The LeMoyne House: Where America's First Crematory Was Born

The brick house at forty-nine East Maiden Street in Washington, Pennsylvania, was built in eighteen twelve and looks perfectly respectable. What set it apart was its owner, Francis Julius LeMoyne, a physician and abolitionist who held an unusual conviction: burying the dead contaminated drinking water, and the hygienic solution was cremation. In a country that considered the practice morally scandalous, LeMoyne had a small crematory built on his own land in eighteen seventy-six, on a hill locals called Gallows Hill, making it the first crematory in the United States.

The first cremation took place on December sixth of that year. LeMoyne himself became the third person cremated there, in eighteen seventy-nine. Over its twenty-five years of operation, the facility performed forty-two cremations before closing in nineteen oh one.

LeMoyne's house is now a National Historic Landmark and the home of the Washington County Historical Society. His hilltop crematory, a spare stone structure barely larger than a garden shed, still stands nearby.