Frederick Leaser - PLAQUE
Lynn Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
whose homestead is located one mile to the north in September 1777 with his farm team hauled the Liberty Bell from Philadelphia to Allentown where it was concealed in Zion Reformed Church. His grandson Jesse Follweiler conveyed on the same wagon the liberty pole erected on this spot January 1st, 1833 --- It bore the Legend Jackson * Liberty and against nullification.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In September 1777, with British troops advancing on Philadelphia, patriots feared the great State House bell would be melted for cannon. Local farmer Frederick Leaser hitched his farm team and hauled the bell north to Allentown, where it was hidden beneath the floor of Zion Reformed Church until the danger passed. More than half a century later his grandson used the same wagon to carry a liberty pole to this spot, its Jacksonian legend against nullification tying one generation's revolution to the next's fight over the Union.
Why it matters
It preserves the humble, human side of the Revolution — an ordinary farmer whose wagon helped save one of America's most enduring symbols of independence.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the late summer of 1777, the American Revolution had turned toward Pennsylvania. British forces under General Howe were bearing down on Philadelphia, then the young nation's capital and the seat of the Continental Congress. When a capital falls, its symbols become spoils — and few objects were more symbolically loaded than the great bell that had hung in the Pennsylvania State House.
The fear was practical, not sentimental. Bells were cast from bronze, and bronze could be melted and recast into cannon. An occupying army that seized the city's bells could quite literally turn them against the people who had rung them. So as the British approached, patriots scrambled to move church and public bells out of reach.
This corner of Lehigh County was then a stretch of German-speaking farm country in the Pennsylvania backcountry, a day's hard hauling north of the city. Its people were farmers, its roads were rough, and its wagons were built for grain and hay — which is exactly why one of them was pressed into a very different kind of service.
People & events
The story on this plaque belongs to Frederick Leaser, a local farmer whose homestead stood a mile to the north. In September 1777, with the danger closing in, Leaser hitched his own farm team and joined the effort to carry the State House bell out of Philadelphia and north to Allentown for safekeeping.
There the bell was hidden away beneath the floor of Zion Reformed Church, tucked out of sight until the British threat had passed. It was not a soldier's feat of arms but a farmer's feat of nerve and labor — the kind of quiet, unglamorous work that keeps a cause alive when armies are in retreat.
The plaque carries the story forward a full generation. In 1833, Leaser's grandson, Jesse Follweiler, used that same wagon to bring a liberty pole to this very spot. Its legend paired the name of Andrew Jackson with liberty and set itself against "nullification" — the doctrine, then at a boiling point, that a state could reject a federal law. One family's wagon thus appears twice in the record: once saving a symbol of independence, once planted in a fight over what that independence would hold together.
Its place in the American story
The bell Leaser helped move is known to Americans today as the Liberty Bell, one of the most recognized emblems of the nation's founding. Its survival was not inevitable. Symbols endure only when ordinary people decide they are worth the risk of saving, and this marker records exactly such a decision, made with a farm team on a country road.
What makes the site unusual is the way it links two great national crises across more than half a century. The 1777 rescue belongs to the Revolution and the birth of the Union. The 1833 liberty pole belongs to the Nullification Crisis, when the question was whether that Union could hold — a dispute over federal authority that foreshadowed the far greater rupture to come.
That a single family, a single wagon, and a single patch of Pennsylvania ground touch both moments is a reminder that American history is not a series of separate chapters but a continuous thread, carried forward by the descendants of the people who lived the earlier ones.
If you visit
This is a memorial plaque in the rolling farm country of Lynn Township, and the pleasure of visiting is in the setting as much as the stone. The homestead it points to lies about a mile north, and the surrounding landscape of fields and low ridges has kept much of the rural character it would have had when a farm wagon rolled through carrying its famous cargo.
Stand here for a moment and picture the logistics of it — the slow pace of a loaded team, the anxiety of moving something precious along exposed roads. The distance to Allentown, where the bell was concealed, is short by car and considerable by ox-drawn wagon, and appreciating that gap is part of appreciating what was done.
It fits naturally into a Lehigh Valley history route. Allentown itself preserves the memory of the bell's hiding place, so you can pair this quiet rural marker with the more developed sites in the city and trace the whole journey in an afternoon — from the farm that supplied the wagon to the church that supplied the floorboards.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Frederick Leaser
- · Jesse Follweiler
Related events
- · Concealment of the Liberty Bell, 1777
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Abraham Blumer - PLAQUE
South Whitehall Township, PA · est. 1929
Born in Grabs, Switzerland, Abraham Blumer crossed the Atlantic to serve the German Reformed congregations of the Lehigh Valley, ministering at Jordan, Union, Egypt, and Allentown from 1771 to 1801. During the Revolution he also served as chaplain to the First Battalion of the Northampton County Militia. He spent three decades tending to the spiritual life of his frontier congregations and is buried in this cemetery.
Allentown
South Whitehall Township, PA · est. 1947
Founded in 1762 by the colonial leader and jurist William Allen, this town went by the name Northampton until 1834. During the Revolution its distance from the Delaware made it a safe haven — the Liberty Bell was hidden here in 1777 and wounded Continental soldiers were treated nearby. Chartered as a city in 1867, it became a long-lived hub of textile mills and cement works.
Allentown
South Whitehall Township, PA · est. 1947
William Allen, a leading colonial jurist, established this settlement in 1762; it answered to the name Northampton until 1834. In 1777 it sheltered the Liberty Bell from advancing British forces and hosted Revolutionary wounded. Incorporated as a city in 1867, it flourished as a center of textiles and cement manufacture.
Allentown
Whitehall, PA · est. 1947
Laid out in 1762 by the powerful colonial jurist William Allen, this Lehigh Valley town spent its first seventy years known as Northampton before taking its founder's name. In the anxious autumn of 1777, as the British occupied Philadelphia, the Liberty Bell was spirited here for safekeeping and Revolutionary wounded were nursed in the town. It grew through the 19th century into a humming center of textiles and cement, earning its city charter in 1867.