Philadelphia’s past and the nation’s history are deeply entwined, with every corner of the region a part of America’s 250 years and beyond. Beneath the streets lie tales of residents and visitors, personages grand and mundane. In Northwest Philadelphia and southeastern Montgomery County, many of them trace back to the struggle for American independence.

Examining the names in some of the area’s oldest cemeteries opens the door to bits and pieces of Revolutionary War history – tales of real people who shared the same spaces in which we now live, bringing them back into the light of day.

There was the prominent Chestnut Hill landowner who came to his door only to be confronted by British soldiers, who knocked off his hat with a spear and ransacked his home.

There was the young Roxborough woman who ferried surviving Revolutionary soldiers across the Schuylkill River to save them from a massacre.

There was the West Oak Lane doctor who allowed the remains of a British general and a British colonel, both killed in the Battle of Germantown, to be relocated to his land to prevent the desecration of their graves. (The doctor, for his part, had once narrowly escaped beheading in France.)

There was the Germantown baker, known as “the Gingerbread Patriot,” whose patriotism earned the friendship of George Washington, and who left a charitable legacy that still helps children today.

Here are some of those stories.

The Yeakel Cemetery

Once left to crumble on a hillside off Stenton Avenue in Wyndmoor, the Yeakel Cemetery is a small site with a big connection to Chestnut Hill. The current family and caretakers prefer the spelling Yeakel, as seen on a large monument in the cemetery, but alternate spellings Yeakle and Jackel are also used on old headstones and records. The Yeakel Cemetery website and Rev. S.F. Hotchkin’s 1889 Ancient and Modern Germantown Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill tell more of the story.

This one begins with the quest for liberty. Christopher Yeakle, who would buy and expand the small Mack family burial ground in 1802 with his sons Christopher Jr. and Abraham and son-in-law Abraham Heydrick, left his native Germany and arrived in America in 1734. He and his mother came to find freedom from the religious persecution they faced for their Schwenkfelder faith. 

Christopher Yeakle became a major landowner in and around Chestnut Hill. His properties included the future sites of depots for the Reading and Pennsylvania railroads, now SEPTA’s Chestnut Hill East and West lines, and his log cottage at the corner of Mermaid Lane and Germantown Avenue was a local landmark from 1734 until its demolition in 1905. He eventually settled in an estate at the summit of Chestnut Hill, where he stayed for the rest of his life.

 Four Revolutionary War veterans rest in the Yeakel Cemetery: Christopher and Abraham Yeakle, Abraham Heydrick, and another local resident named Jacob Neff. Christopher served under Pennsylvania Militia General William Irvine, while the others served under Captains Baltzer Heydrick and Andrew Redheiffer. Christopher Yeakle’s house was famously ransacked by British forces, with Hotchkin recounting: “The English soldiers knocked Christopher's hat from his head with a spear when at his own door. The British soldiers came out of the city to surprise Washington at Whitemarsh in the night and returned in disappointment.”

Still, war soon spread even to the cemetery hill. A skirmish between the Pennsylvania Militia and British forces on Dec. 6, 1777, left 30 to 40 casualties in its wake and a wounded General Irvine in British hands. Oral tradition states that soldiers killed during the war were buried here, but the written record from Hotchkin mentions only soldiers of the War of 1812.

Information from 1781 tax records, provided by Alex Bartlett from the Chestnut Hill Conservancy, gives insight into who the Yeakels and their comrades were in peacetime, and the lives they fought to protect. Abraham Yeakle was a farmer with 80 acres of land, a horse and four cows. Abraham Heydrick was a shopkeeper. Jacob Neff was a joiner (an old term for woodworker,) as was his commanding officer Baltzer Heydrick. Andrew Redheiffer was a farmer with a large, 270-acre property.

 The Yeakel Cemetery, now owned by the Schwenkfelder Church, today sits surrounded by a rehabilitation center and separated from the road by a chain link fence. Under the care of the church and the Yeakel Cemetery Preservation Committee, which includes a family descendant and several historians, work has been underway since 2012 to improve access and maintain the scenic hillside cemetery.

St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church of Whitemarsh

The largest gravesite on our list, at St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, was founded in 1698 and has been a cornerstone of the community for over 325 years. Now on its fourth church building, the site also is home to more than 3,500 graves across nearly 12 acres. The oldest headstone still standing dates to 1727, with earlier burials left unmarked. Many details of the church’s history can be found on the Church History and Cemetery pages of the St. Thomas Church website. Julie Lawson, chair of St. Thomas’ History Committee, shared additional stories.

Already nearly a century old at the time, St. Thomas Church did not escape the Revolutionary War unscathed. The British occupied the property during the Battle of Whitemarsh, fortifying the church building with cannons and lodging their horses inside. Soldiers used the cemetery’s headstones for target practice (some still have visible marks and chips) and cooked under elevated gravestones to heat their meals. A dozen veterans of the war came to rest in the cemetery, along with a number of unknown soldiers.

Revolutionary War veteran graves are marked with 13-star colonial flags and small round plaques. Jacob Achuff, whose raised tombstone is one of the first visitors will see across from the church doors, was part of a large clan of parishioners whose family farm is now home to the Sandy Run Country Club. Captain Andrew Redheiffer is buried farther back. The oldest of the veterans was John Brandt, who was in his 50s during the war and 89 when he died. Another veteran, Christopher Loesser, was a long-time parishioner and is known for personally digging the grave of his good friend Andrew Gilkeson before being buried in the adjoining plot a few years later, Lawson said.

Gilkeson is a notable figure in his own right, remembered as a successful businessman and trailblazer in the fledgling Ambler township. “Gilkey,” as he was called, owned 100 acres of land north of Butler Pike to Hagues Mill Road. Gilkey’s Tavern, on the corner of Butler and Bethlehem Pike, became an important nexus of trade. A large part of the old tavern building remains visible and in use today, and while calling the area “Gilkey’s” or “Gilkison’s Corner” has fallen out of fashion, you can still find occasional references to it in books (and now Wikipedia) well over a century after his death.

St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church has grown much since the 1700s. The venerable church building, originally completed in 1881, has seen multiple expansions. The grounds also contain a scenic walking trail and arboretum, a modern preschool, and a retreat complex. The St. Thomas community will host the Whitemarsh 250 celebration’s kickoff event on April 12, 2026.

Concord School House and Upper Burying Ground of Germantown

The Upper Burying Ground, established in 1693, is one of the oldest cemeteries in Philadelphia. Though only 300 headstones were placed, as many as 1,300 people may be buried there. Germantown residents pooled funds to build the Concord School House on a corner of the site in 1775. According to the Concord School House website, the word “Concord” is believed to commemorate the arrival of early Germantown settlers on a ship of the same name, the first skirmish of the Revolutionary War, or the cemetery outside allowing residents to lie “in sweet concord” regardless of religion.

When the Battle of Germantown raged, the Upper Burying Ground gained nine new residents: three officers and six soldiers. More than 50 veterans of that war eventually came to rest on the grounds, but with some headstones and records lost or no longer readable, the exact locations of many are no longer known. The website’s history page offers some details, and a printable self-guided tour with more information was provided to Wissahickon magazine by Dr. John Pollack, president of the Concord School House and Upper Burying Ground.

Two memorials commemorate the fallen. One, among the oldest war memorials in the country, was placed in the early 19th century. The other, erected by the Sons of the Revolution in 2005, remembers the soldiers interred throughout the site.

One of the other notable burials here is architect Jacob Knorr, who in addition to building the Concord School House was also responsible for the creation of Cliveden and the original Germantown Academy.

Today, the Concord School House is a different kind of learning environment: a time capsule where, in the preserved environment of its expanded 19th century incarnation, visitors can peer into a small slice of the past. Outside, the Upper Burying Ground continues to pay quiet remembrance, where many names can still be read.

Leverington Cemetery

Leverington Cemetery in Roxborough may now be known for alleged hauntings and ghost orbs (it was #6 in WHYY’s 2013 “Top 6 haunted and eerie spots in Northwest Philly,”) but behind its most famous monument is a very real tale of war, death, patriots, and the heroism of brave young girls and women, especially an incident known as “The Massacre at Wood’s Barn.” 

A Historical Sketch of Roxborough Manayunk Wissahickon by Joseph Starne Miles recounts the story by Horatio Gates Jones, a Pennsylvania state senator, in his “Historic Notes.” Jones reportedly heard it in 1874 from a then-82-year-old Elizabeth Wood Taylor, who as a young girl carried her sister to safety at a neighbor’s home and was herself held at gunpoint by the British. 

More than a week after the American defeat in the Battle of Germantown, a scouting party of Virginia troopers traveling through Roxborough was ambushed while staying the night in the house and barn of a local patriot named Andrew Wood. The British shot seven soldiers, set fire to the barn, and picked off survivors as they fled. The British also burned straw in the chimneys to smoke out any hiding soldiers and left the Woods’ well “rendered useless” before finally moving on.

The accounts tell of Wood’s wife, covered in blood after rushing into the burning barn to carry out the wounded and dead, sending her son to the roof with clothing dipped in slop to extinguish embers pushing toward their house. Another woman, the elderly Elizabeth Colwell, spread word of the fire and gathered neighbors to help before damage could expand across the town.

Some survivors escaped to the home of the Levering family, whose daughter Anna ferried them across the Schuylkill to safety. The dead, reportedly numbering at least a dozen, were initially buried in the Wood family’s private burial ground.

In The Wissahickon by T.A. Daly, a different telling of the story has Hessians under the command of General Wilhelm von Knyphausen burning the barn while looking for a guerilla band called the “Green Boys,” of which Anna’s brother Jacob Levering, nicknamed “the spy of the Wissahickon,” was an “important figure.” 

Jones, upset that no monument commemorated the fallen troopers, pushed for their eventual reburial at Leverington Cemetery and delivered the dedication speech for their memorial. The cemetery is still well tended and sits surrounded by homes, with a diner next door. The site of the massacre later became home to Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church, which after 100 years was repurposed as the home of Ruggiero Plante Land Design. 

The de Benneville Family Burial Ground (West Oak Lane)

The Life and Times of Dr. George de Benneville by Albert D. Bell reads like a revolutionary-era Forrest Gump, full of excitement and a veritable “who’s who” of European nobles and famous Philadelphia names. He was a true renaissance man versed in medicine, sailing, botany, philosophy, theology and metallurgy. Born to a Huguenot family fleeing France and raised in part by godparents Queen Anne and Prince George of England, de Benneville was a haughty youth until a bout of illness and vision of hell reportedly triggered a spiritual awakening that changed his life forever. 

De Benneville’s newfound spirituality quickly got him into trouble. He was excommunicated and later imprisoned in France. Bell writes that, bound and on his knees before an executioner, he narrowly escaped beheading when influential British relatives begged for a reprieve by King Louis XV. He continued to travel, spending time in Germany and Holland (and, pronounced dead after falling ill again, woke up at his own funeral) before finally making his way to Philadelphia to support Schwenkfelder friends and help publish what would become the Sower (or Sauer) Bible – which, at 1,267 pages, was the largest book printed in Pennsylvania at the time and a foundational work for a press that rivaled Benjamin Franklin’s own.

De Benneville reportedly was friendly with local Native Americans, finding common ground in botany and respecting their spirituality, and they were said to often camp on his property. When the Revolutionary War broke out, de Benneville treated soldiers on both sides even as his sons served in the American forces, according to Bell.

The de Benneville Family Burial Ground, nestled next to the site of de Benneville’s home in what is now West Oak Lane, received two unusual residents in May 1778: British General James T. Agnew and Lt. Colonel John Bird. The two were casualties of the Battle of Germantown and originally interred at the Lower Burial Ground there, but at the request of Sir William Howe, de Benneville accepted their bodies and reburied them so the graves would not be desecrated. George de Benneville is buried there as well, dying at the ripe old age of 90 in 1798.

Now sandwiched among a used car lot, rows of homes, a preschool and empty storefronts, the small de Benneville Family Burial Ground sits as a quiet oasis tucked between busy city streets. There is a large monument to Agnew and Bird, titled “Soldiers of Great Britain.” A British flag used to fly there but the pole is gone.

St. Michael’s Evangelical Lutheran Church

The origins of St. Michael’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Mt. Airy are shrouded in mystery, with new research and information, often conducted around big anniversaries, pushing the founding farther back. An archived version of the St. Michael’s website from 2016 cited the recently discovered will of the first pastor,  Rev. Anthony Jacob Henckel, as the earliest known record. He died in 1728, so the church’s history extends even farther back.

The most famous figure buried in the churchyard is likely Christopher Ludwig (also spelled Ludwick), known as “the Gingerbread Patriot.” “Christopher Ludwig: The Gingerbread Patriot,” an article by Geraldine Duclow in the fall 1989 issue of the Germantown Crier, offers a detailed account of his life.

Ludwig was a confectioner who made a name for himself as a gingerbread baker, spokesman for the German community (and a founding member of the German Society of Philadelphia) and a devout Lutheran.

Duclow wrote that Ludwig was a patriot, donating funds for arms early on and later infiltrating a Hessian camp to espouse American ideals. Hundreds of Hessians eventually defected after learning about the American way of life. He was appointed “Superintendent of Bakers and Director of Baking in the Army of the United States” and was so renowned that George Washington himself called him “honest friend” and wrote a certificate in his honor.

After the war, Ludwig returned to a ransacked Germantown farm and rebuilt his life. He continued his charitable work even after retirement, volunteering at a bake house for the poor during the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1797 and leaving the majority of his estate to churches and charities upon his death in 1801. One of these, the Christopher Ludwick Foundation, carries on his legacy to this day; the foundation’s website says that his original bequest, grown from $13,000 to almost $6 million, now provides $250,000 each year “for the schooling and education gratis, of poor children of all denominations, in the city and liberties of Philadelphia, without exception to the country, extraction, or religious principles of their parents or friends.”

Two other historical connections to St. Michael’s are Jacob Anthony Hinkle and Major James Witherspoon. Hinkle built Chestnut Hill’s historic Mermaid Inn. Witherspoon, killed during the Battle of Germantown, was the son of Declaration of Independence and Articles of Confederation signatory Rev. John Witherspoon.   

Many old cemeteries, especially those tied to individual churches, survive on a knife’s edge of budget and interest. Despite its rich Revolutionary-era history, St. Michael’s succumbed to the passage of time and closed its doors in 2016. Many of the parish buildings were repurposed for restaurants and retail, but the cemetery remains, its silent memorials enduring, now under the United Lutheran Seminary in Mt. Airy.

Preservation across the ages

Historic sites and cemeteries often survive into the present through the hard work of volunteer organizations and donations from the community. Many more burials and records have simply been lost to time, inscriptions worn away by nature and paper records lost or destroyed as the years march on and custodianship changes hands. The Quaker Burial Ground at Historic Fair Hill, for instance, was used as early as 1703, but executive director Kerry Roeder explained that no headstones or records remain from the early era. Those stories are likely lost forever.

“We are able to celebrate this historic milestone richly for all the hard work the generations before us did to protect and preserve and the stories, documents, artifacts, and more that fell into their keep,” said Georgie Gould, President of the Roxborough Manayunk Wissahickon Historical Society. “Local historical societies like RMWHS continue this work to preserve. We want to save the history of our generation as well as our parents’ and grandparents’. If we don’t do it, no one will.”