The magazine of history with notes and queries, Vol. II, No. 6, December 1905

by Various

WHERE ARE EVANGELINE AND GABRIEL BURIED?

The priests and sextons of old St. Joseph’s, St. Mary’s and Holy Trinity Churches, of Philadelphia, are often called upon by visitors to the city, to point out the grave of Evangeline and her lover, Gabriel, the delightful creatures of Longfellow’s fancy, in relating the expulsion of the Acadians from their happy homes and their dispersion along the coast of the British provinces.

Of course, Gabriel and Evangeline are buried nowhere, as they never existed, save in the imagination of the poet. The poem he calls “A Tale of Acadie,” a “mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest.” Still, it is astonishing that so many who have read the poem have believed in the actuality of the tradition in its relation of chief characters, in its Evangeline and her lover, and have sought their graves at these three Catholic graveyards. St. Joseph’s now has no burial ground attached to the church. It had originally, but after 1759 the dead of the congregation were interred in the ground across the street, and, after 1763, called St. Mary’s Street.

Longfellow’s poem represents the time of the meeting, death and burial, as occurring during a pestilence. This was the yellow fever of 1793, as no general epidemic had occurred in the city from the time of the coming of the Acadians in November, 1755, until that awful pestilence of 1793 ravaged the city.

But St. Joseph’s, in that year, had no burial ground at the church. The latest interment I know of was that of Father Farmer, August, 1786. Perhaps a few persons holding lots might have been permitted to inter in that graveyard after the opening of St. Mary’s ground in 1759, but most unlikely that Gabriel, an inmate of the city almshouse, would have been brought there for burial, and later Evangeline laid in a grave “side by side” by his.

So, though Old St. Joseph’s—mainly because it is called Old, and because of the nearness of the Quakers’ Almshouse (torn down in 1874), which many have supposed to have been the almshouse Longfellow had in mind—is the most probable place of the burial of the lovers, in the belief of many, including usually well informed “Penn,” of the Evening Bulletin, who, on October 12, 1898, declared that as Evangeline had long been a Sister, who knew the city and its seamy side, she, like a good Catholic, could have saved his body from being buried in the potter’s field, and would have carried it to the ground of Old St. Joseph’s.

(It is to be remarked that Philadelphia had no Sisters of Mercy then, nor Sisters of any Order until 1814, when the Sisters of Charity came from Mrs. Seton’s to take charge of St. Joseph’s Orphan Asylum, on Sixth Street.)

St. Mary’s, on Fourth Street, almost directly opposite to St. Joseph’s, is not so often called at nor so frequently assigned as the supposed place of interment.

To the opinions of those, who have supposed that either of these “churchyards” was the one Longfellow had in mind when writing the poem, I, years ago suggested that Holy Trinity Churchyard, on Sixth Street, was the most likely place—the place most probable—the one which Longfellow saw and years after had in mind.

The City Almshouse, at the time of the fever in 1793, was on Spruce Street, south side, from Tenth to Eleventh Streets.

It was there when, in 1824, Longfellow visited the city.

On the same street from Eighth to Ninth, was then, and is now, the Pennsylvania Hospital. Longfellow doubtless saw both, and the recollection of either came to him when writing the poem, as the place where Gabriel, dying, was attended to by Evangeline, in the city poorhouse. Though there has been discussion as to which of these institutions Longfellow had in mind, it could not be settled, because the poet, in writing to Charles H. A. Esling, Esq., of Philadelphia, now a resident of Germany, could not himself tell what building he had in mind.

But the point with us is as to where the lovers were buried. They have so impressed countless thousands, that one may almost consider them as actual personages, who lived and moved and died, and were buried in our city—but where?

When it is remembered that the Pennsylvania Hospital and the City Almshouse were both on Spruce Street, and that either of these could have been the scene of the meeting of Evangeline and Gabriel, what is more probable, that, as Longfellow walked Spruce Street, in 1824, he could, at the western entrance of Holy Trinity church have glanced at the passageway to the entrance of the church and seen as you can to-day see, the little churchyard attached to it? Then passing eastward, to Sixth Street, and turning northward, he had to pass the church, when again he saw “the little Catholic churchyard”—the only such in the city in 1824, and the smallest even to-day.

Remember, Longfellow, in describing the burial place of the lovers, wrote:

“Side by side, in their nameless graves, the lovers are sleeping,

Under the humble walls of the little Catholic churchyard.

In the heart of the city, they lie, unknown and unnoticed;

Daily the tides of life go ebbing and flowing beside them.”

Mind, he says, “the little Catholic churchyard.” Many, I fear, have thought of Old St. Joseph’s, “the little Catholic church,” and so, have assigned to it the burial place, but it is “the little Catholic churchyard,” which Longfellow speaks of, and the smallest such which Philadelphia had in 1824, or could have had in 1793, the time of the pestilence, was Holy Trinity, which dates from 1789. It best fills the probabilities in the case: the almshouse at Tenth Street; the hospital at Eighth; the little Catholic churchyard at Sixth Street.

The word “yard,” too, is important. He does not say Catholic graveyard—but churchyard. Holy Trinity best fills the idea of a small space attached to a building—a church—and having the commonly called “yard,” a small enclosed place—in this case, at the side of the church, right “under the humble walls.” No other Catholic churchyard in 1793, could have been “under the walls” of any church but this. St. Joseph’s had ceased to be a place of interment; St. Mary’s was, and yet is, a large graveyard. It is not a “little churchyard,” and interments cannot be said, even in imagination of poetry, to have been “under the walls” of the church, as big in 1793 as to-day, save by about twenty feet.

While, of course, there was no real Evangeline or Gabriel in Philadelphia, and no real burial anywhere, the sole discussion is confined to the churchyard Longfellow saw, in 1824, and in 1847, had in mind as the burial place of the two. No place so well fills the possibilities, even the probability, as Holy Trinity’s “little churchyard,” at Sixth and Spruce.

How Longfellow came to write Evangeline has been narrated; how Lowell thought the “tradition” a fit one for a story, but that Longfellow desired he be allowed to use it for a poem.

In “The Neutral French or the Exiles of Nova Scotia,” by Mrs. Williams, issued in 1841, will be found the same story, but with New York as the scene of action. That doubtless was the source of suggestion to Longfellow.

Martin I. J. Griffin.

Philadelphia.