Delaware’s Old Swedes Church : In the Cradle of Immigration

Old Swedes Church built in 1698 and surrounded by 15,000 graves is better known in Sweden than it is in America.

Each year individuals and groups from Sweden make emotional pilgrimages to the historic stone-and-brick edifice believed to be the oldest Protestant church standing as originally built and still regularly used for religious services in the United States.

“The Swedes know the church because they read about it in their history books,” said Vicar Gregory E. Griffith, 37, pastor of Old Swedes. Half a mile down the road is The Rocks, where the mother colony from Sweden in the New World was established in 1638.

“Wilmington was the cradle of Swedish immigration to America,” Griffith said.

Lutheran Congregation

The original colony established a Lutheran congregation, he said, “and 60 years later the descendants of that original congregation built this church.”

Several of the first Swedish immigrants to America are buried in the churchyard cemetery.

Swedish kings over the years have visited the church, most recently Carl XVI Gustaf during America’s bicentennial year.

Many of the church’s most valued possessions are gifts from the Swedish royal family and from towns and organizations in Sweden, including an altar cloth given to the church in 1950 by King Gustav Adolph V, who embroidered the central cross himself; a copy of a prayer book used in Sweden during the Colonial period and a 1540 Swedish Bible, gifts from the Crown Prince of Sweden in 1938.

The communion silver still used today was presented to Old Swedes Church by the Great Copper Mountain Mining Co. of Falun, Sweden, in 1718. The model of the Kalmar Nyckel, the ship that brought the first Swedes to America, hangs in the church, a gift from Goteborg, the port city from which the Kalmar Nyckel sailed in 1638.

Old Swedes Church is a spotless sanctuary with room for 250 in its quaint white box pews. The original black walnut pulpit and canopy is said to be the oldest pulpit in use in America. A hand-carved black walnut dove suspended from the canopy is a gift from Sweden. The church floor is made of bricks fired and laid in 1698.

Few Americans ever heard of Old Swedes Church but nearly everyone in America’s second smallest state knows about it. The Dutch who founded the first European settlement in Delaware in 1631 were killed by Indians. It wasn’t until the Swedes arrived seven years later that Delaware’s first permanent European settlement was established.

All fourth graders in Delaware each year make field trips to Old Swedes Church as part of their course in the history of the state.

Resting, Resting, Resting’

The cemetery, with headstones on all sides of Old Swedes Church, is a classic Colonial graveyard. “Resting. Resting. Resting,” three stones at the head of one grave proclaim. Many graves have footstones as well as headstones. Many headstones have sunk into the ground and disappeared. Others stick a few inches out of the ground.

Tombstones in the graveyard are mottled with lichen and moss. Bodies were buried in layers.

No one knows how many people were buried within the walls of the church. It is known that five children were buried inside the altar rail and that at least two of the early Swedish ministers are buried in the church. Sweden sent missionaries to the church to serve as pastors until 1791. After the ministers stopped arriving in the New World, Old Swedes became an Episcopal church, a denomination that has continued to this day.

Many Swedes from throughout the United States come to Old Swedes or write the church to check their genealogy through early baptismal, marriage and burial records that go back more than three centuries. Old Swedes’ current congregation numbers roughly 100 active members.