New Jersey's oldest Episcopal parish...

St. Peter's was established in Perth Amboy in 1698.  Construction of the first church here was begun in 1719 and the churchyard went into use in 1722.  The original building, compact and narrow with a prominent steeple at it's entrance, was replaced by the present structure, designed by brick manufacturer and architect Alfred Hall, in 1852.  A series of fine English stained-glass windows (dated to the early 1900s) depict themes of the Bible and of colonial times.  The elegant Gothic Revival architecture of the main building, along with it's more modern day entrance and steeple, keep guard over the remains of some of the most well-known citizens of Perth Amboy's history as well as some of those whose names are long gone.  Rising high above the waterfront bluff, the church is visible from Raritan Bay, indeed even from the shore of Staten Island.  In the churchyard, vaults house such notables as Thomas Gordon, an original settler from Scotland, William Dunlap, known as the 'Father of American Drama' and Thomas Mundy Peterson, the first African-American to vote next to the everyday citizens who lived, worked and died here as well as the bodies of those deemed too "lowly" at the time to even be signified by a headstone. All are now equally respected.