The township of Moyamensing was chartered by act of 24th of March, 1812. Under this authority its commissioners some time afterward established their public burying ground upon a lot on the south side of Tidmarsh Street, now replaced by Carpenter Street, between Eleventh and Twelfth Street. It took up half the square; south of it was a deep ditch or stream of dirty water.

Some records refer to this burial ground as the Philadelphia Alms House Burying Ground. Originally established in 1732/33, the Philadelphia City Alms House was originally located in a small complex on Union (now Delancey) street between Third and Fourth and Spruce and Pine Streets. This original alms house had built and organized like a large domestic house, and was never meant to accommodate more than forty or fifty people at a time. Not having a burial ground of its own, those who died there were usually interred in the public square.

The Philadelphia Almshouse moved in 1767 to a new complex, which became known as the Philadelphia Almshouse and House of Employment, better known at the time as the "Bettering House." It occupied the lot from 10th to 11th street and from Spruce to Pine Streets fronting on Spruce Street, forming "Alms House Square," and buried its dead in this nearby potter's field.

Neighbors recalled that during the 1832 cholera epidemic, so numerous were the dead buried here that trenches were dug in the ground and bodies piled into them in mass graves.

The Moyamensing potter's field was vacated around 1845, after the Alms House had moved to Blockley in 1835. It was estimated by one longtime neighbor that 12,000 bodies had been buried in the ground by the time of its closure.

When the city vacated the ground and removed Tidmarsh Street and cut Carpenter Street through the burial ground's old extent, a contract was given out to remove the affected bodies, but only a few were ever removed.

Many remains from this cemetery were found in the 1880s and 1890s during construction activities in the area; some of the bones were taken out and thrown in garbage dumps along Broad Street, while others were removed to the City Burial Ground. In 2004, archaeological investigations found additional remains.