Benjamin Franklin's Final Resting Place
5th and Arch Streets, Philadelphia, PA 19106
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Admission typically $5-7 adult, includes self-guided map. Franklin's grave is also visible from the brick-wall opening on Arch Street at no charge.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Grass paths between colonial-era stones; mostly level
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1719 · Colonial Burial Ground · National Historic Landmark · Founding Fathers · Benjamin Franklin
Christ Church Burial Ground was established in 1719 as the second cemetery of Christ Church, the Episcopal parish founded in Philadelphia in 1695. The original churchyard cemetery on Second Street had become full by the second decade of the eighteenth century, and the new burial ground at the corner of 5th and Arch was laid out on land then near the western edge of the colonial city.
The ground holds the remains of Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), buried alongside his wife Deborah Read Franklin (1708-1774) and their two children Francis and Sarah in a family plot in the northwest corner. At his death on April 17, 1790, an estimated twenty thousand Philadelphians followed his cortege to the grave. Franklin's slab originally lay behind a brick wall; in the nineteenth century, a metal-fenced opening was cut into the wall on Arch Street to allow visitors to see the grave at any hour. A 2017 article by Mark E. Dixon in Hidden City Philadelphia traces the opening not to a Franklin family request but to a publishing-industry public-relations campaign of the era.
Four other signers of the Declaration of Independence rest in the cemetery: physician Dr. Benjamin Rush, lawyer Francis Hopkinson, North Carolina delegate Joseph Hewes, and Pennsylvania jurist George Ross. Additional Revolutionary-era figures include Commodore William Bainbridge of the USS Constitution. The cemetery remains active and is operated by the Christ Church Preservation Trust as one of the most-visited colonial burial grounds in the United States.
Sources
Compared to Philadelphia's other colonial sites, Christ Church Burial Ground keeps a low ghost-lore profile. The Pennsylvania Haunted Houses directory and regional ghost-tour operators include the cemetery on evening itineraries, citing fleeting glimpses of figures in colonial dress near the Rush and Hopkinson plots, occasional impressions of being watched along the brick wall on Fifth Street, and a vague sense of presence on Franklin's slab itself.
The penny ritual at Franklin's grave is the cemetery's most enduring tradition. Visitors toss pennies through the wrought-iron grate onto the flat marker, accumulating to the point that the cemetery's caretakers periodically sweep and donate them. The practice references Franklin's well-known thrift aphorism and reads as folk veneration rather than haunting; the coins symbolize continued conversation between living visitors and an eighteenth-century polymath whose presence is felt without being seen.
Christ Church Preservation Trust does not promote paranormal claims. Ghost-tour appearances reflect Philadelphia's broader walking-tour ecosystem rather than the cemetery's own programming.
Notable Entities
Walk the two-acre colonial cemetery and locate the grave of Benjamin Franklin, who is buried alongside his wife Deborah in the northwest corner. Visitors traditionally toss pennies onto the slab in tribute to his "a penny saved is a penny earned" maxim. Four other Declaration of Independence signers are also buried here.
Christ Church Preservation Trust offers periodic guided tours combining the 1695 Episcopal church on Second Street and the 1719 burial ground. Tours interpret the colonial congregation and its Revolutionary-era parishioners including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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