A non-profit organization called The Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery formed to take ownership of the property, clear overgrown brush, maintain graves, stabilize the crumbling gatehouse and raise money for a petition to place the cemetery on the National Register of Historic Places. Mount Moriah Cemetery was established by an act of the Pennsylvania Legislature and incorporated on March 27, 1855. The cemetery was expanded to approximately 200 acres, spanning Cobbs Creek into the Borough of Yeadon in adjacent Delaware County, making it the largest cemetery in Pennsylvania. In 1856, the remains of Betsy Ross and her third husband John Claypoole were moved from the Free Quaker Burying Ground in Philadelphia to Mount Moriah. The practice of cemeteries purchasing the remains of famous historical individuals was common in order to drive additional business. The Daughters of the American Revolution erected a flagpole at the site of her grave in her memory. In 1864, the United States Federal Government purchased two parcels of land within Mount Moriah Cemetery. The Soldiers' Lot on the Philadelphia side of the cemetery was purchased for soldiers who died at local military hospitals and contains 404 Union Army soldiers. The lot initially included the remains of many Confederate soldiers, however in 1885 all but two were reinterred at Philadelphia National Cemetery. The Naval Plot on the Yeadon side of the cemetery is ten acres in size and was purchased for the reinterment of bodies previously buried at the U.S. Naval Home. The Naval Plot today contains 2,400 U.S. Navy officers and seaman. In the early 1870s, Henry Jones, an African-American man purchased a lot for burial in Mount Moriah Cemetery. After his death, cemetery authorities refused to bury him based on his race. A lawsuit was filed against the Mouth Moriah Cemetery Association and in 1876 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Jones had the right to be buried in the cemetery. In the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration program performed work at Mount Moriah Cemetery to improve the drainage system throughout the cemetery. In December 1975, Betsy Ross' descendants petitioned to have her remains moved to the Betsy Ross House. The headstone at her grave had been stolen years before. A physical anthropologist, Dr. Alan Mann, moved some bones in 1976 from the estimated vicinity of her grave but was unable to determine whether they belonged to Ross or not. Horatio Jones, the last known member of the Mount Moriah Cemetery Association, died in 2004 and the cemetery closed its gates in 2011 in a unique legal situation having no known owner.