The wooden fence that surrounded the property originally was burned by the British for fuel, and the brick wall that is now in place was built in 1784.
Washington frequently occupied a pew in St. Peter's, and many other men who were prominent in the early history of the country worshipped here. The building is practically as it was when they lived. "It is the same church to which the colonists in their knee-breeches and rich coats came to attend the first service in 1761," a member of the vestry said in 1891. "The pulpit, reading desk, and chancel rails were built in 1764, and the present organ loft was put up over the chancel in 1789. In all other respects the plain, austere interior of this old church ... remains unchanged, the only relic in Pennsylvania, and one of the very few in the country at large, of the church in colonial days. Bishop De Lancey, in his centennial sermon, preached September 4, 1861, said: 'We enter by the same doors—we tread the same aisles—we kneel where they knelt—we sit where they sat; the voice of prayer, instruction, and praise ascends from the same desk from which it reached their ears, in the privacy and seclusion of the same high, strait unostentatious pews.'"
In the crowded churchyard are the graves of many colonial worthies as well as many leaders in the early history of America. Stephen Decatur is buried here, and Charles Wilson Peale, who painted a famous portrait of Washington.
The Pennsylvania Evening Post of January 18, 1777, told of the burial of one of the patriots whose bodies were laid here:
"Yesterday the remains of Captain William Shippen, who was killed at Princeton the third instant, gloriously fighting for the liberty of his country, were interred in St. Peter's Churchyard. His funeral was attended by the Council of Safety, the members of Assembly, officers of the army, a troop of Virginia light horse, and a great number of inhabitants. This brave and unfortunate man was in his twenty-seventh year, and has left a widow and three children to lament the death of an affectionate husband and a tender parent, his servants a kind master, and his neighbors a sincere and obliging friend."
Captain Shippen, before joining Washington's army, was captain of the privateer Hancock, which, between July 1 and November 1, 1776, sent to American ports ten prizes captured at sea.
Photo by Ph. B. Wallace
CLIVEDEN, PHILADELPHIA
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