While driving near York, Pennsylvania, I decided to stop by Prospect Hill Cemetery to visit the grave of Union General William Franklin. The cemetery was massive, and after locating Franklin’s grave and snapping a few photographs, I continued up the hill where I saw a plot devoted to dead Union soldiers who died while being treated at the army hospital located in York during the war. They were men from all throughout the North. Many of them simply having volunteered to fight, marched away from home, got sick, and died.
An older grave caught my eye just a stone’s throw away from the Civil War graves – a notable one that I did not know was in the cemetery. It was the grave of another non-Pennsylvanian. In fact, he was a New Yorker, and died in York in June of 1778, while a sitting member of the Continental Congress. It was the final resting place of a signer of the Declaration of Independence – Philip Livingston.
Philip Livingston certainly is not one of the Founding Fathers we remember. In fact, we probably remember his brother, William, who served as New Jersey’s Governor during the war, more. But Philip had a very impressive resume and played a part in nearly every major political conference in the colonies held in the years leading up to and during the early days of the American Revolution.
Born in 1716, Livingston graduated from Yale and pursued a career in the import business. Quickly, he built on his status and influence after relocating to Manhattan. He attended the Albany Congress in 1754, and was a member of the Stamp Act Congress, New York’s Committee of Safety, and president of the New York Provincial Congress in 1775. The prior year, Livingston was appointed to the First Continental Congress and was forced to flee his Manhattan home with his family when the British occupied the city in 1776. While he participated in the Second Continental Congress, he also served in the New York Senate.
Unfortunately, Livingston would never get to see his dream of an independent American nation become a reality. Following the British capture of Philadelphia in 1777, the Continental Congress relocated to York, Pennsylvania. Livingston had been suffering from dropsy, and his health was quickly deteriorating. He died suddenly in York while Congress was in session on June 12, 1778, and was laid to rest on Prospect Hill.
If you ever find yourself near York, take the time to visit the grave of a Founding Father who, far from home, died before the cause in which he pledged his life and sacred honor for could be won.
Emerging Revolutionary War Era 