F. Julius LeMoyne House

This stone house in Washington, Pennsylvania, built in eighteen twelve, was the home of one of the nineteenth century's quiet radicals. Francis Julius LeMoyne was an abolitionist physician who ran a stop on the Underground Railroad and founded the town's first public library. His most startling act came late in life: convinced that burials were contaminating the groundwater and spreading disease among his neighbors, he built the first crematory in the United States on a hilltop here in eighteen seventy-six.

The first cremation took place on December sixth of that year. The idea was deeply controversial, but LeMoyne held firm. The house is now a National Historic Landmark and a museum run by the Washington County Historical Society.