and community engagement.  100% of your donation goes directly to the cards being transcribed.  I hope you will consider donating after you listen to this episode.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-mount-vernon-cemeterys-interment-card-initiative

https://www.instagram.com/mtvernonce

I have a collection of death-positive shirts featuring inspiring quotes and original designs, all created by me. These shirts are perfect for anyone who values open, honest conversations about death, dying, and grief.

 https://www.endoflifeclarity.com/store 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Brandon: Ideally, in a perfect world, I would love to see some sort of hybridized model for Mount Vernon that would be accommodating to everyone and for the community that we're trying to build, that we're trying to reconnect with, but also trying to build. 

[00:00:16] Jill: Welcome back to Seeing Death Clearly. I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and end of life coach.

[00:00:22] Here on my show, I have conversations with guests that explore the topics of death, dying, grief, and life itself. My goal is to create a space where you can challenge the ideas you might already have about these subjects. I want to encourage you to open your mind and consider perspectives beyond what you may currently believe to be true.

[00:00:41] In this episode, Brandon Zimmerman tells us the history and challenges of Mount Vernon Cemetery. A hidden gem in North Philadelphia established in 1856. This 28 acre cemetery holds over 33, 000 graves, but has faced decades of neglect transforming into an overgrown wildlife filled sanctuary. Brandon tells us of the story of the cemetery's decline.

[00:01:08] which led to it now being an ecological haven for deer, foxes, and native birds. Brendan shares his vision of reconnecting the cemetery with the surrounding neighborhood, turning it into a green space that honors its historical significance. Join us as we uncover Mount Vernon's rich history, its untamed beauty, and the inspiring efforts to transform it into a vibrant and inclusive space for everyone to enjoy.

[00:01:33] One last thing, the Mount Vernon Cemetery's interment cards, which are vital historic resources documenting the burials, were thought lost until a second incomplete set was discovered. These cards are now being transcribed and digitized. They're the only reliable means of locating burials at the cemetery.

[00:01:54] And the Friends of Mount Vernon Cemetery are seeking $5,000 to complete this initiative. There's a link in the show notes to donate towards this cost. 100 percent of your donation goes directly to the cards being transcribed. I hope you will consider donating after you listen to this episode. Welcome to the podcast, Brandon.

[00:02:13] Thank you so much for coming on. I know last week we talked for like two hours because it was just such a great conversation. We talked about all kinds of stuff, but I really wanted to bring you on so that we can talk about the work that you're doing with, it's Mount Vernon Cemetery, correct? Yes. I'm super excited about this.

[00:02:31] I saw a video about this cemetery that's been kind of hidden in Philadelphia. I was like, I have to see if I could get somebody to come on and talk to me. Thank you so much. 

[00:02:41] Brandon: Oh, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. It's funny that you mentioned being kind of hidden because we are, for all intents and purposes, hidden in plain sight there in Philadelphia.

[00:02:50] How many local people are unaware that we're right there, right in North Philadelphia? 

[00:02:54] Jill: Yeah, and I have been to the cemetery that's right across the street many times. I've probably driven right past it and just never noticed that it was there. How long has the cemetery been around? When did it open?

[00:03:07] Brandon: Mount Vernon has been around for quite some time. It was formally established in 1856. The first burial occurred there in 1857. And, for a reason, we're still Not entirely sure about, which is to say we haven't found anything in the records that kind of pinpoint precisely why it has become a predominantly German cemetery.

[00:03:30] A large majority of those buried there are of German descent. Some famous names in the 19th century German community are buried there. It was a functioning cemetery, uh, for over a hundred years. Um, 33, 000 people are buried there. It's about 28 acres. Uh, so not, not huge. You mentioned across the street there, that's Laurel Hill Cemetery.

[00:03:50] They're about 78, 79 acres. So about three times the size. We always tell people who visit, it's a tight 28, possibly 26. But yeah, been around since 1856. The cemetery began to fall upon hard times at the turn of the 20th century, kind of the victim of their own success because they had this dedicated core of people interested in being buried there, predominantly German.

[00:04:11] Space filled up quite fast. And then there was no real available burial space. By the thirties, forties, things were looking pretty grim. All of the old trustees had died off. An individual on the board consolidated all the power and it became under the control of one gentleman, not one business, not one corporate entity.

[00:04:31] It became the official property of one individual who passed it down to his son. And the sun really just kind of let it go, let it go back to nature in the worst sense of the term. And it just became a derelict cemetery. A lot of people assume that because of the poor physical condition of the cemetery, it's been abandoned.

[00:04:50] It was never abandoned. It was always under someone's control, but it certainly looks abandoned. The gatehouse is nothing but a hollowed out shell. It had no roof. The cemetery itself is completely overgrown. I'd invite anybody to go online and look at photos. Photos speak more than a thousand words. It's really indescribable in terms of the extent of the overgrowth.

[00:05:11] Tombstones completely enveloped in vines. That has been the case now for an indeterminable amount of time, at least the last 10, 15 years. What's really sad, or I should say the saddest of it all, is that this gentleman who owned the cemetery stopped selling plots in the 1960s. And so while people are still buried at Mount Vernon, we have a gentleman buried there just in February.

[00:05:34] He stopped selling plots, which means no new families could purchase plots. And so you see this generational jump here, right? People who had family buried there who they knew in their lifetimes, those people are few and far between who are still alive, and they're in their 70s, they're in their 80s, there's this two generation gap between primary stakeholders or people who have family buried there, who even remember coming back to the cemetery before it was this overgrown, blighted mess.

[00:06:03] It's not just the state, the physical. Cemetery is in ruins. It is kind of this institutional memory here where we just got this this 30 to 40 year gap Of nothing really so yeah That's a nice sell to say it's a beautiful place but I should say even though it's gone back to nature again and sort of the The worst sense of it as it pertains to a cemetery I should say that as a green space, especially a green space in Philadelphia, we're right on the cusp of Strawberry Mansion in a neighborhood that I, that I recently learned is called Swamp Poodle, which in and of itself, I have, I've yet to research where the hell that came from, but you know, it's Philly, so.

[00:06:41] the names or whatever, but because of where it's located, this is right on the cusp of a neighborhood that I don't want to speak for the neighborhood and say is desperate for green space, but they certainly could use a viable green space. I mean, in this day and age, who doesn't need green space, right?

[00:06:56] It's really incredible how this cemetery has gone back to nature. We have deer on the property, native birds called it home, a birdwatching group saw a great horned owl in the tree, uh, red tailed hawks circled the property, um, family of foxes are on the property, which in and of itself is an epic story, it's, it's, it's incredible, you know, how here sort of dropped in the middle of, of, of North Philadelphia, this.

[00:07:23] Sort of ecological marble has kind of has risen and again, yes, neglected its invasive species, porcelain berry vines and so forth. But the old Jeff Goldblum nature finds a way kind of thing is true here because it's found a way to be sort of self sustaining in that way of having a green space that has a viable ecosystem.

[00:07:44] That is something we're very interested in in preserving even when the cemetery becomes Under better care and it's future and so forth. The friends would love to see this place maintain that sort of wild component of it, because this aspect of it, the nature component of it, again, it's been allowed to thrive since the sixties, but in many ways, at least in terms of modern memory and people who are still around, this place has functioned more as green space than as a cemetery in the last 50 years.

[00:08:13] Let's finding that balance between those two, which is an interesting. 

[00:08:16] Jill: Were people able to go in it? Because I think how my family, we go to the cemetery and we visit, even though I don't believe anything that is a part of who my people were is still there. It's maybe a weird physical body that's embalmed in the ground, but it's very important to my mom.

[00:08:35] It was very important to my grandmother that we went and we would clean up the graves and we would bring flowers and we would do things for the holidays. So, Could people have done that over the last 50 years when it was closed down? Or what happened to the families of people that wanted to visit their loved ones in the cemetery?

[00:08:53] Were they able to get in there? 

[00:08:54] Brandon: So I've heard two answers to that question. One of which we can confirm because she's still kicking around and she's in her eighties. So the answer is both yes and no. There are a number of folks we have met over the last three years who had no problems getting in. They say they just picked up a phone, called the caretaker, caretaker let them in, boom, done, off you go.

[00:09:15] Other people have said for years and years and years, they would call, they would never get an answer, no one would call them back, they'd show up at the gate, the gates were always chained. There are those people who, for one reason or another, could never get in. The cemetery, even before it was was this sort of overgrown, blighted property, the gates were always closed.

[00:09:36] When I say to people it's been closed to the public or shut off to the public, that's not to say that it wasn't cared for, it was just not publicly accessible in the way that most American cemeteries are, right? Most cemeteries you show up and they've got the sign right at the gate, right? Open from dawn till dusk, you know?

[00:09:52] You show up and the doors are magically opened and at night they shut them when it gets dark. That does not seem to have been the case here for an indeterminate amount of time. Within that time frame, that's when the overgrowth started to happen, that's when it wasn't being taken care of, and then access began to be restricted even more and more.

[00:10:10] Because the gentleman who owned it didn't want people going in, and he didn't want them to get hurt, but he also didn't want them to see what was actually happening to their cemetery. Because a lot of these plots in here have endowments. Or, even if they don't have endowments, there's a real Misconception in this country and maybe globally, but I doubt it, I would assume it's an American thing that misconception of what it means to actually own a plot in a cemetery.

[00:10:36] I admit that's something that I had to actually look up and educate myself when I started to get involved with this, but, but many of the people that I've encountered over the last three years whose family own a plot in there, assumed that ownership of a plot meant that they were landowners, that they own the physical land in which their family was buried within, or especially in the case of Mount Vernon, the cemetery had to be forcibly taken away from the owner through something called Act 135, city ordinance governing blighted and abandoned properties.

[00:11:03] We had a bunch of people who would approach us to say like, well, I should have a say in this, or I should have a say in charting this because my family owns land and it's like, Not really. You own the land in the sense of you own the right of burial upon that land, but it's not like you're a land owner.

[00:11:24] It's not like a cemetery, you know, there's 33, 000 people are buried at Mount Vernon. It's not like there are 33, 000 landowners, right? If that was the case, then what would an actual cemetery corporation, what would its function be, right? So it's not like you're gonna have 33, 000 people buying land and setting up individual studio apartments or something, right?

[00:11:43] Navigating that with some folks who are in their 60s and 70s and haven't really planned out their future, you know, something we talked about the other day. So, because they haven't gone through the process of buying their final resting place, or even talking about it or researching it, there is this automatic assumption that because my family owns a plot in this cemetery, that means they own the land.

[00:12:06] Then the shocker comes when the laws change. Technically, you only own it for 70 years plus death or whatever those regulations are. I think they might even change state to state. So, so it's, it's been, it's been a fascinating challenge, but It's been a varied experience for the community associated with this.

[00:12:24] And it also does seem, I should say, the, the woman who's been getting in there. She's, she's a fantastic old lady. She reminds me so much of my grandmother. Feisty in her old age, has a walker. She's in her eighties and she has visited her family. She's the last person alive in her entire genetic line. Sons have all passed away.

[00:12:44] Nephews have passed away. Parents, you know, she always says, I don't know why I'm the last one, but she's outlived them all. And they're all buried at Mount Vernon and she has come every year for the last 40, 50 years plus, every year to put flowers on her family's grave at Easter and Christmas. I expect an email from her any minute to say, I want to get in there Christmas.

[00:13:04] And every time I see her and she puts flowers, like my grandmother, she sticks a 20 in our pockets, use this to get some pizza or use this for gas. And then she jokingly says, I'll see you one way or the other. the next holiday. If it's Easter, one way or the other, I'll see you at Christmas. If it's Christmas, one way or the other, I'll see you at Easter.

[00:13:21] And she jokingly says either above or below ground because she intends to be buried there with her family. Every time I talk to her, she says, I have never had a problem. I call up and off I go. I have a feeling that she's the exception to the norm. 

[00:13:33] Jill: That is so fascinating. Actually, I didn't know that about I guess I didn't really think about it too much, you know, like my family owns their burial plots, right?

[00:13:42] Is that what it's called? Burial plot? I never really thought about what does that actually mean? We don't have any space in the cemetery near my grandparents, but the rest of us are kind of like, I don't really want to be put in the ground anyway. Like, just do something else with me. And again, if I get buried.

[00:13:58] Ideally, I want it to either be Green Burial, or hopefully by then, New Jersey will have human composting, because I think that's fascinating, but, you know, we'll see. Hopefully I'm not gonna die any time soon, but you never know. 

[00:14:09] Brandon: You never know. I will also say that some of that, exactly to your point of, with Green Burial becoming, The future, really, the future of the funerary business and cremation coming in.

[00:14:19] Even the concept of a burial plot is, I'm not gonna say a foreign concept or an outdated one, but people, middle aged, younger, so forth, that concept of pre purchasing a plot in a cemetery is not on the radar. Even my own parents who were in their late sixties, we've never discussed it. Do you want to be buried?

[00:14:37] You're going to be cremated and want to go on my bookshelf. You know, what, what's, what's the situation here? So it's also not just a form of misinformation on what goes on in a cemetery, but it is also this movement out of your classic eight by eight to your, you know, whatever cell vault, coffin, headstone, those classic components of a cemetery.

[00:14:56] Jill: So what are the plans for Mount Vernon? You're going to clean it all up, try to get rid of the, and it's a shame because I actually love porcelain berries, I think they're beautiful, but they are invasive and we do need to keep that under control. Once the friends kind of clean it up, what's the long term goals for the cemetery?

[00:15:13] What do you envision? 

[00:15:14] Brandon: So, it's, it's a great question and, and one that is still up in the air. Ideally, in a, in a perfect world, I would love to see some sort of hybridized model for Mount Vernon that would be accommodating to everyone. And for the last three years, in terms of the community that we're trying to build, that we're trying to reconnect with, but also trying to build.

[00:15:36] The collaborators, we've held a number of different events at the cemetery. The people that we're trying to get interested in the cemetery and make this place their own. I'm trying to spread as wide and diverse a net as I can because Traditionally, traditionally first tier, which Mount Vernon was, a first tier cemetery.

[00:15:54] So you've got your laurel hills, your woodlands, Mount Vernon falls into that category, but Philadelphia, and again, it's, you know, across the country. Traditionally, first tier cemeteries like that were whites only. and held on to that restriction until the late 60s, early 70s. So to our knowledge, because the cemetery effectively shut down as a company in the form of selling plots, because it shut down in the late 60s, before civil rights movements is completed and before legislation changes, and we have integration in places like burial grounds and so forth, so That did not happen in Mount Vernon.

[00:16:29] So to our knowledge, we have no people of color there. Fast forward 50, 60 years, and now here we are today, where we're right on the cusp of Strawberry Mansion neighborhood, which is predominantly people of color, predominantly low income black and brown families, who walk by it every day. who have to stare out their windows at this awful blighted cemetery that they have no connection to and have been restricted from entering one way or the other, either because it, you know, was shut down, but also because they were forbidden from being buried in there.

[00:16:59] Here's this sort of social justice reclamation component that I would love to see fulfilled. I would love to see the neighborhood view this space as actually part of their neighborhood. Not this blighted eyesore that the whites kept them out of, but Actually reclaim it as a viable green space. We have a school right across the street from the cemetery.

[00:17:19] I would love to see afterschool programs in there. I can't, I can't advocate growing, you know, fruit and vegetable in the soil. Cause God knows what's in there, but we could figure out a way. To grow fruit and veg in containers or what have you. Classic sort of cemetery setups. A lot of times they keep bees on cemeteries like that.

[00:17:39] Even just walking trails would be incredible for that neighborhood. A safe space, a beautiful safe space to walk around in. So in terms of the community component, I would love to see that happen. I would love to see the cemetery be made safe again. And we would have to get rid of the current invasive vegetation.

[00:17:58] The porcelain berry vines in small quantities, it's kind of like English ivy, right? English ivy in small quantities, you know, it's beautiful. It's amazing. You can go to Home Depot and you pay a lot of money for English ivy. But when unchecked, English ivy will swallow. Everything and anything, and what they don't tell you a lot of times is that there are many people, myself included, who are highly allergic to English ivy.

[00:18:21] So it's also sort of a known irritant, maybe not the same level as poison ivy, but it's been that category with some people. With the English ivy, folks who were buried there who owned plots were encouraged to go out and purchase English ivy, and they would plant it along the stone coping that would You know demarcate their their plot and it gave it much more natural look right rather than these these stone squares all over the place you had these beautiful ivy covered well you know that was 60 100 years ago and now that english ivy has grown and become a complete carpet in some places or it's crawled up a tree.

[00:18:58] And it has completely enveloped the tree. We have seen some trees where the English ivy's root system is as thick around as your wrist. You can actually come up and cut a square out of it and remove it. It's like a thick candy coating shell around the, you know, the peanut that is the tree inside. So it's, it's, It's completely taken over all of our trees and it's slowly strangling them.

[00:19:21] So, that type of thing, we gotta take a couple steps back here to get nature a little bit more under control and then come in and be a little bit more strategic in terms of replanting things in there. I would definitely say that I have zero interest in taking it back to a classic turf cemetery model.

[00:19:40] The classic almost golf course with tombstones on it look, right? Which is basically American cemeteries, right? Very little interest in that, not only because of how expensive that would be, but also as a business model, been there, done that, didn't work, right? And also, we're right across the street from Laurel Hill, you know, who has that appearance, who has that look, will never compete with them.

[00:20:01] And we are flanked on the backside by a beautiful cemetery called Mount Peace, which also has that model. And we would never be a viable competitor there. Not that it's about competition, right? But, you know, in order for the cemetery to survive, it needs to bring in money. That's just the reality of it because it's become this wild sort of untamed frontier here.

[00:20:20] This wilderness, I would love for us to maintain some aspects of that have trails instead of roads have green burials, focus on green burials instead of your classic burial model. And that needs to happen out of necessity more than a monetary standpoint, because unfortunately, the cemeteries. Records have been damaged due to environmental issues.

[00:20:44] The, the most important cemetery records were stolen. So, we don't even know where everyone is buried in there. And legally, you can't just start digging holes and digging up bodies, right? Which, in the 19th century, you could. Re burials was, was big business. But today, you'll lose a license, go to jail, etc.

[00:21:01] for it. So, the green burial model, you mentioned human composting. I look forward to the day when that's legal in Pennsylvania as well. That would be a huge boom for Mount Vernon. The green burial model would be amazing because there are so many turf cemeteries these days that are trying to pull back from the traditional models and become more of a green burial space.

[00:21:23] I think New York times wrote an article on how America's cemeteries are rewilding. That's going to take a lot of the old turf cemeteries. That's going to take a lot of care and feeding to come. Seed all of this land, develop trails, and sort of re design the way in which they're going to go about their model.

[00:21:42] You know, we, in this way, kind of luck out because we don't have to go against any pre existing Burial models, because we don't have one, because haven't been a functioning cemetery since the sixties, but then also in terms of the wilding component, like we got it, you know, everybody else is rewilding and we're, we're de wilding to get back to that equilibrium.

[00:22:02] I would very much love to see that type of thing happen. You know, Malvern, it sits on top of a, of a beautiful hill. We have sloping hills that kind of go down into a valley. The day where we could stand there and see these open meadows of wildflowers and the deer running through that. Rather than English IV, I was just in there yesterday and there's a beautiful fox, just this huge red fox, and I rounded a corner and he was completely passed out, dead asleep on top of a tombstone, but this tombstone had like three feet of vines.

[00:22:33] Because of its height, I knew it was a tombstone, but here he is perched on top. And in the summertime, they have to wade through oceans of this ivy that was probably up to their necks or even beyond them. So here he is trying to come up for air and sleeping on top of the vines. I would much rather see him in a little burrow in a beautiful meadow rather than perched on top of a toppling tombstone that was the only safe space.

[00:22:58] So yeah. 

[00:22:58] Jill: That must have been beautiful to see him sleeping like that. I could imagine that. It's something you don't see that every day in Philly. Oh, definitely not. It must be pretty 

[00:23:05] Brandon: cool. It's been amazing with the wildlife because I live in Maniunk and we have, because of our proximity to the Wissahickon Park, we get a lot of animals in our backyard.

[00:23:17] We feed a colony of feral cats in our neighborhood. I put out bowls of food and water at night and our backyard camera picks up possums, foxes, and all that. They're used to living and, and Operating in the city, avoiding cars, avoiding people. You go into Mount Vernon, which again is 28 acres. It's small as far as cemeteries go.

[00:23:38] It is a sizable property and you have this wildlife that is still shy of humans, but not as shy. As you would expect urban wildlife to be and so yes a fox will run away from us But an hour or two later you'll catch him in the distance coming back and peeking or he'll run a safe distance away Look over his shoulder at us and then just sit down and watch us, you know, so at first you worry With that behavior go.

[00:24:04] Oh my God, they're rabid. They're not. They're just not used to people. We're upstanding deer to them, right? They're just we're another animal in there that walks on only two legs So i've seen many of them who are asleep who I step on a twig and make a noise and they quickly perk up Look see that it's me and just go right back to sleep.

[00:24:22] They're not phased by us So it's amazing because again, you stop and you think like, Ooh, I'm in the woods. And it's like, No, I'm in North Philadelphia right now. Like nuts. 

[00:24:31] Jill: Yeah, that's so awesome. And when you're clearing out the things you have to do it all by hand. You're not going in there with bulldozers.

[00:24:39] So there's people that actually are going in there with their gloves on ripping this stuff out. How does that even? work. How many people do you have doing that? 

[00:24:46] Brandon: Yeah, it's hell on gloves. I have to say, if there's any glove manufacturers who listen to your podcast, if you need a sponsor, please call me. I go through gloves like toilet paper.

[00:24:57] It's insane. Any of these gloves that say they're thorn proof. No, they're not. We've tried them all. No, they're not. They go right through our gloves. Because of the terrain being so treacherous and overgrown. You can't see the ground. It's an ocean of vines. I mean, it really is. You wade through it. In some instances, it's up to your waist.

[00:25:19] And this time of year, now that we're starting to get cold weather at night, I can go in and just rip this stuff. With my bare hands when it gets cold enough and this stuff actually dies because we actually have a winter like we did last year. This stuff dies and you can rip it like tissue paper. The year before that, however, we never had an actual winter here.

[00:25:40] So this stuff never actually died. So here we are in February and you crack a vine open and you'd still see inside. It was still green inside. So it's like, yes, it's hibernating. but it's not dead. The surface level, this stuff isn't dead yet. It was a huge pain to clear that stuff because we're used to just going in there and ripping and being able to pick this stuff up.

[00:26:00] You were cutting live stuff in there, which is just a nightmare. Yeah, that's a huge job 

[00:26:05] Jill: to get through 

[00:26:07] Brandon: that. Yeah. And it's exhausting. This time of year, when we start back up to do this kind of stuff this time of year, you can go, we usually go ten to one, and one o'clock will roll around, and you're just like, yeah, I still probably have another hour in me.

[00:26:19] We could keep going. But when this stuff doesn't die, you're in there maybe an hour, hour and a half tops, and you're like, I gotta call it. You know, this is so friggin exhausting. Because again, it's not just the actual work, but it's just physically walking around. Because this stuff You know, I usually, when I give a tour, I make an Evil Dead reference, and it's true.

[00:26:37] These vines come out of nowhere. No one's getting assaulted, per se. They are holding you down. You know, they wrap around your ankles, your thighs, and you're stuck in place. When stuff actually dies in there and you can properly wade through it and navigate, it's a lot easier. The terrain is so treacherous and it's so unknown that you have to clear it by hand.

[00:26:56] A perfect example is in the very back of the cemetery. There's a very large field. If you didn't know any better, you'd look and just be like, it's a very large field. I could probably get on a riding mower and just blow through this no problem. The very first group that was in their clearing before I took over in March of 2022 did just that.

[00:27:14] They got on a big skag mower and just mowed through the entire section. But when we came back and started researching it and looking at the topography and actually started to clear down to the actual ground, to the dirt and below, we discovered that it's actually a 18th century burial ground that was moved to Mount Vernon in the 19th century.

[00:27:35] It was moved there in 1867. The tombstones there were a hundred years old. Before they even arrived at Mount Vernon, right? This stuff is super fragile and historically significant because of where it used to be in Center City, Philadelphia, when they moved it up. It was all part of the Second Presbyterian Burial Ground, which included Revolutionary War soldiers, some people who helped finance the American Revolution, just incredibly historic stuff and incredibly fragile stuff.

[00:28:02] The fact that they took a two ton mower and mowed this seemingly open field beneath the vines Where all of these incredibly fragile, incredibly historic tombstones that need to be cleared by hand. And again, you go in and look into an area and there's a mound. That's the fun part of all of this. You go and there's this big mound and it's a lottery.

[00:28:22] You could go over there and you could peel it back and there could be a tombstone. I say they're cocooned because the vines truly just cocoon this stuff in. We have found perfectly preserved butterfly wings inside these cocoons. That's how watertight these vines can get. Because they've been allowed to go unchecked for at least a decade.

[00:28:41] But, in addition to that, you know, there's small trees or, you know, whatever. So, you come to a mound and you peek inside and you see, is it just a weed tree or is it an actual tombstone? So, you can't really take anything for granted. You look at the ground and you think, oh, that's stable. We went to walk through this plot a couple years ago, and from where we were standing on the road, the ground, the topography looked completely different.

[00:29:04] Even just covered in mounds of leaves because nobody's been in there to pick up the leaves for a decade. I go walking through and I step up on what appears to be a rock or just a change in topography and my foot crashes through glass and I fall up to my hip. It is actually an underground vault. So think of a mausoleum, just tilt it upside down and bury it rather than walking in and everyone's In the walls, you would take this piece of glass off, and you'd look down, and everyone's down, and in the walls.

[00:29:35] Why they went that model, rather than a mausoleum, I'll never know. I'm assuming it had something to do with money, but who knows. I can never see why that's a good idea. But anyway, there I am, thigh deep, dangling over a 20 foot drop into darkness and dead leaves and God knows what down there. I had no idea.

[00:29:53] I couldn't see it because it's just completely covered. So you go and take some heavy equipment in there. There's tombstones that are half buried, tombstones that are slightly sticking above the ground. You nick one of those things with a mower blade, you're doing irreparable damage to your mower and to this tombstone.

[00:30:10] While this place is overgrown, Mother Nature has reached equilibrium with the place. Vines can't destroy granite. We can destroy granite by again hitting it with a mower blade, but vines can't destroy granite. Vines will curl up and it will pull a statue off a plinth, it'll knock a tombstone over, but it's not going to start taking chunks out of a granite angel or a granite tombstone.

[00:30:31] Only we can do that. It's also that mission of the friends of like, we're going to do no harm here. Yes, we need to clear this stuff. Mother nature's got way too much of a stranglehold in this place, but can't do it at the detriment. of the monuments, and we certainly can't do it at the detriment of our own health and safety.

[00:30:47] For nothing else other than I worry about my people, that's just way too meta for me. Getting hurt in a cemetery is meta to the point of being cliche. No one's dying in a cemetery here on my watch. This can't happen. 

[00:30:59] Jill: Cause yeah, if it was me that stepped on that glass, I potentially would have gone all the way through and hit the bottom.

[00:31:04] And that would have been an interesting story for my husband and my children to tell everybody was, she was cleaning out a cemetery and died in the cemetery, hopefully not. And so if anybody's listening and they're like, Oh, I want to do something to help. Do you take volunteers? Do you take donations?

[00:31:20] Like, what's the best way for people to help out? 

[00:31:23] Brandon: Yeah, so we love anybody to come help out. You do have to sign an access waiver just to make sure you can't sue any of us in the event of any issues. I've been doing this for almost three years now. Other than some poison ivy rashes and the occasional thorn in your finger, nobody's been hurt in three years, knock on wood.

[00:31:41] We have an Instagram page, Instagram account, at Mount Vernon Cemetery, MT Vernon Cemetery. We do weekly cleanups. We usually announce them a week or two in advance. We have one this weekend to clean up the outside of the property. We start cleanups again in January, so anybody who wants to come down, keep an eye out for when we do the postings.

[00:31:59] You RSVP, I send you a waiver, and then you come on down. It's a lot of work, but it's a lot of fun because the before and after is always incredible. You go in and see the seemingly insurmountable blight and vegetation, but I always try to take a picture of the before and then A couple people come in and can clear like a hundred feet in a couple hours and the after photo You're just like oh my god, I can't believe we did all that work But also I can't believe what we found underneath here It's an amazing group of people the majority of people who have family buried there are are primarily in their 70s 80s You know a number of them live far away.

[00:32:36] So the majority of the volunteers who come week after week are people who are just interested in the place and are just looking to do a community service and to try and help. Which, which I think is the most amazing thing out of all of this is these aren't people with direct ties to this cemetery who are sacrificing their time to make the world a better, cleaner, greener place.

[00:32:56] It's incredible. And it'll range from just me and a couple people to we'll have a whole horde of people and get like 20 or 40 people show up. It varies, but it's, it's a good time. It really is a good time. 

[00:33:06] Jill: Yeah, I'm gonna get over there. I'll have to keep an eye out on the instagram and i'll post in the show notes a link to your instagram So it'll be easy for people to find it.

[00:33:14] I love to garden. I love being outside. I love cemeteries There's nothing not to love about this and i'm in for a hard labor. I don't mind that I'm thinking too like I know laurel hill does Events and things like i've actually been to a Circus or something there. And I've been to a concert there. They have all kinds of stuff.

[00:33:34] Are you going to do educational seminars for the public? Or do you have any thoughts on what that might look like? 

[00:33:41] Brandon: I'm not a huge fan of commerce in cemeteries. I can't say it goes against my ethics or morals per se. It doesn't feel right, but if it would pay the bills. You do what you got to do. Last year, we held our very first public event.

[00:33:54] We opened it up to the general public. We did it in November of 2023, kind of as a, as a one part test to see if the community would actually show up. Part was to see whether we had built enough of an internal social media, just sort of messaging system enough to get word out there on our own, or, you know, did we need to do other things?

[00:34:16] And then lastly, I received a neighborhood grant from the city to put on this festival. For free so we did that in November of last year and we got over 300 people showed up We were completely maxed out, you know, we thought like, yeah, maybe we'll get 100 people, you know Maybe it was it was better than anticipated so much so that I actually had to shut it down This past year.

[00:34:37] I couldn't do that again because We didn't have the infrastructure. I don't have the volunteers, uh, the cemetery is technically under the control of a court appointed conservatorship. We're not the owners, so we're not, uh, the insurance carriers. I'm very wary of going too big on someone else's property.

[00:34:55] It's unfortunate in a way because here's a community who is clamoring for, we want more Mount Vernon, and I can't give it to them right now. I have to back off because we can't grow any larger. This year, for example, taking a page out of Across the Street, who are the masters of this, they've got it down to an art form, Laurel Hill.

[00:35:12] We were invited on one of their history tours after Thanksgiving last year, and it was just mind blowing to me what You can do with just a simple history tour. I have an exhibitions background. I designed museum exhibitions and so forth. So I'm thinking we need bells and whistles and interactives and flashing lights.

[00:35:29] It was literally just two dedicated older volunteers with a little microphone and one of those little speakers that they dangle on their chest. Just talking history with people and it was captivating. I mean, it was just amazing. So they say don't borrow steel when you see something amazing We absolutely kind of stole that model of like hey this time around Let's try and do More history focused stuff, sort of less flashy, public y kind of stuff.

[00:35:58] And we also have reached a point now where because of our clearing and researching and we built this community, we've got enough content now based off of the people who are buried there, who we have found buried there, that we can begin to offer the community a bunch of different tours. We have our general history tour.

[00:36:15] You go around, you hit the big token spots. For most people, they know Mount Vernon because Drew Barrymore, you know, famous actress, Drew Barrymore, her grandfather's buried there. 

[00:36:26] Jill: Oh, wow. 

[00:36:26] Brandon: In fact, both families of the Drews and some of the Barrymores are buried there. So that's usually the touristy destination at Mount Vernon.

[00:36:34] But we have a gentleman who's very interested in Veteran history, civil war, revolutionary war. He's developing a tour, most of Philadelphia's beer barons, like a lot of these old school German beer barons, all the, the loggers and the IPAs that they were, you know, manufacturing in 19th century, a lot of those guys are buried there.

[00:36:53] So I'd love to do a beer tour of Mount Vernon, provided I don't have to have a liquor license, but who knows? 

[00:36:59] Jill: Have people just bring their own beer with them. That's what, you 

[00:37:02] Brandon: know, it's that double edged sword of like, we have all of these beer barons, right? I know that would kill, no pun intended, but also I have to be cautious because the last thing you want people to be doing when they're walking through vines and uneven roads is drinking, right?

[00:37:16] That double edged sword of like, wow, we could really do a fantastic tour, but We got to get this place cleaned up a little bit more before. Hold that one for the future. Or at least have an ambulance on site or something. But we also did sort of as an experiment to see if it would work just this past November.

[00:37:32] We did a twilight tour because we were in there one day and it gets really dark at night. Like really dark. You're in the fifth largest city in the United States, but it's 28 acres of no electricity. We don't even have running water on site. We don't have toilets on site. So you go to the center of the property.

[00:37:50] Where you're basically 14 acres in sort of all directions, and man, it gets pitch black. You can't see your hand in front of your face, and you're just like, I'm in Philadelphia right now? I can't believe this. So we didn't want to do it at night, but we did a twilight tour right as the sun was going down.

[00:38:06] We found out that Mount Vernon is actually the tallest hill in that area, so we could watch the sunset. Which was absolutely gorgeous. People get spooked out because you're in an abandoned looking cemetery at night. That was very popular. Programmatic events like that and ways in which we can reach different stakeholders, different constituents, a more diverse audience.

[00:38:25] It's not just people whose families are buried there. It's not just people who are interested in cemeteries. I mean, we, we had birdwatchers come in here in October. And I started on sort of my classic like this is the history of the cemetery and they were just kind of like we don't Give a shit. Where's the birds?

[00:38:39] Where's the birds, you know? And so I got to just shut up and we walked over and they saw a great horned owl on the property This is philadelphia a great horned owl in the city of philadelphia So, you know being able to reach out to a varied group of people we had at the twilight tour Who are an amazing group, South Street Circle.

[00:38:57] It's a neo pagan ritual group. They came to do a spiritual cleansing ceremony on site. I was prepared for the old school people to get upset. You know, oh, you're gonna allow witches into this cemetery, and that goes against my religious beliefs, and blah blah blah. And we had a couple of those people. You just push them to the side, or you say, look at the state of this place.

[00:39:15] This needs all the help it can get. So anybody who wants to come in and bless this place or cleanse this place of the bad energies, I am all for. This is non denominational when it comes to helping to clean this place up. So you play to the, pray to the God of vines or the God of porcelain berry. It doesn't matter.

[00:39:33] Just whoever can get this place under control is welcome. Being able to engage all those different types of audiences is fantastic. And it's something that I'm really interested in growing. That capacity of it in terms of the different events that we can hold there. While I can't necessarily say I'd love to have a circus on the property, I would absolutely love to do things like Across the Street does.

[00:39:54] Movie nights and symposia and vary those offerings. Right now we're kind of going middle of the road. General public type stuff. I try to keep it PG 13 and the ideal audience, but the twilight tour, for example, we made that a rated R event. Cause there's a lot of terrible things that have happened on the property.

[00:40:12] People who have killed themselves, people who have died from huge world tragedies, Johnstown flood, influenza epidemic, you know, those types of things that are more suited for. An adult audience who is prepared to hear that type of thing. We ran that last month and people were very receptive of it. Next month, I have the group called Girls Like Horror.

[00:40:34] It's a feminist horror club. They're interested in coming. The cemetery looks like a horror movie set, especially with all this fog that we've had, like, oh my gosh, like it was, it was straight up out of a movie. So they're interested in coming and engaging with the property in a, in a completely different way.

[00:40:48] And each time one of these groups comes in and looks at it from their different angle. It's always fascinating to hear what people have to say about it. One of the questions you asked me about, how do I envision this to be? That shouldn't be a decision necessarily dictated by one person or one group.

[00:41:03] Right. You know, some people come in here and they go, ugh, just bomb this place with herbicides and just get it over with. People go in there. Oh, why can't you just burn this place? Do controlled burns. But more often than not, you get people who come in here and go like, this is. This is really gorgeous. You know, you need to keep, you need to keep something here, because you stand in the middle of the property and it's just vegetation as far as the eye can see.

[00:41:24] There's something special about that, right? So again, figuring out what to do, but also offering it up to a bunch of different people is something we're really excited to grow. 

[00:41:32] Jill: I can't wait to see it. I can't wait to see what you're going to do with it in the future, and maybe one day I can collab with you and do something death and dying, because that's kind of my deal.

[00:41:43] That would be awesome. This was amazing. I'm so fascinated by the whole thing. I appreciate you taking your time to talk with me today. I will put link in the show notes to your Instagram. so people can find you. Thank you. Thank 

[00:41:57] Brandon: you. I really appreciate it. 

[00:41:58] Jill: In my next episode, we explore memorial forests with Jillian Nye.

[00:42:04] Jillian shares her six years of experience helping families create meaningful conservation focused memorials. through better place forests. These natural alternatives to cemeteries allow families to choose a memorial tree where ashes are mixed with forest soil, supporting decomposition and the health of the ecosystem.

[00:42:25] Jillian describes how these minimally developed forests ranging from 40 to 180 acres. preserve natural beauty while offering accessible trails and spaces for reflection. She shares touching stories of families personalizing ceremonies with rituals and some forming deep emotional connections to the memorial trees.

[00:42:45] We also discussed the flexibility of better place forests approach ensuring long term access and accommodating future memorials. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or family member who might find it interesting. Your support in spreading the podcast is greatly appreciated.

[00:43:02] Please consider subscribing on your favorite podcast platform and leaving a five star review. Your positive feedback helps recommend the podcast to others. The podcast also offers a paid subscription feature that allows you to financially support the show. Your contribution will help keep the podcast advertisement free.

[00:43:19] Whether your donation is large or small, every amount is valuable. I sincerely appreciate all of you for listening to the show and supporting me in any way you can. You can find a link in the show notes to subscribe to the paid monthly subscription, as well as a link to my Venmo if you prefer to make a one time contribution.

[00:43:35] Thank you, and I look forward to seeing you. In next week's episode of seeing death clearly.