ODESSA, Del. (AP)- As housing developments sprouted on former farms off U.S. 13, stately Old Drawyers Church stayed picture-postcard-perfect, perched on a creekside hill about a mile north of Odessa, with a graveyard where timeworn stones testify to its three centuries of service.
This Sunday, church supporters will honor its 300th anniversary, celebrate its distinguished past and preservation, then dedicate a Delaware rarity: a new cemetery.
The 2 p.m. ecumenical service, open to the public, features Gov. Jack Markell speaking on the theme "300 Years of Faith, Family and Friends." Refreshments will be served afterward in old-fashioned style under a tent by Drawyer Creek, for which the church is named.
The church has just one service a year. It has no minister. Or congregation. Those simple facts are key parts of its story, steeped in history as well as mystery.
"It's a beautiful church with a beautiful past, it really is," said J. Christopher Roberts, a former New Castle County councilman who helps maintain the site.
The original congregation's roots date to the 1670s, when mainly Swedish and Dutch immigrants gathered to worship, state records say. The congregation bought the land and built a hewn-log church in 1711.
"We were the first Presbyterian church in St. Georges Hundred," said spokesman Douglas Bennett of Bear. "And we're still a member of the Presbytery."
Raising money for a new building took many years. Delaware Colonial leader Thomas McKean, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, helped raise money.
In 1773, the current church replaced the original. It is a two-story Georgian structure, about 54 by 40 feet, of handmade bricks, with wooden pews, each with its own door and latch. Repairs of pew latches and other minor work was done this week to prepare for Sunday's service. The cedar shake roof also was recently replaced.
The pews once seated prominent Colonial families, high-degree Masons and state leaders -- while the balcony was for servants and, some say, members' slaves.
The church remained active for generations. But by 1861, its congregation dissipated. Gone.
"What happened isn't really clear," Bennett said. Some members began to attend church in Odessa, he said, but the full facts of why the church was abandoned remain a mystery.
Even the date of its final use is lost to time. "By 1869, or some say 1865, no one was attending here," he said. Vacant and unused, the church deteriorated.
In 1895, the Friends of Old Drawyers Church was created to keep up the church, its grounds and traditions. "That was formed by my great-great-great uncle Lewis Vandegrift," Bennett said. "He was the first president."
And Bennett is president now.
His predecessor- who had the unpaid post for two decades- was Gov. Sherman W. Tribbitt, who died last year and is buried beside the church. Another former governor is buried nearby-Walter W. Bacon, for whom the Governor Bacon Health Center near Delaware City was named.
Among other prominent burials is Harry B. Roberts Jr., the 1960-66 president of New Castle County Levy Court, replaced by New Castle County Council.
Both he and his father served as president of the friends' group -- one of the state's earliest historic preservation organizations -- listed on a plaque in the church.
J. Christopher Roberts is the friends' vice president. "Not only was I baptized here, I was married here- twice," said Roberts, an Odessa-area farmer who plans to be buried there, too.
As vice president, he handles arrangements for burials and the church's use for weddings, baptisms and funerals. Fees for such services and donations are the group's only income.
But Roberts soon could be busier. After Sunday's service, the friends will dedicate their new cemetery across U.S. 13.
Tribbitt accepted donation of about five acres from the H. Rodney Sharp Farm after it was cut off from the rest of the farm by the construction of Del. 1. Board member Robert C. McDowell of Middletown worked to help the friends purchase two adjoining parcels from the state. "He made that cemetery happen," Bennett said.
With about 14 acres, it has space for several thousand burials. Roberts said it will help fill a shortage of burial space in southern New Castle County at a beautiful site listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
