Biography:

St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, also known as Old St. Mary's, is a historic church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is located in the Society Hill neighborhood at 248 S. Fourth Street, between Spruce and Walnut Streets. It is still an active parish of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia with Masses held on Saturdays at 4:30 p.m. and Sunday at 10 a.m.

Old Saint Mary's was established as a larger worship site for Old Saint Joseph's church, a block away. Old Saint Joseph's had started as a chapel in a residence because public celebration of Catholic Mass was illegal at the time. In 1757, a larger church was built on the site of Old Saint Joseph's in Willings Alley; but six years later, Old St. Mary's was erected on a larger site which allowed room for a Catholic cemetery. St. Mary's and Old St. Joseph's remained a single parish until 1830.

Members of the Continental Congress and other public figures attended services on occasion at the church, since it was the city's most prominent Catholic church at the time. Among them were George Washington and John Adams (who complained that the visual and musical splendor of the church encompassed "everything that can lay hold of eye, ear, and imagination, everywhere which can charm and bewitch the simple and ignorant," adding, "I wonder how Luther ever broke the spell."

In 1810, after Philadelphia had been made a Diocese, St. Mary's was named the Cathedral, a role in which it continued until 1838, when St. John the Evangelist Church superseded it.

The cemetery was enlarged (by adding an extra layer of soil to the ground level) after the yellow fever epidemic of 1793. Some of the notable people buried there are listed below.