Pilger Ruh
Bethel Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
"Pilgrim's Rest" was the name given to this spring on the Tulpehocken Path by Count Zinzendorf, the Moravian missionary, on his journey to the Indian towns of Shamokin and Wyoming in 1742.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In 1742, Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf, the Moravian leader traveling among the Native peoples of Pennsylvania, paused at this spring along the Tulpehocken Path and named it "Pilgrim's Rest." The path was an ancient Indian route linking European settlements to the Native towns of Shamokin and Wyoming, and Zinzendorf's journey was part of the Moravians' extensive missionary work among the region's Indigenous nations.
Why it matters
The spring marks the meeting of two worlds along a Native trail, where German-speaking Moravian missionaries sought common ground with Pennsylvania's Indian communities on the eve of decades of upheaval.
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Related people
- · Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf
Related events
- · Moravian missions to the Pennsylvania Indians
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Tulpehocken Path
Bethel Township, PA · est. 1952
This ridge once carried the Tulpehocken Path, a Native trail linking the Iroquois town of Shamokin—at present-day Sunbury—with the fertile Tulpehocken Valley to the southeast. Along it traveled Indian ambassadors journeying to treat with "Brother Onas," the Iroquois name for William Penn and the proprietors who followed him. The path was a channel of the careful diplomacy that governed Pennsylvania's early relations with the Six Nations.
Tulpehocken Path
Pine Grove Township, PA · est. 1949
The Tulpehocken Path was a key overland route through the Blue Mountain, threading the "Gaps of the Swatara" toward the Iroquois council fire at Onondaga in New York. In 1743 the celebrated interpreter Conrad Weiser passed here alongside naturalist John Bartram and mapmaker Lewis Evans, carrying peace messages from Virginia to the Six Nations to defuse frontier tensions. Their journey was part of the delicate diplomacy that kept an uneasy peace between colonists and the powerful Iroquois Confederacy.
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.
One Red Rose - Caspar Wistar PLAQUE
Jackson Township, PA · est. 1930
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.