The Presbyterian Burying Ground closed to new burials in 1887, and about 500 to 700 bodies were disinterred after 1891 when an attempt was made to demolish the cemetery and use the land for housing.

After a decade of effort, the District of Columbia purchased the cemetery in 1909 and built Volta Park there, leaving nearly 2,000 bodies buried at the site.

[8][9][c][10][11] Land for both the cemetery and a new Georgetown Presbyterian Church were donated by Dr. Charles Beatty, who provided a building lot of 1,500 square feet (140 m2) on the block.

The cemetery had two gravel paths, lined with fir trees, one which bisected the grounds east–west and another which extended from 4th Street north to the center of the block.

[19][21] It contained high-back pews and a high pulpit, and served as Georgetown Presbyterian Church's primary place of worship.

"[12] The Reverend Thomas Bloomer Balch said that the cemetery was, from its inception into the 1860s, a symbol of "the pride and wealth and glory of aristocratic Georgetown".

Despite being one of the largest cemeteries in the District of Columbia,[27] Presbyterian Burying Ground quickly came to be seen as too small and crowded to permit the construction of the large funerary monuments favored by Americans in the Victorian era.

[32] Another blow to the Presbyterian Burying Ground occurred in 1848, when 12.5 acres (51,000 m2) Oak Hill Cemetery opened just five blocks to the northwest.

This garden cemetery with beautiful landscaping, terraces, spacious grounds, and magnificent chapel—created and financed by the city's richest businessman, William Wilson Corcoran—deeply appealed to the residents of Georgetown and Washington.

But the odor of these decomposing bodies was so strong that the D.C. Board of Public Health declared the vault a nuisance and ordered it closed on April 10, 1874.

[40][46] The trustees said it would advertise in regional newspapers to ask families to remove their loved ones' remains from the Presbyterian Burying Ground.

[55] Approximately another 120 disinterments occurred by the end of June, and cemetery officials that all removals would be completed in time to meet the fall deadline.

[58] The abandoned Presbyterian Burying Ground became something of a tourist destination, with curiosity-seekers coming by every day to see the open graves and scattered tombstones.

Workmen were digging a trench to lay water pipes, and uncovered bones belonging to a large number of human bodies.

Local people began using the cemetery as a garbage dump, throwing old wire, pieces of metal, tin cans, carcasses, and household ashes onto the grounds.

Almost all the marble vault lids were shattered, and vandals had toppled or broken funerary monuments, tossed pieces into open graves, and thrown headstones around.

Georgetown Presbyterian Church no longer had a sexton appointed to oversee the grounds, and a rank odor was coming out of many of the open graves.

In September 1898, at the behest of Georgetown residents, the City Commissioners of the District of Columbia introduced legislation to make it a crime to allow property to become a public nuisance.

[75] Unable to purchase the cemetery outright, the GCA began working on a plan to have Congress pass legislation condemning the land and turning it over to the District of Columbia for some public use.

[78] To bolster their case, several citizens of Georgetown formally complained to the Metropolitan Police Department, asserting that the cemetery was not only unsightly but that it had become a garbage dump and that the numerous bodies there were creating health problems.

The investigation also noted that most of the vaults were in a state of collapse; numerous memorials and headstones had been broken, vandalized, or fallen over; and that the cemetery was heavily overgrown.

After making the expenditures required by Congress, $30,000 remained which the City Commissioners agreed to spend in acquiring Presbyterian Burying Ground for a municipal playground.

[81] In May 1907, Allen W. Mallery, agent for the church, agreed to sell the cemetery to the city, but the Beatty family objected and the sale cancelled.

Their attorney, William H. Monogue, claimed in November that the church had conducted no search for graves, had destroyed monuments and memorials, and had scattered human remains.

Noted D.C. historian John Proctor Clagett claimed in 1942 that most of the bodies near 34th Street NW had probably all been removed, but the central, southern, and southeastern portions remained untouched.

[93] About 1944, workmen digging a trench to lay sewer pipes across the southern part of the park exposed a brick burial vault.

Nonetheless, at the same time, some local boys found an intact small brown tombstone in the park close to where the men were digging.

These included the Beatty, Elliott, Hepburn, Holtzman, Mackey, Magruder, McPherson, Melvin, Murray, Peters, Reed, and Zevely families.

[14] Several ministers important in the founding and early settlement of Georgetown were also buried there, as was the man to kill the last Native American in the area.

[27] Of particular note, an unidentified Imperial Russian ambassador to the United States buried two of his infant children in the center of the cemetery beneath a marble pyramid.