The inscription on Capt. Charles Sandgran's headstone is now obliterated. But, a century ago, it was possible to read this terrible pronouncement: "the earth and the sea shall give up their dead."
The words “lost at sea” are the most melancholy, and often the most mysterious, inscriptions on gravestones at Gloria Dei. In those cases, the stones are merely markers for a person who never came home and never saw their loved ones again.
Members of the Stewart family, buried in the churchyard of Gloria Dei (Old Swedes’ Church), had a long relationship with another important Philadelphia landmark—Carpenters’ Hall.
In 1865, Rhoda McCoy, almost 90 years old, was buried in the Gloria Dei Churchyard. Rhoda must have had a strong constitution — she died of “old age” rather than an ailment or disease.
Lavinia Sheed never married and died at age 65 from rheumatism. She is buried near her father and several of her siblings in the Gloria Dei Churchyard.
Born Feb. 24, 1752, Sophia Fisler was a younger unmarried sister of Hannah Collin. She lived with her sister and husband as a housekeeper and appears in church records as early as 1793.
“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.
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.
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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Ann Ord was the daughter of George Ord and Rebecca Lindenmyer and sister of George, Jr. She married David Pinkerton on June 12, 1790.
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