Around Swedish America in 548 Days - Day 268

Day 268 - Chester

Chester is the second-oldest settlement in Pennsylvania. Called Upland by the Swedes, the city got its new name from William Penn. In the Old Swedes Cemetery, State Highway 291, across from the city’s administration building, is the grave of John Morton (1727–1777), marked with an obelisk. Inscriptions on this and on many other old stones are almost completely illegible. Not far from this cemetery at Second and Penn across from the William Penn monument, was an official state historic marker (undergoing restoration in 2005) noting the location of the farmhouse of Armegott Printz, daughter of Johan Printz, New Sweden’s governor from 1643 to 1653. Armegott Printz returned to Sweden in 1676 and died in 1695.

On the northwestern edge of Chester in Crozer Park stands one of the most elegant of all the memorials relating to the New Sweden Colony—a large red- granite monument by the Finnish sculptor Väinö Aaltonen, donated to the people of Pennsylvania and the city of Chester in 1938 by the government and people of Finland. With scenes in bas-relief on both faces, the monument has inscriptions in Finnish and English. It honors the many colonists who came from Finland or were Finns living in Sweden (especially in Värmland) just before remigrating to New Sweden.