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of English for colloquial purposes became a necessity as soon as the immigration of Englishmen became considerable, although Swedish survived in sermons and church services for a good many years, and, in fact, Dutch was reintroduced for such uses among those whose grandfathers had spoken it. From the retirement of Dutch officials after the final surrender to England, until New Yorkers, in the days of Penn, began to come to Bucks County, there was scarcely a Dutch family in the region now called Pennsylvania, and so small a proportion were the Swedes and Dutch of its population during the period of these Chronicles that we might disregard those races, had they not been strong in the region now called Delaware, and therefore of weight in the politics of Penn's dominion. Although there was some influx of Englishmen both before and after the Duke of York's deed to William Penn, the greater part of the population of New Castle, Kent, and Sussex Counties was of other nationality than English at the Revolution of 1688, particularly if Scotland was to be reckoned a separate nation. There were even quite a number of Frenchmen.

Of the three races, Swedes, Finns, and Dutch, the Swedes were greatly in the majority on Delaware Bay and River.

The Swedish settlers and their children were not dissenters from their National Church, which, although classified as Lutheran, was, like the Church of England, liturgical, presided over by bishops, and controlled by the State; nor had the Dutch any of those peculiarities which separated some Anabaptists and the Quakers from other Protestants. When language was not a barrier, aliens who recognized the Bible as their Directory in faith and morals, not placing greater confidence in the individual conscience, whose ministers were trained, who took an oath when the magistrate required it, whose leading men wore swords, and of

whom the poorer men were ready to use pikes and guns, were more congenial to the ordinary Englishman than his Quaker compatriots. There will be mentioned the likelihood of such an Englishman, at least before 1696, attending the houses of worship established by the Swedes, and partly maintained by the Dutch, where at times there ministered an Anglican clergyman.

In the year with which this history begins, the Swedes were assembling for worship at Tranhook on Christiana Creek in New Castle County (church now known as Holy Trinity, Wilmington), and on Tinicum Island (church soon afterwards abandoned), and at Weccacoe, for which the congregation afterwards built the edifice now standing, dedicated July 2, 1700, known as Gloria Dei Church (on Delaware Avenue above Washington Avenue in Philadelphia). Rev. Jacob Fabritius, living above Penn's capital town, and coming down the river in a canoe, tended all the congregations, and even went into Maryland. He had been blind since 1682, and was led about by some one who preceded him with a staff. Acrelius says that this dominie, by birth a German or a Pole, and called from New York by the non-English whites on the Delaware, preached mostly in Dutch. It may be supposed that he was never one of the clergy of the country of Sweden, although his Lutheranism was undoubted. When he was not present at Tinicum, Andreas Bengtson (Andrew Bankson) read Möller's Postilla.

King Charles XI of Sweden, not in the exercise of any superintendence over English subjects of Swedish descent, but out of zeal for the Evangelical religion, upon hearing of the need of ministers and books, sent over the Rev. Andreas Rudman, Rev. Eric Tobias Biörck, and Rev. Jonas Auren, who all arrived in June, 1697, when Rudman took the churches in Pennsylvania proper. He was invested with a commissaryship or vice-episcopal dignity, whereby, after he had given up

his charge in Philadelphia, he presided at the ordination there by himself, Biörck, and Sandel of Justus Falckner on Nov. 24, 1703 (Sachse's German Pietists), Rudman had, on July 19, 1702, preached his farewell sermon in Weccacoe Church, in accordance with leave to return home; but, after laboring among Lutherans on the Hudson, he for some time served Anglican churches in Penn's dominions, and he died in Philadelphia. He had been succeeded in his Swedish charge by the Rev. Andreas Sandel, picked out by the Consistory of Upsala, and ordained by Archbishop Benzelius of that see. In Sandel's time there were enough Swedes and other Lutherans at Pennypack and Amasland and Kalcon Hook, as well as at Manatawny, as about to be mentioned, for him occasionally to preach at those places. When, in 1719, Sandel returned to Sweden, the Rev. Jonas Lidman took charge of Weccacoe and Kalcon Hook; and the Rev. Samuel Hesselius, of Neshaminy and Manatawny. Lidman, upon being recalled, left his congregation in 1730 to the care, says Acrelius, of Mr. John Eneberg, who was then preaching for the Germans. Rev. Gabriel Falk, who came in 1733, was obliged to leave Weccacoe by being found guilty of slander, and sentenced to heavy damages; but, retiring to Manatawny (of which name Molatton appears to be a variation), he for a number of years served what has since been called St. Gabriel's, Molatton (now the Protestant Episcopal Church at Douglassville). Rev. Johan Dylander came to Weccacoe in 1737, and served until his death in 1741. During the visits of Whitefield and Zinzendorf, the Church of Sweden in Pennsylvania was badly broken up. After the arrival of Mühlenberg-see a later chapter-there was an attempt to unite the Swedes and the German Lutherans ecclesiastically; but the Rev. Gabriel Naesman, who had been sent from Sweden as Dylander's successor, refused to join, as being subject to the Arch

bishop and Consistory of Upsala. Naesman was shepherd of the diminished flock in the year when this history ends. Under his successors, the Swedish church edifices and congregations of Pennsylvania became three in number only: Gloria Dei at Weccacoe, and what is now St. James's at Kingsessing, and Christ Church in Upper Merion (Bridgeport). In Delaware, there was Holy Trinity Church. An ecclesiastic called "Provost," sometimes the minister at Holy Trinity being appointed such, presided over all the Swedish missionaries on the Delaware, and one of the archbishops or bishops in Sweden had the general care of the mission. Pastors were sent from Sweden until after the American Revolution. When subsequent vacancies occurred, the congregations began calling clergymen of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America.

When the early purchasers from Penn arrived in Pennsylvania, they found the choicest land in the possession of those who had come under other authority, mostly Swedes. Penn, at his second visit, offered to such Swedes in exchange lands at Manatawny (partly in Montgomery and partly in Berks County on the Schuylkill), at a quit rent of a bushel of wheat per 100 A. He set apart 10,000 acres thus to be a Swedes Tract, somewhat like the tracts to be mentioned for persons of other nationalities respectively. Although Acrelius says that only a few accepted the offer, Swedes were afterwards reputed owners of that number of acres in the aggregate there. Swedes also bought considerable land from Welshmen owning the same on the western side of the Schuylkill around about the present town of Bridgeport, Montgomery Co.

In addition to Swedish ideas of public policy, there were, as have been mentioned in a preceding chapter, some Swedish grievances real or supposed; so there may be said to have been at a certain time a Swedish

Party, as well as several Swedish neighbourhoods. The sympathy, before alluded to, between the non-Quaker English and the persons of other nationality, made, independently of any personal interests, the prevailing sentiment in the Lower Counties strongly opposed to that in the Upper, or Pennsylvania proper.

While certain ideas were derived from the Swedes and Dutch, and they controlled politics in some localities, they, even in Delaware, were not the leading exponents of their views, and their importance did not outlast their relative numerical strength. It marked contrast with certain Dutch families in New York, the progenitors of some of which, to be sure, received enormous territory, and resembled Penn as landlord, but not as Governor, it is noticeable that the pioneers on the western banks of our river and bay secured no financial, social, or political advantages over those who came later. The commanders of the colony not vicegerents under an officer at Manhattan left no sons; yet there were chief men who joined Penn in inaugurating his government who left families; but their children succeeded to no political importance in the Upper Counties, and, in fact, their grandchildren, to very little in the Lower; for Delaware in good time became English, although not strongly Quaker. As a class, collection of families, or group, the Swedes and Dutch are obliterated from the history of Pennsylvania after Penn's second visit. The non-Quakers of different nationalities intermarried, and many of the most influential persons of later Colonial times had, through some female line, a strain of Swedish blood: but John Morton, signer of the Declaration of Independence, was the only person of Swedish patronymic known outside of a county court or the House of Assembly, until, in more modern times, a number of individuals have by their abilities recalled to us this old race to which they in the male line belong.

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