Charles Evans Cemetery is an historic, nonsectarian, garden-style cemetery located in the city of Reading, Pennsylvania. It was founded by Charles Evans (1768-1847), a son of Quaker parents and native of Philadelphia who became a prominent attorney and philanthropist in Reading during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Early history
After donating the cemetery's first twenty-five acres and $2,000 to support the early development and operations phase of this public burial ground, he then ensured the cemetery's long-term stability by bequeathing a roughly $67,000 endowment from his estate, following his death in 1847 to support beautification of the grounds and other perpetual care activities. Sited atop a hill, the cemetery was initially located outside of the city when Evans first donated the land, but was absorbed into Reading's boundaries as the city developed to meet the needs of its expanding population.
By the 1870s, cemetery administrators had expanded the grounds significantly, according to the Huntingdon Journal, which reported on the cemetery in its September 10, 1873 edition as follows:
The Charles Evans Cemetery, the beautiful "City of the Dead" of Reading contains one hundred acres of ground. The total number of interments within its precincts last year was 483; for the months of January, February, March, April, May, June, and July of this year the number was 267.
Roughly six thousand of the seventy-two thousand individuals interred since the cemetery's establishment have been veterans of the U.S. military, including two thousand men who served during the American Civil War.
Administration
The original members of the cemetery's thirteen-member board of trustees were personally appointed by Charles Evans. They were: John Banks, John S. Hiester, Dr. Isaac Hiester, James L. Dunn, Samuel Bell, Dr. H. H. Muhlenberg, William Strong, Matthias S. Richards, William Darling, Dr. Diller Luther, William Eckert, Benneville Keim, and Peter Filbert. As those men resigned or died, they were succeeded by: Isaac Eckert, Adam Leize, James Milholland, James B. McKnight, G. A. Nicolls, William L. DeBorbon, Charles H. Hunter, J. Pringle Jones, Horatio Trexler, William M. Hiester, Augustus F. Boas, Warren J. Woodward, George D. Stitzel, Henry S. Eckert, John S. Pierson, Hiester Clymer, Henry M. Keim, Thomas D. Stichter, Daniel Ermentrout, Edwin F. Smith, and D. Gregg.
William Clemson was the first superintendent of the cemetery, and Thomas Gallagher was the first grave digger employed by the cemetery. Jacob Gnau was the cemetery's sexton at the time of Charles Evans' death in 1847. Following his death, Clemson was succeeded by Alexander Burnett, who was succeeded by John C. Hepler in 1880.
The first interment at the cemetery took place on May 21, 1847. Mrs. Harriet Norton, the mother of P & R Express Co. executive James L. Norton, was the individual buried that day.
Cemetery managers subsequently issued burial permits, beginning on January 1, 1848. Each permit from that date until through March 1886 was numbered with each year's series of permits "bounded and filed among the archives of the cemetery," according to The Reading Eagle. By the mid-1880s, it was estimated that roughly fifteen thousand burials had been made at the cemetery and at least $125,000 expended for the addition of trees and other ornamentation to the cemetery's grounds, as well as the purchase of additional land for future burials. Payments were made for these expenses by the cemetery's trust and through the sale of cemetery lots, which sold for twenty cents per square foot in the cemetery's oldest section in 1886 and thirty cents per square foot in the newest. The cemetery was also insured, and was "protected by law from taxation, and against the opening of streets through its grounds."
Architecture
Visitors arriving via the main gate on Centre Avenue enter through a large, sandstone, Gothic Revival arch, which was erected in 1852, and pass by the grave of the cemetery's founder, Charles Evans, above-ground crypts, obelisks and other monuments to Civil War-era soldiers and other historical figures from Berks County.