Service Without Freedom: Robert Butt and Laurel Hill’s Yellow Fever Monument

Join City of Camden Historic Preservation Specialist and Mount Peace Cemetery Historian Dolly Marshall for a special Black History Month presentation about the life of Memory Worker and Sexton Robert “Bob” Butt, an enslaved man who came to Philadelphia from Norfolk, Virginia, in 1859 to raise funds to purchase the freedom of his wife, children, and himself. As a cemetery worker, Mr. Butt was responsible for preparing the graves of over 1,159 people during the Norfolk yellow fever epidemic of 1855. Many people perished, including Northern doctors, nurses, and medical students from Philadelphia who were sent to Norfolk as first responders.

Mr. Butt personally accompanied their remains for obsequies and burial at Laurel Hill. The Yellow Fever Monument was erected at Laurel Hill East to memorialize the 15 Philadelphia volunteers who contracted and died of the yellow fever while helping in Norfolk (12 of whom are buried under the monument), but…