Historic society launches app for self-guided tours of Pennsylvania’s oldest graveyard
Gloria Dei (Old Swedes’) Episcopal Church in Philadelphia is Pennsylvania’s oldest church and oldest surviving brick building. Its graveyard has remained in operation since it began receiving burials around 1677. Today, the the remains of an estimated 5,000 people are interred there, but only about 1,000 of them are on record. Photo: Gloria Dei (Old Swedes’) Episcopal Church
[Episcopal News Service] Gloria Dei (Old Swedes’) Episcopal Church in Philadelphia’s Queen Village neighborhood is both Pennsylvania’s oldest surviving brick building and oldest church. Established in 1646 as a Swedish Lutheran church and built between 1698 and 1700, the church is older than the city of Philadelphia.
Old Swedes’ Church became an Episcopal congregation in 1845. Its graveyard is even older than the church’s building; it has remained in operation since it began receiving burials around 1677.
Amy Grant, chair of the nonprofit Historic Gloria Dei Preservation Corporation and an Old Swedes’ parishioner, told Episcopal News Service that the remains of an estimated 5,000 people are interred at Old Swedes’ graveyard, but only about 1,000 of them are on record. The oldest surviving headstone, belonging to Peter and Andreas Sandel, dates to 1708.
“Every time I do research on somebody that I knew nothing about who’s buried at Old Swedes’, I learn something fascinating,” Grant said. “There’s an architect who preserved historic buildings and worked on a bank that was prominent during the Civil War, and the first female journalist for the Philadelphia Daily News. These are stories that can inspire future generations.”
Grant, who’s a full-time web developer and graphic designer, has been working with other board members of the preservation corporation – all volunteers – over the last five years supported by grants from the Queen Village Neighbors Association and the Philadelphia Cultural Fund to build an app for self-guided tours. The free app, called Old Swedes Graveyard Tours, officially launched on Oct. 4 and is available on iOS and Android. Type “Old Swedes” without the apostrophe in the App Store or Google Play to download the app.
The app features a searchable graveyard map with all the verified graves, including photos, and available biographies about the people who’ve been interred there, including Alexander Wilson, the “Father of Ornithology,” and Swedish composer Erik W.G. Leidzén. The information also includes the headstones’ inscriptions and epitaphs, and their sizes, materials and conditions. Grant said that headstones made of soapstone are in better condition and easier to read than headstones made with other materials.
“The burial records from 1677 to 1750 disappeared at some point in time, so we don’t have an exact number of people for those very early burials, and their gravestones have not necessarily survived,” Grant said. “We do have evidence that point to such-and-such person was buried there because it was mentioned in their will, or someone has a letter that says where they were buried.”
Old Swedes Graveyard Tours offers four different themed tours: General Tour, New Sweden History, The American Revolution and Mariners. More tours are being developed. An education student from Temple University in Philadelphia is working on a tour about interred mariners that would be tailored toward educators in an updated version of the app. Two other interns are high school students who are working on a tour about interred artists and an updated tour about New Sweden’s history. Other specialized tours, including authors and actors, will later be available for a limited time in honor of National Author’s Day in November and Philadelphia’s Mummers Parade on New Year’s Day. Audio tours with turn-by-turn directions will be available in the future.
“I think we have to preserve our history – both good and bad – so that we remember who came before us and why we’re here today,” said Grant, who also mentioned that there’s been a growing interest in people learning about their heritage through resources like Ancestry.com, Find A Grave, FamilySearch and 23andMe.
“Access to genealogical materials has become very easy to obtain, and resources like the Old Swedes’ app makes that research easier,” she said.
Grant said it’s important to “preserve everything that we can,” because churches, like Old Swedes’, can’t always support everything on their own due to limited funds and needing to prioritize handling building maintenance and ministries.
“Once something’s gone, you can’t get it back,” Grant said. “If the church closes, the congregation leaves, no one will take care of the building. It’s going to wind up getting demolished, and I don’t want that to happen.”
-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.
