| Interment Location | Visited | Sequence in Graves I Have Visited |
|---|---|---|
| Philadelphia, PA | June 14, 2013 | 40th Vice President visited |
Some grave hunting adventures involve prolonged efforts to find a particular interment site — which if set in a many acre burial ground could be like trying to find a needle in a haystack, even with a map. On other occasions, you find the grave you are looking for immediately because it is located just inside the grounds’ entrance. George Mifflin Dallas falls into the latter category. By entering the S 3rd Street gate to St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, my father and I walked right up to the eleventh vice president’s memorial. It is the flat marker shown in the center of this photograph.
Twelve members of the extended Dallas family are memorialized on the grave marker. They are predominantly — but not entirely — listed in order of their decease. George Dallas, who died on New Year’s Eve 1864, is mentioned first. The final name carved into the stone is that of A.J. Dallas Dixon, the vice president’s grandson, who passed away in 1948.
After George Dallas on the slab is his son, Philip, and then Second Lady Sophia Dallas. Elsewhere in St. Peter’s churchyard rests the vice president’s father, Alexander James Dallas, who served in President James Madison’s cabinet. The Dallas entry in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress mentions another of his relatives who served in the Federal Government: six-term Rhode Island senator Claiborne Pell, his great-great-grandnephew. This distant relation is buried in the Ocean State.
Dallas was the 40th and penultimate person in the initial leg of my vice presidential gravesite quest. Only Hubert Humphrey remained for me. My father and I flew to Minnesota to see “the Happy Warrior” in January 2014.
Fast Facts
Born: July 10, 1792 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Spouse: Sophia Chew Nicklin Dallas (m. 1816-1864)
Political Affiliation: Democratic Party
Senate Tenure: 1831-1833
Vice Presidential Tenure: 1845-1849 under James K. Polk
Died: December 31, 1864 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Cause of Death: Heart Attack
Age: 72
Interment: St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
"Sir, I have nothing so much and so deeply at heart, as the maintenance of the harmony and perpetuity of this Union. Whatever may be the contrast and irreconcilable appearance of opinions, no danger is to be apprehended, and no difference can be condemned, while the preservation of our Constitution, and the good of the country, are the leading and paramount objects of us all."
- George Mifflin Dallas
February 27, 1832 in a speech delivered to the U.S. Senate regarding tariff disputes and the Nullification Crisis
Sources Consulted and Further Reading
Dallas, George Mifflin. Speech of George Mifflin Dallas, Delivered in the Senate of the United States, Upon the Subject of the Tariff, on the Twenty Seventh of February, 1832. Philadelphia: Peter Hay and Co. Printers, 1832. https://books.google.com/books?id=DzCHFWfLXTQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false.
