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Old Swedes Church, Wilmington
Holy Trinity Church, also known as Old Swedes, is a historic church at East 7th and Church
Street in Wilmington, Delaware. It was consecrated on Trinity Sunday, June 4, 1699, by a
predominantly Swedish congregation formerly of the colony of New Sweden. The church, designated
a National Historic Landmark in 1961, is among the few surviving public buildings
that reflect the Swedish colonial effort. The church is considered part of First State National
Historical Park.
History
The church was built in 1698–99 in territory that was once the colony of New Sweden, from
local blue granite and Swedish bricks that had been used as ship’s ballast. The church is
situated on the site of the Fort Christina’s burial ground, which dates to 1638. The church
claims to be “the nation’s oldest church building still used for worship as originally built”.
There are reportedly over 15,000 burials in the churchyard. Lutheran Church services were
held in the Swedish language well into the 18th century.
In 1697 the Church of Sweden renewed its commitment to Swedish settlers in the Delaware Valley and sent three missionaries, Jonas
Auren, Eric Bjork, and Andreas Rudman, to the area. A total of three churches with similar architecture were built or established by Swedish
communities in the area about the same time. All are generally known as “Old Swedes”, and later joined the Episcopal Church. Holy Trinity
in Wilmington was built in 1699. Gloria Dei (Old Swedes’) Church in Philadelphia, about 30 miles away, was founded in 1677 and the
building was completed in 1700. Trinity Church in Swedesboro, New Jersey, about 20 miles away by modern roads, was founded in 1703,
with its current building completed in 1784.
Five other Swedish churches were founded about this time: St. Mary Anne’s Episcopal Church in the town of North East, Maryland, Old
St. Gabriel’s Episcopal Church in Douglassville, Pennsylvania, St. George’s Episcopal in Pennsville, New Jersey, St. James Kingsessing in
Philadelphia, and Christ Church (Old Swedes) in Upper Merion Township, Pennsylvania.
Holy Trinity in Wilmington has housed an Episcopal parish since 1791 and is now part of the Episcopal Diocese of Delaware. An earlier
church in New Sweden was built in Swanwyck, near New Castle about 1662 which was replaced by a combined church and fort at Crane
Hook in 1667.
In 1958 the historic Hendrickson House was moved to the grounds of the church. The church building was declared a National Historic
Landmark in 1961. Trinity Parish operates two church buildings in Wilmington, both listed on the NRHP: the main building on North Adams,
and Old Swedes at East 7th and Church Streets.
Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington
The Hagley Museum and Library is a nonprofit educational institution in Wilmington, Delaware.
Covering more than 235 acres (0.95 km²) along the banks of the Brandywine Creek, the museum
and grounds include the first du Pont family home and garden in the United States, the powder
yards, and a 19th-century machine shop. On the hillside below the mansion lies a Renaissance-revival
garden, with terraces and statuary, created in the 1920s by Louise Evalina du Pont Crowninshield
(1877–1958). The facility sits at the midpoint of the DuPont Historic Corridor.
History
n 1802, French immigrant Eleuthère Irénée du Pont founded black powder mills on the banks of Brandywine Creek. He chose the location
for the river’s tumble over the Fall Line which provided power, timber and willow trees (used to produce quality charcoal required for superior
black powder), the proximity to the Delaware River (on which other ingredients of the powder – sulfur and saltpeter – could be shipped); and
the quarries of gneiss which would provide building materials for the mills. The E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company’s black powder factory
became the largest in the world.
In 1921, the mills along the Brandywine closed and parcels of the property were sold. Plans for a museum were established 31 years later,
on the occasion of the DuPont Company’s 150th anniversary in 1952.
Origin of the name
Hagley historians only know that the name was already in use well before E.I. du Pont expanded downstream from Eleutherian Mills in 1813
by purchasing the land that became the Hagley Yards. An 1813 document refers to the land as Hagley and it had been called Hagley as early
as 1797, when its owner, Philadelphia Quaker merchant Rumford Dawes, applied for insurance on buildings that were said to be located in a
place called Hagley on the Brandywine. Dawes had acquired the property in 1783. Since the name Hagley did not appear on the documents
transferring ownership at that time, it seems likely that Dawes gave this name to the Brandywine location.
It seems likely that Delaware’s Hagley was named for an English estate that was well known in the second half of the eighteenth century. It
is likely that Dawes chose the name based on an English narrative poem entitled The Seasons by James Thomson. Hagley Hall was the seat
of Thomson’s patron the Baron Lyttelton, and the poem’s description of a sylvan dale is strikingly reminiscent of the Brandywine Valley. The
Seasons was popular in Philadelphia at the time that Rumford Dawes acquired and named Hagley. The English Hagley estate is located in
the West Midlands countryside about ten miles southwest of Birmingham. Perhaps coincidently, Delaware’s Hagley is about 8 miles south
of Chadds Ford Township, officially known as Birmingham Township before 1996.
At about the same time, Hagley Plantation on the Waccamaw River in South Carolina got its name when the owners, who were admirers of
English culture, chose the name Hagley to remind them of the well-known parkland of that name near London.
The Museum was featured on Mysteries at the Museum television show.
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