In The True Spirit of Independence Day: Don't Miss This!

Saint Paul's Church is one of the birthplaces of the American Revolution. One of New York's oldest parishes (founded in 1665), the church stood at the edge of Eastchester village green, the site of the "Great Election" (1733), which raised the issues of Freedom of Religion and Freedom of the Press. It was used as a hospital following the important Revolutionary War Battle at Pell's Point in 1776, and was the scene of various military developments for the next six years.

The first church was built by the town when the residents were dissenters, Puritans who opposed the Church of England. But the British, in an effort to more effectively manage the Royal Colony of New York, legally established the Anglican Church in Westchester County in 1702. Town residents had to accept this new form of church administration, and pay the salaries of ministers assigned to the parish by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.

The election for an open seat in the New York assembly on Oct. 29, 1733, is one of the better known political events in colonial America. Held at what is today St. Paul’s Church National Historic Site, in Mt. Vernon, it led to the arrest of the printer John Peter Zenger, whose acquittal in a seditious libel case in 1735 is seen as a foundation of the free press in America. The first issue of Zenger’s New York Weekly Journal carried a lengthy report on the famous election, producing one of the few complete accounts of a colonial election available to historians.

This historic site opened to the public in 1984 and is operated under a cooperative agreement with the Society of the National Shrine of the Bill of Rights at Saint Paul's Church, Eastchester.

To learn more about the history of St. Paul's Church, click here.

The national historic site has its 135th Independence Day celebration at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.