Families gather to honor distant ancestors

Families gathered in Yeadon just before Thanksgiving to observe the reburial f hundreds of ancestors whose graves were moved for construction.

The remains of nearly 500 people were unearthed in 2017 at the site of the First Baptist cemetery at Second and Arch Streets. during the construction of a luxury apartment building at 218 Arch St., according to reporting in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Many of the remains were re-buried in July at Mount Moriah off Cobbs Creek Parkway.

Kimberlee Sue Moran, a forensics scientist at Rutgers University Camden, along with the Friends of Mount Moriah Ceremony and the Rev. James Williams of First Baptist Church of Philadelphia, organized the memorial ceremony, according to the Inquirer.

“This was really our closing chapter of all the public outreach and public-facing side of the project,” Moran said at the Nov. 22 service, according to the Inquirer. “Now, we will focus on all the information we’ve gathered over the years and make sense of it and publish reports. We want to put out into the public sphere what we’ve learned from all these individuals.”