A sign at Graceland Cemetery states that Graceland Cemetery was established in 1774, is the resting place of more than 1,600 Civil War Veterans, and was the first Public Cemetery in Delaware County.

None of this stated history is true.

This remarkable historical tall-tale dates back to 1994, when a local history professor, on being interviewed by a newspaper in regards to a planned cleanup of the cemetery ground which was then, as now, maintained by the Borough of Yeadon, declared that he found information that Graceland Cemetery had been established before the American Revolution as Delaware County's (or, what would have then been Chester County's) earliest public burial ground, and was known at one time as "Graceland Memorial Gardens."

The professor had, unfortunately, conflated Graceland with the nearby Owen and Palmer Family Burial Ground. The real history of Graceland is far less illustrious, and much more scandalous.

In or before 1892, a man named Alexander Harding bought 90 acres of land in what was then Darby Township, contiguous to Mount Moriah Cemetery, from the estate of Joseph Palmer, whose aforementioned family burial ground adjoined Mount Moriah.

In 1894, a man named Lewis G. Dutton conceived of an idea to purchase the full 90-acre tract from Harding and lay out a large cemetery similar to its illustrious neighbors, Holy Cross, Mount Moriah, and Fernwood. The deal featured a curious option to buy, initially, a small, three-acre lot of land in what had become the Borough of Yeadon in 1893, and the right-of-way thereto, for $5,000, and to purchase the remaining 87 acres later for $135,000. Dutton and others thus incorporated the North Mount Moriah Cemetery Company in July, 1894, for this purpose.

The real reason for the small purchase option of just the initial three acres, however, was land speculation. In March or April 1894, Dutton had made a contract with the Machpelah Cemetery Society, whose burial ground was at Eleventh street and Washington Avenue in Philadelphia, whereby Dutton would buy the ground of the Society in Philadelphia (selling it later for a hefty profit to developers), and was to exchange with the existing Machpelah lot owners lots in a new cemetery containing not less than three acres and move the bodies there.

On October 1, 1894, settlement was made between Dutton and Harding for the three acres of land. The price was paid in full by Dutton and the property delivered to Joseph Costello. Costello, the straw purchaser, deeded the parcel on December 3, 1895 to the North Mount Moriah Cemetery Compan and immediately thereafter and on into 1895, Machpelah Cemetery was removed to the three-acre "Machpelah Section" of the planned 90-acre cemetery.

Difficulty beset the scheme almost immediately when, in July 1895, soon after the bodies were moved from Machpelah, the Borough of Yeadon, likely in an effort to stop the cemetery companies within its corporate limits (Mount Moriah, Holy Cross, and North Mount Moriah) from gobbling up even more of the developable land, passed an ordinance that prohibited the further expansion of these existing burial grounds.

Though the North Mount Moriah company did acquire the remaining acreage from Harding in December, 1895, it never could never recoup its costs. Without funds or any hope of success, it abandoned the scheme (so far as the 87 acres were concerned) and finally, defaulting on its mortgage, was foreclose upon.

On May 28, 1898, Joseph L. Carpenter, Jr., one of the company's creditors, bought he land at sheriff's sale. Later that year, a new company, the Graceland Cemetery Company was chartered to manage the much-smaller-than-hoped-for cemetery. A subsequent federal court order in 1907 dashed all hopes of future expansion.

Burials continued to be made in Graceland Cemetery as late as (it is thought) 1964. In May of that year, the Borough of Yeadon received a court order to allow it clean up and maintain the grounds, which by that time had been left mostly unattended and had become overgrown with shrubs, and its monuments knocked down and wrecked. Yeadon became de-facto owner of Graceland after its owner died, and it maintains the ground to this day.

While it has been believed that as many as 5,600 Civil War soldiers who died at two local military hospitals were buried at Graceland in a trench along Baily Road, between Rose Street and Ruskin Lane, these soldiers, in a considerably reduced number, were in fact removed from Machpelah to the Philadelphia National Cemetery at the time the former was closed.