Bethel Burial Ground, cemetery in Philadelphia

Bethel Burial Ground is a historic cemetery in Philadelphia's Queen Village neighborhood where thousands of people were buried between 1810 and around 1864. The site now lies beneath Weccacoe Park and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The cemetery was purchased in 1810 by Reverend Richard Allen to provide a burial ground for Philadelphia's Black residents and operated until around 1864. After closing, the site was abandoned and later repurposed, eventually becoming Weccacoe Park by 1900.

The cemetery was a place where the Black community of Philadelphia honored their dead with dignity and kept family histories alive. The surviving gravestones tell of people who built lives in the city despite facing hardship and racism.

The site is now part of the public Weccacoe Park with playgrounds and sports facilities where visitors can walk and learn about the history beneath the surface. Archaeological studies have documented the graves without disturbing them, keeping the site respectfully preserved.

A preliminary excavation established the cemetery's extent and found many grave shafts, layers of fill, and one gravestone reading "Amelia Brown, 1819, Aged 26 years - Whosoever live and believeth in me, though we be dead, yet shall we live." Bills of mortality and death certificates document 1,716 burials on the 0.28-acre site before 1830.