Commemoration for the Fallen, September 7, 2007

Remarks by Roger D. Thorne

The year was 1700. An Anglican priest named Evan Evans, rector of Christ Church, Philadelphia, began a mission to the Welsh-speaking people of this area . . . in their own language. Those who ventured into this Valley, a portion of the Welsh Tract of William Penn's 1682 grant from the Crown, would have found no roads and barely a trail. What one diarist referred to as a "howling wilderness" was mainly primeval forest. By 1710, because of the extreme difficulty of traveling even short distances, the growing missionary parish divided itself into two congregations, St. David's Church in Radnor, and Montgomery - later to be called St. Peter's Church in the Great Valley. Two churches - one parish, and so it would remain until 1836.

A log chapel may have been constructed in Montgomery as early as 1705 within an existing burying ground at the 350' foot crest of this highest hill within the center of the valley. It was common to build a house of worship on ground already used as a burial place. Oral tradition [recorded in 1849] cites the earliest death date as 1703. The oldest confirmed death date on a St. Peter's gravestone is 1737.

And it was in 1737 that a young Scottish priest named William Currie arrived to take charge of his Anglican flock. He would have found the Montgomery log chapel, and nearby, the foundation for a permanent stone church that was completed in 1744, and within which we sit. At its dedication the following year, the cited purpose of the property has relevance to today's commemoration: "for use of members of the Church of England to perform Divine Services . . . and a place to bury their dead."

Under the ministry of Parson Currie, the western end of the parish grew in both numbers and affluence. Most parishioners were landowners, many with considerable means. By the early 1770's, the appearance of the Great Valley was changing from its early days. More and more of the forested Valley floor had been converted to agriculture, and looking east and west from this high hill, many farms would have been evident below.

But politics was destroying the once tightly-knit fabric of this congregation. With Whigs outnumbering Loyalists, Currie's quiet refusal to deny his ordination vows by praying publicly for the British monarch was quickly eroding the spiritual effectiveness of this once beloved pastor. In May 1776, Currie finally resolved the impasse by submitting his resignation to his congregations, citing his advanced age after 39 years of ministry.

No period in St. Peter's long history is more rife with legend than the War for Independence. Yet, in a pamphlet entitled An Historical Sketch Of St. Peter's Church - Great Valley, published by John Hodgson in West Chester, PA in 1850, at a time when the local events of the glorious Revolution were still well remembered within the area's consciousness, the narrative is mute about any wartime events occurring at this old church. Not until the early 20th century did confident assertions of the church's wartime activities appear with increasing frequency, always without cited documentation.

This is all we know for sure: With the resignation of William Currie, the temporal governance of this church, its Vestry, ceased to function. A procedural notation in the church's original Vestry book, dated April 30, 1776, was the last entry until late in 1780. We believe that this Church of England, now without either priest or vestry, ceased regular worship services and indeed was functionally abandoned during the Revolutionary period. When entries into the Vestry Book started again in October 1780, there is no reference to any use of the sanctuary, or its churchyard, during those blank years.

An oft-quoted Revolutionary legend states that "Soldiers killed in combat, including British troops, were buried near the west wall of the churchyard." We have no hard evidence for this assertion . . . . except one clue.

On July 1, 1778, nine months after the Paoli battle, a map was published in London entitled: 'British Camp at Trudruffrin from the 18th to the 21st of September, 1777, With an Attack Made by Major General Grey Against the Rebels - Drawn by an Officer on the Spot'. This depiction shows British troop positions and battle lines relating to the Paoli engagement. The unnamed cartographer got much of the Valley's topography wrong, but the officer went out of his way to prominently show the obscure St. Peter's Church in the center of his map, to the understatement or exclusion of features and landmarks far more relevant to the battle. We are unsure to this day why the map was made, and it has so far kept its secrets well.

During the night of September 20-21, 1777, the American army suffered over 50 men killed outright in the midnight bayonet assault on Wayne's Pennsylvania Line, with over 100 wounded. In the wake of the disaster, the Continentals retreated west and northwest to regroup. The British had well used the elements of darkness and stealth in their attack, and lost only 3 men killed. The most senior of these was Captain William Wolfe, commander of an assault element designated the Light Company of the 40th Regiment of Foot, one of 13 such platoon-sized units comprising the elite 2nd Light Infantry Battalion of Maj. General Grey's detachment. At the conclusion of the battle, Wolfe's body, and those of 2 British enlisted men from the Light Battalion, along with British and American wounded, were placed upon wagons as the British army returned to their uneasy bivouac through the remaining hours of the night. At first light the British would break camp to maneuver toward the Schuylkill River in their campaign to capture Philadelphia. But where to suitably bury the 3 British dead?

Over the last several decades, several historians, including Thomas McGuire, author of The Battle of Paoli, have concluded that the Trudruffrin map, and the host of circumstantial evidence, strongly suggest the validity of the St. Peter's legend . . . that this abandoned Church of England in the Great Valley was not only known to the British Army, but would have been considered its logical burial spot for its soldiers killed less than 3 miles distant.

Perhaps the burial happened this way: Sunrise that next morning, Sunday, 21st September, dawned at 05:49 am. The British Army would begin its departure from their Tredyffrin bivouacs at around 06:00 am. Protecting the rear of General Grey's detachment was the 2nd Light Infantry Battalion, encamped near the spot where today's Route 202 crosses over Swedesford Road in Tredyffrin Township. At first light, about 05:15 am, a designated burial detail departed the 2nd Battalion camp for the isolated location that was (and still is) St. Peter's Church. Three routes could have been used by the detail, the shortest and most direct heading west up the Swedes Ford Road to Bull's Corner, then north and west on the Church Road, past the fulling mill on the Valley Creek, across the shallow ford, to the crest of Saint Peter's Hill.

Perhaps Light Dragoons rode point for the detail's three and a half mile journey to the churchyard. In the autumn the Valley is often shrouded by mist at first light, an aid to snipers or ambush. Marching warily in route step, with flankers out, light infantryman wearing short red jackets and broad brimmed campaign hats followed the dragoons, in turn followed by a team and wagon. Upon the wagon's plank bed lay the three British corpses, along with the bodies of several Continentals who had not survived their wounds from the night's fight. Passing through the gates along St. Peter's west wall into the quiet churchyard, there were shallow graves to be dug, and a short burial service to be read. No priest or military chaplain attended the proceedings. Per Army regulations, familiar yet haunting words from the Order for the Burial of the Dead from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer was read by the officer in command. A brief salute, and the interment of Captain William Wolfe, 40th Foot; Private Daniel Robertson, 49th Foot; and a sergeant unknown to us from the 71st Foot, as well as the unknown Americans, was concluded. Quickly returning to rejoin their battalion, they would leave the Great Valley for the last time.

The exact location of these graves is unknown: given the brutal circumstances of the Paoli battle, this anonymity protected the graves from subsequent desecration. Perhaps the mapmaker was present, a "brother officer" of Captain Wolfe from the 40th Foot or the 2nd Battalion, intending his document as a permanent record of the burials - for the Regiments, and for family members back in England.

The event which I have described is our best conjecture of this interment, one of thousands of unrecorded wartime burials of soldiers on both sides . . . . so far from home.