The City Of Chester.

rendered the locality a place of dread, and the superstitious negroes soon began to regard it as a spot to be avoided when living and shunned as a place of interment. In time even that the lot had been ever used as a graveyard was forgotten until the clause in Lydia Wade's will directed attention to it. In 1868, John and James C. Shedwick erected the row of houses on the east side of Edgmont Avenue, above Twelfth, and while the excavations for the cellars were being made a number of human bones were exposed. At that time they were thought to be the remains of Indians, the fact that it was the site of an old graveyard being unknown to the public.

St. Paul's Church and Burial-Ground. - A tract of ground was donated to the Swedish Church by Armgard Pappegoya for glebe or church land in Upland early in the history of the settlement. The plot of land on the south side of Third Street, east of Market Square, where the old burial-ground now is, and where the first St. Paul's Church building was erected, was, previous to that structure being placed there, a burying-place for the dead of the Swedish colonists at Upland. This fact is established by the report of Mr. Ross to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts in 1714, wherein he distinctly makes this declaration. He also states, they (the Swedes) "had likewise a Church endowed with a valuable Glebe not far from the place of burial, but of this building there remains no sign at this day." John Hill Martin thinks this reference is to the block-house, or House of Defense, which was torn down by order of the court in 1703, an opinion which is doubtless correct. Acrelius tells us that the Swedes held religious services usually in the forts and houses of defense. The fact is satisfactorily established that the Swedes were obliged to have sentinels regularly posted during public worship to apprise the congregation within of any attempted attack by the Indians, of which the early settlers seemed to be constantly apprehensive. Every student of our early annals is aware that after the cargo of the "Black Cat," which had been ladened with articles of merchandise for the Indians, became exhausted, and the Swedish settlers' capacity for making presents had ceased, the savages seriously considered in council whether the Europeans should be exterminated or permitted to remain. An old Indian succeeded in preventing a breach between the two races by assuring the young braves that courageous and vigilant men, armed with swords and muskets, would be difficult to subdue. The clergymen were particularly obnoxious to the savages, because the latter believed that during divine services the minister - he alone speaking and all the rest remaining silent - was exhorting the congregation against the Indians. Acrelius also tells us that a block-house answered the purpose very well (as a church):

"The Indians were not always to be depended upon that they would not make an incursion, fall upon the Christians, and capture their whole flock. It was, therefore, necessary for them to have the religious houses as a place of defense for the body as well as the soul. The churches were so built that after a suitable elevation, like any other house, a projection was made some courses higher, out of which they could shoot; so that if the heathen fell upon them, which could not be done without their coming up to the house, the Swedes could shoot down upon them continually, and the heathen, who used only bows and arrows, could do them but little injury."¹

In 1700, Rev. Mr. Evans was sent to Pennsylvania by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and located in Philadelphia. He is frequently mentioned in the history of the society as going to Chester, Chichester, Concord, and Radnor, each about twenty miles distant from Philadelphia, and while constant allusion is made to a church edifice existing in that city, no intimation is given of any such building in either of the other places designated. I am aware that in taking down the old St. Paul's Church building, in July, 1850, after it had stood one hundred and forty-eight years, two bricks, burned exceedingly hard and considerably larger in size than those in use at the present day, closely cemented together, and with the figures 1642 cut upon them, were found. These numerals must have been made upon them many years subsequent to that date, for in 1644 there was not a house standing in the present limits of Chester. Independently of that fact, we have documentary record of the exact date of the building, so circumstantially set forth that there is no room remaining for doubt.

In an account of the building of St. Paul's Church, Chester, furnished to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, Mr. Ross, the then missionary of the society, in his report, June 25, 1714, says, -

"In the Swedish Dormitory - the old Swedish burial ground - James Sandelands, of Chester, (or as it was first called, Upland,) Merchant, a man of good reputation in the country, was on account of affinity interred to keep up the memory of this founder of a growing family; twas agreed amongst his relations that his grave, as also that of his kindred and family, who were or might be buried there should be distinguished & set apart from the rest of the burying ground by an enclosure or wall of stone. This design was no sooner formed & noised abroad, but it was happily suggested by a projecting fellow in Town, that, if it seemed good to Mr. Sandelands' relations, the intended stone wall about the place of the interment might be with somewhat more changes carried up and formed into a small chapel or church. This new motion was well liked by ye sd relations and encouraged by everybody in the neighborhood that wished well to the church of England, but they who put life into this proposal & prosperously brought it to pass were Joseph Yeates, merchant in Chester, and James Sandelands, son to the above named Mr. Sandelands, the latter of which two gentlemen, besides other gifts, gave some land to enlarge the church yard, but the former, to wit: Mr. Yeates, a zealous asserter of our constitution in church and State, must be allowed to have been the main promoter of the founding of St. Paul's upon Delaware."

The report further alludes to other persons "parishers, who were chief helpers to carry on the work," -