Friends of Old St. Paul's & Swedish Burial Ground

At the corner of 3rd and Welsh in Chester sits a half-acre of ground that has been a resting place for as many as 380 years — older than the United States by more than a century. Burials began here around 1641, when Swedish settlers chose the spot for their dead rather than carry them back down the Delaware to Fort Christina. William Penn landed two blocks away in 1682 and renamed the town from Upland to Chester. St. Paul's Episcopal Church was built on the site in 1702, and in 1777, John Morton — the Pennsylvania delegate whose vote tipped the colony toward the Revolution and the first Signer of the Declaration of Independence to die — was buried here.

The Friends of Old St. Paul's & Swedish Burial Ground formed in 2023 to preserve and protect Pennsylvania's oldest colonial cemetery. We work alongside the Pennsylvania State Society Daughters of the American Revolution, the City of Chester, and St. Paul's Church to restore buried headstones, rebuild the brick and iron perimeter wall, install proper Veterans Affairs markers for interred veterans, and provide perpetual care for a national historic site that has been threatened by neglect, traffic, and three separate efforts over the years to relocate John Morton's grave elsewhere.

Our work is both physical and educational. Approximately 100 headstones recorded in the 1893 survey are still missing, and we use ground-penetrating radar and historical records to locate, unearth, and re-set them. We're also building a complete burial registry — 736 documented interments and counting — and developing programming to share Chester's colonial story with students, genealogists, and visitors who don't yet know that the country's oldest history is sitting quietly at this intersection. With Memorial Day 2026 as our restoration goal and the country's 250th birthday just weeks behind it, your gift on Delco Gives helps us hand down a place of dignity and rest to the next generation of caretakers.