HistoricSiteMarkers
Early RepublicCivil War

Federal Street Burial Ground

Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania

Marker Inscription

Congregation Mikveh Israel's second cemetery, founded 1849. Here are buried Abraham Hart the publisher; Alfred Mordecai, soldier and engineer; Dr. Sabato Morais, rabbi and educator; Judge Mayer Sulzberger; and noted Civil War veterans.

Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

The Story

Founded in 1849 as Congregation Mikveh Israel's second cemetery, the Federal Street Burial Ground holds some of the most notable figures of nineteenth-century American Jewish life. Among them are the publisher Abraham Hart, the soldier and engineer Alfred Mordecai, the rabbi and educator Sabato Morais, and jurist Mayer Sulzberger, along with veterans of the Civil War. The ground is a quiet record of a Jewish community deeply woven into Philadelphia's civic, military, and intellectual life.

Why it matters

The cemetery preserves the memory of an established American Jewish community that contributed to publishing, the military, scholarship, and the law well before the great waves of later immigration.

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Related people

  • · Abraham Hart
  • · Alfred Mordecai
  • · Sabato Morais
  • · Mayer Sulzberger

Themes & tags

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