Cow Marsh Old School Baptist Church
a.k.a. Mount Moriah Baptist Church
NE of Sandtown on DE 10, Sandtown, DECow Marsh, or Mount Moriah, was the fourth Baptist Church established in Delaware. Today it is the oldest Baptist congregation in the state still holding regular services. Architecturally, it is unusual because it has survived since its construction in 1872, virtually unchanged.
Baptists were among the first dissenters to answer William Penn's invitation for religious minorities to settle in his territorial claims in the new world. In the Lower Counties on Delaware, now the state of Delaware, a Baptist congregation was worshiping as early as 1703.
Delaware's first Baptist congregation was organized in Wales in 1701, and settled as a body in western New Castle County in 1703. Its members constituted themselves as a "church emigrant" before leaving their homeland. They traveled together until they settled on the 30, 000-acre grant that Penn had awarded to several of their countrymen.
The Welsh Tract congregation was the parent of other Baptist congregations, including Cow Marsh, Bryn Zion, and Mispillion in Kent County, and others as far away as the Cape Fear River in North Carolina. Bryn Zion's corporate body still exists, but the church is no longer standing.
According to Morgan Edwards, the chronicler of early Baptist churches, the Welsh Tract congregation introduced singing, laying-on of hands, church covenants, and other practices among the Baptists of the middle colonies.
John Sutton, pastor at Welsh Tract, preached in western Kent County during 1780. In 1781, the Cow Marsh church was constituted. In 1782, it was admitted to the Philadelphia Association. By 1791, the congregation was prepared to build a meeting house. The first building was erected before 1796.
On September 7, 1793, Job Meredith conveyed a 99-year lease on the original portion of the church site to Joseph Flood, "professor of theology." The place was described in the deed of lease as formerly called "the stand," but now called "Mount Moriah." Flood transferred Mount Moriah on June 4, 1796 to the trustees. By now, a meeting house had been erected on the site. Another acre was added in 1926. The present frame chapel was completed in December 1872.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1976.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.