Map Case 2.49, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia
(The plan has been reduced in size for the convenience of this report.)

This 1835 plan of the burial ground lists the major family burial vaults along the central walkway within the yard. The construction of the Session Room facing Cherry Street required the reburial of numerous graves within its perimeter. The archives for the Second Presbyterian Church has another plan documenting (with name, age at death and date of burial) the graves within that space, presumably all relocated.

When the church moved its Arch Street burial ground in the 1860s, those families with vaults sometimes moved their ancestors to different cemeteries within the region, but the task of moving all the bodies fell short of completion, as the recent archeology by Kise Straw and Kolodner clearly demonstrated.

This photograph was taken in the 1950s as part of a documentary series to record the buildings about to be demolished for the creation of Independence Mall State Park.

James Dexter, a free African and one of the founders of St. Thomas African Episcopal Church, occupied a plain, two-story brick house on the second lot above Cherry Street, 84 North Fifth Street. There he lived with seven other people, according to the 1790 census, and made his living as a coachman. His reliable service and good works were recognized by prominent Quaker merchant and preacher, John Pemberton, who left Dexter an annual annuity, as well as money in trust for the local African community, in his will probated in 1795.

Sometime after his purchase of this property (then 134 N. Fifth Street) in 1846, Philip Doflein replaced the two-story building with this four-story brick structure, as explained in a deed of 1891. Recently the National Constitution Center hired Kise Straw and Kolodner to excavate the site to search for evidence of James Dexter. The analysis of that archeology will provide some insights to the 18th and 19 century history of the property.

The mid-eighteenth century brick houses at the corner survived until the demolition of Block Three. These had once been among the highest valued houses on the block.