Philadelphia Congregations Early Records

Featured Congregation/Collection

Gloria Dei Church, Philadelphia, PA

In the 17th century Swedish settlers landed on the banks of the Delaware River establishing churches in Wilmington, Tinicum and by the mid-17th century in Wicaco outside of what would become Philadelphia. That latter church, Gloria Dei, is Pennsylvania’s oldest congregation. The existing church was built between 1698 and 1700 and originally served a Swedish Lutheran congregation. The church today is part of the Episcopal Diocese and a national historic site. Archival records scanned as…

Philadelphia Congregations Early Records

When completed, the Philadelphia Congregations Early Records project will offer over 80,000 pages of records from Philadelphia’s oldest congregations, connecting the archives of Christ Church, St. George’s Methodist Church, Gloria Dei, Mikveh Israel, the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, the Presbyterian Historical Society, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, the American Baptist Historical Society, the Moravian Archives, and Friends Historical Library.

Digitized materials include minutes, account books, birth, marriage, death, and burial registers.

This project is supported by a Digitizing Hidden Collections grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Additional support has been provided through a Historical & Archival Records Care (HARC) grant from the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission (PHMC).