St. James' Church (Episcopal)
Lancaster, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Founded 1744. Original structure built 1746-53; this building begun 1820. George Ross, signer of the Declaration of Independence, was vestryman. Buried here are the patriots Edward Shippen, William Atlee, Edward Hand, and Jasper Yeates.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Founded in 1744, St. James' Episcopal Church has stood at the heart of Lancaster through the entire span of the American Revolution and the early Republic. Among its vestrymen was George Ross, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and its churchyard holds a remarkable roll of patriots, including Continental Army general Edward Hand and jurists who helped build the new nation's legal order. The present building, begun in 1820, replaced the colonial structure raised in the 1740s and 50s.
Why it matters
Few congregations can claim such a direct connection to the founding generation, making St. James' a resting place for the local leaders who turned revolutionary ideals into a functioning American republic.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Lancaster in the mid-1700s was one of the most important inland towns in the American colonies — a bustling market and crafts center in the rich farmland of southeastern Pennsylvania. It sat at a crossroads of German, Scots-Irish, and English settlement, and its prosperity gave it an outsized role in colonial affairs. When a congregation like St. James' took root here in 1744, it planted itself in a town that would matter.
By the time the Revolution arrived, Lancaster was no backwater. It was substantial enough that it briefly served as the seat of the Continental Congress in 1777, when the British occupation of Philadelphia sent the young government scrambling for safety. A town of that stature naturally drew leaders — lawyers, soldiers, merchants, and public men — and many of them worshiped, served, and were laid to rest in its established churches.
St. James' belonged to the Church of England, later the Episcopal Church in America. That transition itself tells a story: a colonial-era Anglican parish had to remake its identity as the country broke from the crown, becoming an American church rooted in an American town.
People & events
The congregation was founded in 1744, and its first permanent home rose between 1746 and 1753 — a solid colonial structure for a growing parish. The building you would encounter today, begun in 1820, is the successor to that original church, raised as the young Republic was finding its feet.
Among the parish's vestrymen was George Ross, a Lancaster lawyer who signed the Declaration of Independence. To serve on a vestry was to help govern the practical life of the church, and Ross's name links this congregation directly to the founding act of American independence.
The churchyard deepens that connection. Buried here are patriots whose lives spanned the fight for independence and the building of the new nation's institutions: Edward Hand, who served as a general in the Continental Army; and Edward Shippen, William Atlee, and Jasper Yeates — men of law and public affairs whose work helped turn revolutionary ideals into functioning courts and governance. Together they represent both the sword and the pen of the founding era.
Its place in the American story
Few congregations can claim so tight a bond with the generation that made the United States. A signer of the Declaration among its vestrymen, a Continental Army general in its churchyard, and jurists who helped establish the rule of law in the new nation — that is a remarkable concentration of founding-era lives around a single parish.
That concentration is not an accident. It reflects how the Revolution actually worked: not only through famous names in Philadelphia and Boston, but through the local leaders of important towns like Lancaster, who filled the ranks of the army, argued the cases, wrote the laws, and served on the committees and vestries that held communities together. The nation was built by people like these, in places like this.
A parish churchyard, then, becomes a kind of index of the founding. To read the names here is to see how a single American town supplied both fighters and framers to the cause — and how a local congregation quietly gathered the story of a revolution into its own ground.
If you visit
An old churchyard is one of the most rewarding places a history-minded traveler can linger. Walk it slowly. The stones are primary sources in their own right, and here they carry the names of men who shaped both the war for independence and the legal order that followed it.
Let the architecture tell you about time. The present church dates from the 1820s, but the congregation reaches back to the 1740s, and the site holds burials older than the building above them. You are looking at a place that outlived its own first structure — continuity you can stand inside.
Lancaster makes a fine anchor for a founding-era road trip through southeastern Pennsylvania. The town itself is layered with colonial and Revolutionary history, and St. James' rewards the visitor who comes not just to glance at a marker but to read the churchyard and imagine the living men behind the names.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · George Ross
- · Edward Hand
- · Edward Shippen
- · William Atlee
- · Jasper Yeates
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Presbyterian Church
Lancaster, PA · est. 1984
This Lancaster congregation traces its roots to 1742, completing its first building here in 1770 with the current edifice dedicated in 1851. Its first regular pastor, the Rev. John D. Woodhull, was a Revolutionary patriot, and among its members was James Buchanan, the 15th President of the United States. The church's long life spans the colonial era, the Revolution, and the antebellum decades of national growth.
Shippen House
Lancaster, PA · est. 1950
Edward Shippen was one of colonial Lancaster's leading citizens, a lawyer and judge who chaired the local Committee of Observation as the Revolution approached. His home stood here for three decades in the mid-1700s, an era when Lancaster was among the largest inland towns in the colonies. He is remembered too as grandfather of Peggy Shippen, who married Benedict Arnold and became entangled in the most infamous treason of the war.
Joseph Simon (1712-1804)
Lancaster, PA · est. 2006
In the mid-1700s, Lancaster sat on the edge of the British colonies' expanding frontier, a bustling inland hub where traders outfitted expeditions toward the Ohio country and beyond. Joseph Simon, a Jewish merchant, built a far-reaching network of trade and land ventures that reached as far as the Mississippi, and when the Revolution came he helped arm the Continental cause. His home doubled as one of the earliest gathering places for Jewish worship west of Philadelphia.
George Ross
Lancaster, PA · est. 1950
George Ross settled at Lancaster around 1751 and became a soldier, jurist, and ardent patriot in the cause of American independence. As a Pennsylvania delegate to the Continental Congress, he signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The site of his country house, nine blocks north on Ross Street, is now marked by a monument; Ross died in 1779, in the midst of the Revolution he helped launch.