One Red Rose - Caspar Wistar PLAQUE
Jackson Township, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
One red rose is annually paid by Trinity Reformed Church to the heirs of Casper Wistar, of Philadelphia, who in 1738 gave one hundred acres of land for church purposes. The congregation was formed by Reformed families among the Tulpehocken settlers. The first communion service was conducted by Reverend John Phillip Boehm, Oct. 18, 1727.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In 1738 Philadelphia glassmaker Caspar Wistar gave one hundred acres to a congregation of German Reformed families among the Tulpehocken settlers, asking in return only one red rose paid each year. That symbolic rent is still honored by Trinity Reformed Church, a living link to the region's colonial German community. The congregation's roots reached back to 1727, when Reverend John Philip Boehm led its first communion service.
Why it matters
The story preserves the world of Pennsylvania's early German immigrants, whose churches and customs helped shape the colony's enduring religious and cultural diversity.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1700s, a great wave of German-speaking immigrants poured into Pennsylvania, drawn by William Penn's promise of religious freedom and cheap, fertile land. Among them were Reformed and Lutheran families from the war-battered Rhineland, part of the group often remembered as the Palatines. Many arrived by a roundabout path, some coming down into the Tulpehocken region after first settling elsewhere.
They brought their faith with them, but not always their ministers. On the Pennsylvania frontier, congregations often formed before any ordained pastor arrived, gathering in homes and barns and holding tight to the worship they had known in Europe. Building a church was one of the first things a German community did to put down roots.
This marker belongs to that founding generation of Pennsylvania's German settlements. It records how a scattered group of Reformed families in the Tulpehocken country became a lasting congregation, and how a Philadelphia benefactor helped anchor them to a piece of ground.
People & events
The congregation's first communion, the inscription tells us, was led in 1727 by the Reverend John Philip Boehm — a figure central to the story of the German Reformed church in colonial Pennsylvania. Boehm began as a schoolmaster who stepped in to serve congregations that had no minister, and he became a tireless organizer of Reformed worship across the region.
A decade later, in 1738, the Philadelphia glassmaker Caspar Wistar gave the congregation one hundred acres for church purposes. Wistar had come from Germany himself and prospered in his adopted colony, and his gift helped a frontier congregation secure the land a permanent church needed. In return he asked for something almost poetic: the payment of a single red rose each year.
That symbolic rent — a token so small it could only mean goodwill — is still honored by Trinity Reformed Church to Wistar's heirs. It turns a routine land transfer into a living ritual, one that quietly re-enacts the founding bargain every year. (The marker preserves the older spellings of both men's names; the tradition itself has never lapsed.)
Its place in the American story
The one-red-rose rent is charming, but the deeper significance is what it preserves: the world of Pennsylvania's early German immigrants, whose churches, language, and customs made the colony one of the most religiously and culturally diverse places in early America.
German-speaking settlers would become one of the largest ethnic groups in colonial Pennsylvania, and their congregations were the backbone of community life — schools, charity, record-keeping, and identity all radiated outward from the local church. A congregation that formed in 1727 and secured its land in 1738 is a case study in how that culture took durable root.
Wistar's gift also reflects a distinctly American pattern: private generosity, often from a successful immigrant, underwriting the institutions of a young community. In honoring the annual rose, the church keeps faith not just with one benefactor but with the whole immigrant founding it represents.
If you visit
This is a place where a small tradition carries a large history, so come ready to appreciate continuity. The value here is not a spectacular ruin but the quiet fact of a congregation still keeping a promise first made in the 1700s.
Take in the setting of the church and its grounds, and let the plainness speak — German Reformed communities favored a modest, unshowy dignity that still marks many of their old churches. The surrounding Tulpehocken country is gentle farmland, the kind of ground that convinced settlers to stay.
Most of all, savor the idea of the red rose. On a road trip through Pennsylvania Dutch country, a marker like this rewards the traveler who slows down to notice how the past is not always behind glass — sometimes it is a single flower, paid once a year, keeping a nearly three-hundred-year-old bargain alive.
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
- · Caspar Wistar
- · John Philip Boehm
Related events
- · Founding of Trinity Reformed Church, 1727
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Tulpehocken Evangelical and Reformed Church
Jackson Township, PA · est. 1954
German-speaking settlers of the Tulpehocken Valley organized this congregation in 1727, part of the wave of Palatine immigrants who put down roots in colonial Pennsylvania. When merchant Caspar Wistar granted land for their second house of worship, he asked in return a single red rose paid each year — a quaint "quit-rent" the church has honored ever since, answered since 1902 by a white rose given back to Wistar's descendants.
Fort Zeller
Millcreek Township, PA · est. 1947
Half a mile north stands Fort Zeller, reckoned the oldest surviving fort in Pennsylvania. It was built in 1723 by Palatine German pioneers who had migrated from New York's Schoharie Valley to settle the Tulpehocken country, and rebuilt in 1745. In dangerous years it served as a fortified refuge for frontier families during clashes with Native peoples.
Jacob Albright
Heidelberg Township, PA · est. 1967
Jacob Albright, the son of German immigrants, grew up among the hardworking farm families of eastern Pennsylvania and turned to preaching in their own language after a season of personal grief. He founded the Evangelical Association, a revivalist movement that ministered to German-speaking country folk, and later rose to prominence in the broader Methodist tradition. He is buried nearby at Albright Memorial Church.
Christ Little Tulpehocken Church
Jefferson Township, PA · est. 1963
Organized in 1729, this is one of the earliest Lutheran congregations in the region, gathered among the German settlers of the Tulpehocken valley by the traveling missionary Rev. John Caspar Stoever, Jr., who began its parish records in 1730. An early log meetinghouse gave way in 1809 to the present stone church. Since 1853 it has been shared as a union church by Lutheran and Reformed worshippers.