Sisters' House
Bethlehem, Northampton County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Built in 1744. Brothers' House until 1748. Here unmarried sisters plied many of the arts and crafts for women. In 1778, Pulaski's banner was made by them.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Built in 1744 and first used as a Brothers' House, this Bethlehem building soon became home to the Moravian community's unmarried women, who lived and worked here practicing the arts and crafts assigned to the sisterhood. In 1778, during the Revolutionary War, the sisters stitched the banner carried by Casimir Pulaski's cavalry legion—a piece of needlework later immortalized in American memory. The Single Sisters' choir was a distinctive feature of Moravian communal life, giving women a defined economic and spiritual role.
Why it matters
The house preserves the story of colonial women's skilled labor and connects that work directly to the Revolutionary cause through the famous Pulaski banner.
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Related people
- · Casimir Pulaski
Related events
- · American Revolution
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Pulaski's Banner
Bethlehem, PA · est. 1974
While the Polish cavalry officer Casimir Pulaski guarded this area in 1778, the Moravian women of Bethlehem stitched a crimson banner for his legion, which his horsemen carried until he fell at the Siege of Savannah in 1779. The gift became one of the Revolution's cherished legends, later immortalized in Longfellow's verse "Hymn of the Moravian Nuns." The story bound a foreign volunteer's sacrifice to the quiet devotion of a Pennsylvania religious community.
Bell House
Bethlehem, PA · est. 1953
Raised in 1745 by Bethlehem's Moravians, this sturdy Germanic building first sheltered the community as a Family House before opening in 1749 as a school for girls — an unusually early commitment to educating young women in colonial America. Its turret carried the town's first clock in 1746 and a bell cast right in Bethlehem that still rings, while a weathervane fashioned as the church seal crowns the roof. The details speak to a close-knit religious settlement that built for permanence and for learning.
Brethren's House
Bethlehem, PA · est. 1964
The Moravians who founded Bethlehem built this stone house in 1748 to lodge their unmarried men, and it quickly became a hive of colonial-era craft — a bell foundry, silkworm raising, and other trades that made the community largely self-sufficient. During the Revolution it sheltered wounded Continental soldiers as a military hospital, and after 1815 it opened as a girls' school before becoming part of Moravian College and a museum.
Hilda Doolittle (H.D.)
Bethlehem, PA · est. 1982
The poet Hilda Doolittle — known to the literary world simply as H.D. — was born in Bethlehem in 1886 and grew into one of the pioneering voices of the Imagist movement. Reaching back to ancient Greece for her spare, luminous style, she pursued what her marker calls the Hellenic spirit and a classic beauty of expression across a career that spanned continents. She died in Zurich in 1961 and rests in nearby Nisky Hill Cemetery.