George Weir Milliken

The purpose of the mausoleum shown above was not to be a boastful display of George’s status or wealth, of which he had neither. His intent was to have it serve as a means of gathering the graves of family members into one place and remembering their lives collectively. His story is notable because in general he was successful, but with regard to his immediate family he failed, and the remains of two others that are supposed to be there have gone missing. 

The family in which George was born decided to escape Ireland, along with a million other citizens, as a result of the famine that swept the country between 1845 and 1853. George was one of six boys and a girl who arrived at the end of that period with their parents, John and Martha.

Setting foot first in New York on June 10, 1853, George filed his intention to apply for citizenship on December 29, 1856 when he was 22. The law required a residency period of five years before applying, but he never got around to actually submitting his petition for naturalization until 1914.

He was 33 when he exchanged wedding vows on May 14, 1868. His bride was Martha Bishop, who shared her first name with George’s sister (who died in 1864) and his mother.  Coincidentally, mother Martha would have no trouble remembering the names of three other daughters-in-law either. They were all named Mary.

Their wedding venue was Seventh Presbyterian Church, also known as Penn Square Presbyterian because it faced the south side of Penn Square at Market & Broad Streets. It was at that square that construction began in 1871 on Philly’s elaborate City Hall, which to this day is still America’s largest municipal building.

The newlyweds settled into 332 South 19th Street, south of Rittenhouse Square. Their neighbor across the street was the famous Civil War General, George Meade, whose funeral they witnessed in 1872. The Milliken family grew to include six children but three didn’t reach adulthood; their first child died of pneumonia at 22 months and the two boys didn’t live to see their first birthdays. 

What kind of job did George have, and how did he afford this mausoleum? He wasn’t rich or famous, but he must have been thrifty. He was a house painter for most of his life but when he finally decided to apply for citizenship in 1914 he said he was a real estate broker. 

He may have chosen this mausoleum style because it had columns similar to the church where he was married. Or, after all those years around houses, he wanted his final resting place to resemble a little house with room for his family in one place. That wish went unfulfilled, however, because his wife, who died in 1908, and the three grown daughters were buried nearby in Fernwood Cemetery.

Most of his siblings and their children were buried elsewhere at Mount Moriah. The bodies of his first three children, his parents, and his sister, Martha, were moved here between 1924 and 1927. One of his brothers, Samuel, had a wife and two small children whom he relocated here before he joined them in 1936.

The cemetery records show these 11 people are in this mausoleum, but a newspaper story in 1984 with this headline says differently. It was mid-day on a Monday in mid-May when Bryan Cartwright, the cemetery’s resident caretaker, called police to report a suspected break-in at the Milliken mausoleum. Two of the eight crypts (which may contain more than one casket) appeared to have been opened.

The detectives responding to the call made the observation that it wasn’t a case of body-snatching because neither of the crypts even had a casket inside, and apparently they never did. They also noticed names carved into the crypts; one was for John Milliken and the other for Mary Milliken, so they returned to the office to check the official register.

That book showed John Milliken, the patriarch, was moved on October 17, 1924 from Section 51, as was his wife, Martha, on that same day. As for Mary, she was the wife of Samuel, John’s youngest son. The register indicated her casket was moved to the mausoleum on October 17, 1927 from Section 130 on the Yeadon side. All of the other caskets were accounted for, but the question of the two empty crypts was never resolved.

It may have been of some comfort to caretaker Cartwright to know the incident was just vandalism and not burglary, but it may have also planted a nefarious idea in the young man’s mind. Three years later, he and a friend decided to break into the mausoleum of Thomas Hoy on the other side of the cemetery and run off with a skull. They were promptly caught, fined, and ordered to pay for the damage. The cemetery had to find a new employee.

Following the 1984 Milliken mausoleum mystery, the entrance doors were replaced with cement blocks. (Stories behind the two nearby mausoleum burials can be found under Joseph Pergolese and Philip Lawall.