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Chester Rural Cemetery is a historic rural cemetery founded in March 1863 in Chester, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Some of the first burials were Civil War soldiers, both Union and Confederate, who died at the government hospital located at the nearby building which became the Crozer Theological Seminary.
The cemetery is landscaped and had a large lake that was drained in the 1950s. It covers 36 acres and contains approximately 31,000 graves. Two monuments in the cemetery have been documented by the Smithsonian Institution Research Information System: the statue "Sorrow" by Samuel Murray atop the Alfred O. Deshong memorial, and the Civil War Memorial, by Martin Milmore.
On April 13, 1917, 55 unidentified victims of the Eddystone explosion at the Eddystone Ammunition Corporation were buried in a mass grave at the Chester Rural Cemetery. An estimated 12,000 people attended the funeral service.
Veterans from the Civil War and other conflicts are buried in this area of the cemetery. There are also memorials to commemorate each war since the Civil War.
On September 17, 1873, the Soldier's Monument was dedicated to the memory of the soldiers and sailors of Delaware County who died in the Civil War. The dedication was attended by 8,000 people. The main speaker at the dedication was the U.S. Congressman John Weiss Forney and many dignitaries attended, including Major General Galusha Pennypacker.
On the front of the Civil War Memorial is the following inscription:
The people of Delaware County erected this monument to commemorate the patriotism of their citizens, soldiers and sailors who fell in defense of the Union in the War of the Rebellion 1861–1865.
Chester Rural Cemetery was a part of the United States National Cemetery System during the Civil War with a leased lot within the cemetery for soldiers that died in the nearby hospital. Many of the soldiers' graves, including Confederate soldiers, were moved to Philadelphia National Cemetery in Philadelphia in 1892.