A Visit to St. Peter's Churchyard

The St. Peter's Church and Churchyard podcasts are available for download at http://www.stpetersphila.org/. The tours were written by Libby Browne, and recorded by Alan J. Heavens.

St. Peter's Church Tour Podcast

You can download this church-tour podcast and the churchyard tour podcast at http://www.stpetersphila.org/

The Book of Philadelphia (1920)

The Night of the Eagle

The event was held on an auspicious day. On May 20, 1815, a naval squadron commanded by Commodore Stephen Decatur began its voyage to Algiers to settle, once and for all, the issue of the Barbary pirates.
It was held at Milner & Carr Conservation LLC in Fishtown, which will restore the bronze eagle that sits atop the granite Decatur monument in St. Peter's Churchyard. The eagle will be returned to its perch Sept. 18.
The evening was a joint production of the St. Peter's 250th Anniversary Committee and Historic St. Peter's Church Preservation Corp. Co-chairs of the 250th committee are Elizabeth Browne, Joseph P. Fanelli Jr. and Claudia Stowers. Katherine Fanelli was the event's chairperson.
Sponsors and donors were Stanhope & Elizabeth Browne, James Colberg and Kathleen Stephenson, Helen and John Davies, Donald Hartz, Alan Heavens, Robert Hornsby Jr., Mary louise Krumrine, the Rev. Ledlie Laughlin, Constance Moore, David Richards, Dorothy & David Stevens, Margaret and Richard Ullman and Donna Weschler.

The guest for the evening was Thomas Jefferson, who offered a tribute to Decatur.

Take my wives....please!

Owen Morris (1719-1809) made his debut with the American Company of Lewis Hallam Jr. in 1759. Morris specialized in comic old men, including Oliver Surface and Polonius before retiring from the stage in 1790. The Hallam players performed in the warehouse owned by William Plumstead in King or Water Street, between Pine and Lombard Streets, and here they opened April 15, 1754, with Rowe's tragedy "The Fair Penitent" and "Miss in Her Teens" as the after-piece.
In 1763, Morris and the first Mrs. Morris went with the company to Rhode Island, where they performed Otello:
"Mr. MORRIS will represent an old gentleman, the father of Desdemona, who is not cruel or covetous, but is foolish enough to dislike the noble Moor, his son-in-law, because his face is not white, forgetting that we all spring from one root. Such prejudices are very numerous and very wrong."

Fathers beware what sense and love ye lack,
'Tis crime, not color, makes the being black.

Mrs. MORRIS will represent a young and virtuous wife, who, being wrongfully suspected, gets smothered (in an adjoining room) by her husband.

Reader, attend; and ere thou goest hence
Let fall a tear to hapless innocence. "

The first Mrs. Owen Morris (d. 1767) was America's earliest Ophelia, and, excluding a performance by British troops during the Revolutionary War, the earliest Lady Teazle.
The second Mrs. Owen Morris (1753–1826) was a strikingly tall woman whose acting ability divided the chroniclers of her time. Nevertheless she proved a popular comedienne with the public, much admired for her Lady Teazle and her Beatrice, as well as her Ophelia. Her eccentricities were notorious, and she went to absurd lengths not to expose herself to daylight. Following the advent of Mrs. Merry, her popularity waned rapidly.
Owen Morris is buried in St. Peter's Churchyard

History on video

Clergy corner

The Rev. Canon Howard Sheldon Davis was interim of St. Peter's Church in 1985. A native of Bethayres, Pa., Father Davis was born April 14, 1912, educated at the George School in Newtown, and received his bachelor's degree in Latin and Greek at Amherst College in 1933. He taught in the Abington, Pa., school district from 1933 to 1940, then entered the Philadelphia Divinity School to study for the priesthood.
He was ordained in 1943, and became rector of St. Faith, Brookline, Pa. until 1945, when he became a chaplain in the U.S. Naval Reserve for a year.
Father Davis was a priest in nine churches in Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi, and was canon at the Episcopal cathedral in Memphis in the 1950s and 1960s. He returned to Philadelphia, where he was assistant rector to the Rev. Paul Washington at the Church of the Advocate in North Philadelphia; was rector at All Saints, Darby; and interim rector at the Church of St. John the Evangelist, Third and Reed Streets; and at St. Peter's Church.
He died Aug. 4, 2004, of heart failure in Philadelphia, at age 92.
(In the photo above, Father Davis, left, performs a baptism, assisted by the Rev. Wendel H. "Tad" Meyer, rector of St. Peter's, September 1989.)

Fund-raising efforts through history

The Rev. Joseph Koci demanded payment for the wooden fence around St. Peter's Church that was burned to keep the occupying British troops warm in the winter of 1778. The cost was $18 plus interest compounded annually.
Selwyn Lloyd, chancellor of the exchequer, was so informed. St. Peter's is still waiting for the check (August 1961)