Yearly Archives: 2017

Read more about the article Captain Joseph Blewer
Blewer / Churchyard / Conservation Priority: Low / History Stories / Lindmeyer / Nordelind / Previously Conserved

Captain Joseph Blewer

Rev. Carl Magnus Wrangel married Joseph Blewer and Sarah Lindenmeyer at Gloria Dei Church on September 26, 1759.

Joseph Blewer being a ship captain assumed an active role in the War of Independence. In November 1775 Captain Blewer was in Cambridge, Massachusetts and was directed by General George Washington to deliver a letter to John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress. In June 1776 Benjamin Franklin and others including Captain Blewer met at Carpenter’s Hall creating the Committee of the City, Council of Safety.

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October 20, 2017
Read more about the article Sarah J. Fosque
Churchyard / Conservation Priority: Moderate / Fosque

Sarah J. Fosque

“Mrs. Sarah J. Fosque, aged seventy-five years, died suddenly at the Virginia Home for Incurables Sunday morning about 5 o’clock.  She was subject to heart attacks and this disease as the cause of her demise.  A few moments before she died she rang the bell for a nurse and told her when she came that she wanted the doctor at once.  Before he could get down the steps she was dead.

The remains were shipped yesterday to Philadelphia, where she was born and had a number of relatives.  She married Captain William F. Fosque, of Accomac County, and survived him several years.  She possessed considerable property at the time of her death and was by no means a charity patient at home.  She was a staunch but very liberal minded Episcopalian, frequently, when in better health, attending Methodist camp-meetings and taking great interest in the work of all denominations.  She thought Easter the choicest day on the calendar and this was the day of her death.”

Source: “Obituary.” Richmond Times 14 April 1903: 2. Print.

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October 18, 2017
Read more about the article Reverend John Craig Roak
Churchyard / Conservation Priority: Low / Roak / Sponsler

Reverend John Craig Roak

John Craig Roak served as Gloria Dei’s rector from 1933 to 1972. Reverend Roak guided his congregation through the end of the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War and all but the very end of the United States’ involvement in Viet Nam. Social changes during his tenure at Gloria Dei included the Great Migration of African Americans from the South, the Civil Rights Movement, the rekindled Women’s Movement that began in the 1960’s, President Lyndon Johnson’s experiment with the Great Society, and increasing immigration from “new” parts of the world, especially Southeastern Asia and Latin America.

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October 3, 2017
Read more about the article Reverend John Dylander
Sanctuary / Dylander

Reverend John Dylander

The 1730’s through the 1780’s was an era dominated by controversy and efforts to maintain the Gloria Dei congregation in the face of strong competition from other denominations. The pastorship was vacant from 1733 to 1737, and the beloved John Dylander had to rebuild the congregation. He was largely successful in this before his untimely death in 1741. Like Rudman, he is buried in the church. Dylander was succeeded by Gabriel Nasman, whose time at Gloria Dei was marked by competition from Moravian missionaties that reduced the size of the congregation, and a debate within the congregation about cooperating with the newly powerful and numerous German Lutherans, who were led by the energetic and capable Reverend Henry Melchior Muhlenberg.

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October 3, 2017
Read more about the article George Ord, Ship Chandler
Churchyard / Conservation Priority: High / History Stories / Lindmeyer / Ord / Previously Conserved

George Ord, Ship Chandler

George Ord, Sr. was born in England in May, 1741 and settled in Southwark. He married Rebecca Lindmeyer on January 17, 1767. They lived in a three-story brick house with a large garden at 784 South Front Street, between Catharine and Clymer Streets. Prior to settling in Philadelphia he was a successful ship captain.

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July 27, 2017
Read more about the article Captain Lodge Colton, Master’s Mate
Churchyard / Colton / Conservation Priority: Low / History Stories

Captain Lodge Colton, Master’s Mate

By Bob Josuweit

Being a riverfront Church, Gloria Dei has a rich history that involves many people who were involved with maritime related occupations. Captain Lodge Colton was no exception. At the age of 14 he became a mariner on the clipper barque “James Cornor.” (sp. Corner?) He served the CSN being appointed in Baltimore, Maryland. Lodge Colton was a Master’s Mate on the CSS Rappahannch in 1864 and the CSS Shanandoah in 1865. The CSS Shanandoah crossed the equator four times. On April 16, 1868 he was married in Baltimore to Marian Watts. The next year they moved to Philadelphia. Although his service took him to ports of call around the world, they maintained sittings at Gloria Dei from 1870 on. In 1874 they settled in New Orleans. Captain Colton’s ship sailed between New Orleans and Havana, Cuba. In 1880 he became a captain in the Ward Line, making voyages between New York, Cuba, and Mexico. He moved to New York and became a senior captain in 1887.

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May 12, 2017
Read more about the article John C. Hunterson, Civil War Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient
Churchyard / Conservation Priority: Low / History Stories / Hunterson

John C. Hunterson, Civil War Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient

John C. Hunterson was born on August 4, 1841 in Philadelphia.

He entered the Union Army on July 23, 1861, where he was mustered in as a Private in Company B, 3rd Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry. He was awarded the CMOH for his bravery June 5, 1862, a few days after the Battle of Fair Oaks. His citation reads “While under fire, between the lines of the two armies, voluntarily gave up his own horse to an engineer officer whom he was accompanying on a reconnaissance and whose horse had been killed, thus enabling the officer to escape with valuable papers in his possession.”

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May 12, 2017
Read more about the article Captain Morris Sheer
Churchyard / Conservation Priority: Low / History Stories / Previously Conserved / Sheer

Captain Morris Sheer

During the 19th century, Philadelphia’s waterfront was lined with wharves which were operated by numerous shipping lines. Smaller vessels designed for domestic use, called packet boats, carried mail, packages, and a limited number of passengers to major cities across the Eastern seaboard. Morris Sheer, a parishioner at Gloria Dei, was one of the first captains of the line of packets that ran between Philadelphia and Charleston.

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May 12, 2017
Read more about the article A Sense of Place
Historic Preservation

A Sense of Place

By Amy Grant, Board Member

Many local residents may not realize that the neighborhood known as Queen Village is actually older than the City of Philadelphia. “Philadelphia’s First Neighborhood” was settled in 1654 by Swedish immigrants, predating William Penn and the founding of Pennsylvania by 28 years. (more…)

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April 11, 2017
Read more about the article Alexander Wilson, Father of Ornithology
Churchyard / Conservation Priority: Moderate / History Stories / Wilson

Alexander Wilson, Father of Ornithology

Alexander Wilson was born on July 6, 1766, in Paisley, Scotland. At the age of 13 he apprenticed in the weaving trade spending ten years as a weaver. He then began traveling about Scotland as a peddler and writing dialect poems, which he published. Discouraged by poverty and by political persecution because of some satires he wrote, he immigrated to America
in 1794.

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April 6, 2017
Read more about the article Recollections About Peter Cruse, Ship Captain
Galoshes, probably Central American, 1820-39. Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Brooklyn Museum Collection
History Stories

Recollections About Peter Cruse, Ship Captain

“My memory often reverts to many statements of my dear Aunt Isabella Cruse, as to the fact of my grandfather Captain Peter Cruse, being the first conveyor of rubber in America …”

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April 6, 2017
Read more about the article Why Preservation is Paramount
Historic Preservation

Why Preservation is Paramount

By Candace Roberts, Board Chair

According to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, “the preservation of historic buildings is a one-way street. There is no chance to renovate or to save a historic site once it’s gone. And we can never be certain what will be valued in the future―because once a piece of history is destroyed, it is lost forever.” (more…)

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March 15, 2017
Read more about the article John Douglass, Revolutionary Soldier
Churchyard / Conservation Priority: Moderate / Douglass / History Stories

John Douglass, Revolutionary Soldier

Captain Douglass was born in 1747. Soon after the Battle of Lexington he began his military service. On June 3, 1776, the Continental Congress resolved “that a flying camp be immediately established in the middle colonies.” The definition of the Flying Camp Battalion is a Reservist or a Home Guard. Their duties were to serve and protect citizens of the state in case of an invasion. They acted like a police force guarding barracks and government buildings. For its part, Pennsylvania was called upon to provide a force of some 6,000 men. Delegations of one officer and two enlisted men from each of Pennsylvania’s fifty-three associated battalions met in Lancaster, on July 4, 1776, for the purpose of selecting this force.

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March 8, 2017
Read more about the article Amandus Johnson, Swedish-American Scholar
Churchyard / History Stories / Johnson

Amandus Johnson, Swedish-American Scholar

In 1908, Amandus Johnson was one of the co-founders of the Swedish Colonial Society, whose members traced their ancestry to the pre-Revolutionary War Swedish colonists. Johnson served as instructor and later assistant professor of Scandinavian Languages at the University of Pennsylvania from 1910 to 1921. After serving as President of the Historical Section of the American Division of the Gothenburg Exhibition in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1921 Johnson accepted the post of Director of the African Educational Expedition to Angola, during 1922-1924. In the years after the expedition, Johnson published a Kimbundu English Portuguese dictionary and a narrative about his travels.

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March 8, 2017
Read more about the article Gustavus Hesselius, Swedish born painter (1682-1755)
Churchyard / Hesselius / History Stories

Gustavus Hesselius, Swedish born painter (1682-1755)

By Candace Roberts

The leading artist in the mid-Atlantic colonies during the first half of the eighteenth century, in 1712 Gustavus Hesselius arrived in Philadelphia as a trained artist. For several years after 1719 or 1720, he lived in Maryland but then returned permanently to Philadelphia. In addition to portraits, his chief subjects, he is known to have painted religious scenes, which number among the earliest colonial examples. Similarly, his two surviving mythological subjects may have been the earliest classical works executed in North America.

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March 8, 2017

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