John Cushing Baker

The patriarch of the Baker family mausoleum, shown above, was John’s father, Daniel Clifton Baker (1805-1849) but his burial location has not been positively identified. He died before Mount Moriah Cemetery opened in 1855, but it’s entirely possible that his family relocated his remains to this mausoleum after it was built in the 1870s. There’s just no record of that. But if there was, it would mean this structure includes the remains of 19 individuals, the most of any mausoleum in this cemetery. 

John was the only grown son and was most likely the person responsible for having this mausoleum built. This story encompasses the lives of the father, mother, son and brief references to his eight sisters, four of whom are interred here.

Daniel’s mother’s father was John Clifton (1750-1802) from Ireland, a member of the Delaware militia in the American Revolution. He fought in the Battle of Brandywine, was severely wounded, and died in Lewes, Delaware where Daniel grew up. Daniel’s father’s line goes back to Vice Admiral John Baker, who died in 1716 while commanding the White Squadron of the British fleet in the Mediterranean. 

Born at the southern end of Delaware, Daniel’s lifelong vocation, albeit a short one, was piloting ships up and down the Delaware River. With Philadelphia being 100 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, navigation was difficult in the ever-changing deepwater ship channels. He helped maneuver the vessels safely to and from the docks. While in the city he was attracted to the daughter of a ship’s captain. Her name was Elizabeth Passmore Pierce and she added his name to hers in 1827.

Her mother’s ancestors were founding members of Old Swedes Church in South Philadelphia, whose current building has been standing since 1700. However, their wedding ceremony occurred at Trinity Episcopal Church in Southwark. Their first home was in Lewes where John was born on November 3, 1827. Daniel later moved his family to Philadelphia where five of the daughters were born.

Two of their children, John and Margaret were given the middle name Cushing because the family was distantly related to Caleb Cushing (1800-1879). He was a member of Congress from Massachusetts, Attorney General under President Franklin Pierce, and United States Minister to China and Spain.

Daniel’s obituary says he died of cholera in 1849, just after his 44th birthday. While living in Delaware, he formed the Association for Decayed and Distressed Pilots, Their Widows and Orphans. After his death the Dan Baker Shoal near Port Penn was named in his honor. 

A shoal is defined as a natural underwater ridge or sandbar that rises close to the surface, often posing a danger to navigation. This particular shoal, in the vicinity of Reedy Island, was just 21 feet deep at low tide. At right is a photo of the nearby Baker Range Lighthouse, built in 1896 and still standing but inactive since 1924.

References to the Dan Baker Shoal and buoys were first found in newspapers in 1871, and last mentioned in 1936 when an oil tanker ran aground. The story at left illustrates the delays encountered by ships having to wait for high tide, and how the Dan Baker name came to have a certain level of notoriety, although it was decades after his death.

Four of Daniel’s girls were under eight years old when he died, but one who was almost 20 helped maintain the household while John provided the income. His mother’s brother, Samuel Pierce, was a ship carpenter, and that’s how John joined the trade that lasted nearly 50 years, until he changed his title to simply “carpenter” in the 1900 census. 

The 1850s saw John and his bride, Harriet Cooley Sweatman, start their own family. Six children were born by 1863 and, to John’s delight, five of them were boys. Three more girls and one more boy completed their nest. Although they moved a few times, that nest was always in neighborhoods within a few blocks of the river where he worked.

The earliest death in the family, after Daniel, was one of the daughters who was buried at Old Swedes Church. The next was one of John’s daughters, Maggie, who lived just 22 months before her death in 1871. This must have been what motivated John to have a mausoleum built, but it can’t be confirmed that Maggie was relocated there from where she was originally buried. 

The mausoleum was built by 1875 because that’s when John’s uncle Samuel died and was interred there, followed by John and Harriet’s last child, Arthur (1875-1878). This is a photo of John’s mother, Elizabeth (1807-1893). She was almost the oldest person buried here but Samuel’s wife lived about a year longer and died in 1889.

Regarding John’s sisters, three of them married into substantial wealth. Three of them died in the same year, 1913.Three of them died at their seasonal cottages in Cape May, New Jersey. Their mother Elizabeth was at one of those homes when she died. Two of them lived to be 83, but two only lived to just under 30 or just over 30.

One of the sisters, Margaret Cushing Baker, married a man named William Phillippe. She honored her uncle and father by naming her son Samuel Daniel Phillippe, who became a police officer and a veteran of the Spanish-American War. 

After her husband died she married James Halliday and had a daughter named Caroline. The girl was only a teenager when her father died, so when she married a few years later, her uncle John Baker walked her down the aisle. Her married name was Caroline Marqueze Halliday Price and she became a social worker and Red Cross organizer. Her mother was originally buried in the Baker mausoleum but was later moved to the Halliday and Phillippe plot in Section 52.

Each mausoleum at Mount Moriah is unique, and the Baker mausoleum is the only one that features a stairway to the rooftop. It took advantage of the hillside overlooking the Soldiers’ Plot. This is what it looked like at the dawn of the 20th century. Unfortunately, this and many of the plots that were bordered with metal piping fell victim to those seeking to make money by selling scrap metal during World War II. Even the metal doors were stolen for the same reason.

This photo shows that another mausoleum was built into the hillside, to the right of the Baker tomb. Therein resides Jacob Hoeflich and his daughter’s family, the Fosters. It was constructed sometime after his death in 1895.

The last occupant of the Baker mausoleum was a son of the youngest daughter of Dan Baker, Daniel Clifton McLearn, who died in 1953.