“As they are a proper people, and strong of body, so they have fine children, and almost every house full. It is rare to find one of them without three or four boys and as many girls, some six, seven and eight sons. And I must do them that right to say I see few young men more sober and laborious.” A Swedish writer of about the same period notes that the Swedish farmers are as well clad as the residents of cities. Penn describes the houses in his new possessions as of a single story and divided into three apartments. A house and a barn suitable to a colonist might be built for seventy-five dollars. [Illustration: REV. ERIC BJORK.] [Illustration: BISHOP LEE.] Penn noted, however, that the Swedes were not so well educated as they should have been, and a few years later they were in such need of religious instruction, although they had but recently lost their pastor, that, partly through the representations of the proprietor and partly through the importunities of the Swedes themselves, the King of Sweden was induced to send out to Delaware the Rev. Eric Bjork. This good and energetic man, finding inconveniently situated the Swedish Lutheran church erected in 1667 at Crane Hook, or Tran Hook, near the mouth of the Christiana, conceived and executed the plan of building a new church near the scene of the original Swedish landing at the Rocks. The new edifice was the Old Swedes of to-day, which celebrated the two hundredth anniversary of its dedication on the 28th of last May. This venerable church, now Holy Trinity of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Delaware, is revered and cherished as the one visible link which joins the city of Wilmington to her earliest past. In the churchyard lie the dead of many generations, and of almost all denominations. Here, side by side with the Swedish colonists of the early eighteenth century, lies the late Bishop Alfred Lee of the Episcopal Church, who in life, as learned as he was modest, was one of the American Committee for the Revision of the King James Bible. Here, too, was recently laid to rest, amid many of his kinsfolk, the late Ambassador Thomas F. Bayard, worn with long and honorable public service. Thanks to the late Dr. Horace Burr we have an English translation of the earliest records of Old Swedes. In these records is contained a curious account of the difficulties attendant upon the building of the new church. There were quarrels over the glebe, the usual troubles with the contractor, and the inevitable changes of plan after the work was under way. Hired sawyers were paid so much per foot, and “drink.” In order to save wages the men of the parish came as they found leisure and hewed the timbers. Masons and other skilled mechanics came from Philadelphia, then “a clever little town,” and with them came Dick, a negro mortar-mixer. [Illustration: THOMAS F. BAYARD.]