All Hallows Feature: Meet the Magees in Death
Magee family burial, Laurel Hill Cemetery [East], Philadelphia
All Hallows (Hallowe’en to All Souls/Day of the Dead, October 31-November 2) is special to me, an October child who specializes in things funerary. I treasure the holiday for gathering us to commune with, to honor departed humanity as a group. Not famous individuals, just us and them.
Day of the Dead, France
Moved by ancient beliefs that the harvest “opens” the portal between the living and the dead, we assemble in autumn to meet the departed in our homes--or theirs, the tomb, what reformers since the 18th c. called the border between two worlds.
For All Hallows this year, we gather at the burial place of a family we’ve met repeatedly on this website, thanks to their service to Philadelphia and St. Stephen’s: the Magees, from the patriarch James (1802-1878) to the last among them, Anna Justina Magee (1843-1923).
The more I studied this place, the more unusual it seemed among the many family plots I knew. I also realized how closely the Magees’ burial embodies defining features of the family.
James Magee has long been known as the Father of the Pennsylvania Railroad for his role as an incorporator and key director who, with investments in Pennsylvania coal and iron, made the family’s fortune--and set the family’s model for civic service and devotion to church.
Superficially, he fits a familiar 19thc. American profile. But the more I learn the more he and his family interests me.
Magee, a poor Irish youth, “made good” while working with, and marrying into, the family of Philadelphia descendants of the nation’s founders.* Together, James and Caroline Axelrod Kneass Magee shaped a uniquely close-knit family. They were not only devoted to their many relations; their own family of eventually nine lived together in one house until death (though moving repeatedly). The activities of the four daughters and three sons meshed constantly despite their different interests. The daughters traveled together, seen off by their brothers.
Most intriguingly, the seven children never married or had families. Though their philanthropy continues to bear fruit, the James Magee family died out after one generation.
Their closeness in life shaped their approach to burial, perhaps precipitated by the first of them to die, daughter Carrie in 1861 at age 25.** They buried her in the original churchyard at St. Stephen’s, the family church since James and Caroline were married there in 1830. When the church vestry—including James--decided in early 1866 to sell their offsite churchyard at 13th and Cherry and move to a larger site at Laurel Hill Cemetery, James followed suit. In August 1866, he purchased a large irregular plot for his family also at Laurel Hill (481 sq.ft; section K, lot 121), constructing (according to daughter Fannie Magee in 1912) a family vault with ample ground around it.
Without the worries that cause some families to choose shared vaults (tight space, high cost), James Magee provided, I propose, a successor to their townhouses in life, a shared chamber instead of separate burials in the generous plot.
Judging by later Laurel Hill documents and what we see today, James’s vault was underground, unmarked, and therefore invisible. Private.
Carrie was reinterred there in October 1868. The family followed: first James in 1878, then Caroline and the remaining six children, with Anna the last in 1923.
Though dates are unclear, the children eventually landscaped James’s spare burial ground and added a marker. By 1912 there were rose bushes in several corners and a red-granite cross, inscribed IHS (Jesus’ christogram), installed just east of the vault. Marking filial piety, the base was inscribed JAMES MAGEE. Without dates or epitaph, the patriarch thus stood for all nine Magees buried there over 55 years, with the cross and the well-tended plot as signs of their values and awareness of visitors.
Today, the rose bushes are gone; we see simply mown turf framed by nearby trees, including a pignut hickory whose leaves, as you see, were gloriously golden on my visit this week.
Our experience today tells us much nonetheless. Though tours and blogs include James among the residents of the cemetery’s Millionaires’ Row, there is telling distance between their sites and difference between the burials. The Magee ground rests among varied tombs on a hilltop above the commanding “Millionaire” family mausoleums that claim visibility from the road, cemetery planners’ longtime offering for maximum prestige and perpetuating memory in passersby throughout time. Some of Laurel Hill’s Millionaire mausoleums hug the inner cemetery road; others face the busy Hunting Park Drive and Kelly Drive. The Magees eschewed an opulent structure with locked doors for quiet openness (with limits). Walking uphill from the cemetery road (the plot is reached on foot; wheelchairs could be a challenge), we find a gently defined space that invites us in through an opening in the low wall.
With no wall to the north (our left in this photo), you get the sense of community with other family plots that flow into the space.
You are quietly drawn by the cross facing west—those of us who negotiate the path from the road. Though taller than I am (5’10), the cross on its double base conveys strength without overwhelming. The raised christogram signals the faith and anticipated divine protection of those buried in front. With the patriarch’s name as the public persona, the nine individuals resting together underground, unseen and unnamed, still invite our presence in their space above.
There, we experience a quiet form of communion even without seeing or knowing about those buried beneath. Yet a bit more information, as offered here, emphasizes the values demonstrated in their space, including their firm tact.
I hope you visit over these days—or any other. These spaces tell us so much, and make us feel even more.
— Suzanne Glover Lindsay, St. Stephen’s historian and curator
* Here, I applaud the work on the Magees of Drs. John DiTunno, Jr. and Chris Formal of Thomas Jefferson University which contributed to this profile. See Ditunno, John F. Jr. and Formal, Chris S., "Anna Justina Magee: A Woman of Determination and Vision" (2021). Department of Rehabilitation Medicine Faculty Papers. Paper 46. https://jdc.jefferson.edu/rmfp/46
**Details in this account derive from St. Stephen’s archives (Vestry Minutes and Parish Register) and from the file on K-121 in the Laurel Hill Cemetery Company archives. My thanks to Beth Savastana for generously making them available along with her own insights.