Old Peter Minuit, the first
Swedish governor, may possibly have been buried there. The Swedes
built another pretty chapel--Gloria Dei, as it was called--at the
village of Wicaco, on the shore of the Delaware where
Philadelphia afterwards was established. The original building
was taken down in 1700, and the present one was erected on its
site partly with materials from the church at Tinicum. It
remained Swedish Lutheran until 1831, when, like all the Swedish
chapels, it became the property of the Church of England, between
which and the Swedish Lutheran body there was a close affinity,
if not in doctrine, at least in episcopal organization.* The old
brick church dating from 1740, on the main street of Wilmington,
is an interesting relic of the colonial Scotch-Irish
Presbyterians in Delaware, and is now carefully preserved as the
home of the Historical Society.
* Clay's "Annals of the Swedes", pp. 143, 153-4.
After Delaware had been eighteen years under the Duke of York,
William Penn felt a need of the west side of the river all the
way down to the sea to strengthen his ownership of Pennsylvania.
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