Singapore took the Ong clan's burial hill for a public cemetery, then dug up more than 4,000 of its graves for a highway, and unclaimed remains were to be scattered at sea

The British merchant George Henry Brown owned the hill in the 1840s. It passed to Hokkien clans, and from 1872 to 1921 it was a cemetery reserved for members of the Ong clan. In October 1918 the press reported a government plan to take it. The owners petitioned, and the land was ceded under the Land Acquisition Act. In January 1922 it opened as a municipal burial ground for the Chinese public. It closed to burials in 1973 with about 100,000 tombs. The businessman Ong Sam Leong, buried in 1918, Lee Kuan Yew's grandfather Lee Hoon Leong, and the school founder Gan Eng Seng lie there. The land has been marked for housing since 1991. On 12 September 2011 the Land Transport Authority announced a road through the cemetery. Exhumations began on 17 December 2013 without an announcement. The Straits Times reported 3,442 graves to be dug up, of which 1,263 had been claimed by families and 304 already moved privately. Remains still unclaimed three years after exhumation were to be cremated and scattered at sea. Volunteers said more than two-thirds of the graves went unclaimed because relatives had died or forgotten them. The final count was 4,153 graves. In 2014 Bukit Brown was put on the World Monuments Watch. The first part of Lornie Highway opened on 28 October 2018. The rest of the cemetery is to be cleared for housing by 2030.