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?