The familiar sight of the potter’s field in the rolling hills of Embreeville is well-known to many Chester Countians. Few, however, know its history–or about the other two, older potter’s fields nearby. Join the Chester County History Center and historian Jonathan Hoppe in a wide-ranging exploration of Chester County’s official and unofficial burial grounds for the poor, from the earliest Swedish settlements in the 1630s through the formation of modern-day Chester County in 1789 to the present day. Learn about where the poor, unknown, unclaimed, and unwanted were buried — in family burial grounds, in institutional cemeteries, and elsewhere — and those others that history has largely overlooked, including the enslaved people that hewed Chester County out of the Lenape’s forests.
About the Speaker: Jonathan L. Hoppe is an archivist and a librarian at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and a Chester County historian. A member of the Malvern Borough Historical Commission, and previously that of Westtown Township, he has documented and studied cemeteries and burial grounds in the Philadelphia vicinity for many years.
Admission is Pay as You Wish! Register Here and please consider a donation to benefit the development of future programming and the preservation of the History Center and its collections. The History Center is home to over 750,000 manuscripts, 100,000 photographs, and 70,000 artifacts.
Presentation is via Zoom, and will be recorded and available for 7 days for all registered participants. We will email out a Zoom link the day of the presentation, and email a link to the recording within 48 hours. Note: the Zoom link emailed out the day of the presentation only takes you to the live presentation; the link emailed out the day after will contain the recorded version.
This presentation is made possible by the generous support of the Haverford Trust Company.
225 N. High Street, West Chester, PA 19380 | 610-692-4800
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