Shrewsbury Parish developed in colonial Kent County, Maryland, and its churchyard was in use long before the present chapel. John Cadwalader, born in 1742, became a prosperous Philadelphia merchant and a leader of the city's volunteer military associations. His career connected commerce, politics, militia organization, and the resistance that became the American Revolution.

Cadwalader commanded Pennsylvania troops during Washington's winter campaign of 1776–1777. Ice prevented his column from completing a planned Delaware crossing in support of the first Battle of Trenton. He crossed later, joined operations in New Jersey, and fought at Princeton. His militia service demonstrated both the importance and limitations of short-term citizen forces operating beside the Continental Army.

After the campaign, Cadwalader continued to support the Patriot cause and became involved in political disputes over wartime leadership. He later moved to his estate in Kent County. He died of illness in February 1786 at about forty-four years old and was buried in Shrewsbury churchyard. His grave therefore predates the chapel that visitors see today.

The present rural church was constructed in 1834 and is commonly described as the third building used by the congregation. Its simple form reflects nineteenth-century Episcopal parish architecture, while the older burial ground preserves eighteenth-century associations. Calling the structure itself Cadwalader's Revolutionary chapel would collapse two different periods and obscure how congregations rebuild while keeping the same sacred landscape.

Shrewsbury Chapel is significant as a continuing parish site and as Cadwalader's documented burial place. The cemetery also contains many people whose lives were local rather than nationally famous. Conservation should protect graves, paths, setting, and church fabric while distinguishing their dates. Cadwalader's marker invites study of the Trenton-Princeton campaign, but the wider churchyard reveals the families, enslaved and free labor, agriculture, and worship that shaped Kent County before and after independence. Cadwalader was also a wealthy slaveholder, and his military service existed within an Atlantic economy sustained by bondage. A complete interpretation can acknowledge Patriot commitment and battlefield leadership while examining the labor and property relationships that supported his status. Church vestry minutes, wills, inventories, and estate papers may recover people omitted from older grave narratives. This broader evidence connects a celebrated officer's burial to the social order of the Chesapeake community in which he spent his final years. Cadwalader's grave also demonstrates continuity of place through architectural replacement. The congregation could demolish or abandon older worship buildings while preserving the burial ground, allowing an eighteenth-century military association to remain beside a nineteenth-century chapel still serving later generations.