Tulpehocken Evangelical and Reformed Church
Jackson Township, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Organized in 1727 by Tulpehocken settlers. Since 1745, one red rose has been paid annually by the Church to the heirs of Caspar Wistar as rental for the land granted by him for erection of the second place of worship. Since 1902, a white rose, a token of appreciation, has been given to Wistar''s descendants.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
The living tradition of the annual rose rent preserves a charming custom of colonial land tenure and marks the deep roots of Pennsylvania's German immigrant communities.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1700s, Pennsylvania was one of the great destinations of the age for people fleeing hardship in Europe. William Penn's colony had promised religious tolerance and available land, and word traveled fast through the German-speaking states along the Rhine, where war, heavy taxation, and hard winters had made life precarious. Thousands of these "Palatines" crossed the Atlantic and pushed inland to farm.
The Tulpehocken Valley, in what is now Lebanon County, drew many of them. It was good ground — rolling, fertile, watered by creeks — and by the 1720s German families were clearing fields, raising barns, and, as they had in the old country, gathering to worship. A church was not an afterthought for these settlers; it was one of the first institutions a frontier community built, the anchor around which a scattered farming population became a congregation.
This marker records the beginnings of one such congregation in 1727, only a few decades into the colony's life. It belongs to the deep German-immigrant history that gave central Pennsylvania its enduring "Pennsylvania Dutch" character — a culture of faith, farming, and stubborn continuity that still shapes the region.
People & events
The congregation was organized in 1727 by the Tulpehocken settlers themselves — ordinary farming families who wanted a place to worship in their own language and tradition. Like many frontier churches, it would need land and buildings, and that is where a Philadelphia merchant named Caspar Wistar enters the story.
Wistar was himself a German immigrant who had made good in the colony, and he granted land for the congregation's second house of worship. But the terms he set have kept his name alive far beyond ordinary land records. Beginning in 1745, the church agreed to pay him — and after him, his heirs — a single red rose each year as rent. It was a real and binding arrangement, not a legend: a token payment of the kind sometimes used in old land grants, where the rent is nominal and the true purpose is to acknowledge the grantor's gift year after year.
The tradition took on a second, gentler gesture in the twentieth century. Since 1902, the congregation has also given a white rose to Wistar's descendants — no longer rent owed, but thanks offered, a way of turning a legal obligation into an act of gratitude and remembrance.
Its place in the American story
America's founding story is often told through cities and statesmen, but a great deal of the country was actually built by immigrant farmers who arrived with little and put down roots one field at a time. The Tulpehocken settlers were part of that broader movement — the German-speaking wave that made Pennsylvania one of the most culturally diverse colonies in early America.
The annual rose rent preserves something that is easy to lose sight of: how land was actually held and passed along in colonial America. A "peppercorn" payment like a single rose was a legal custom, a way of keeping a grant on the books without a burdensome sum changing hands. Very few such arrangements survive as living practice. This one does, which turns a dry point of property law into something you can actually watch happen.
That continuity is the real significance. The same congregation, on ground tied to the same eighteenth-century gift, still marks the bargain each year. It is a small, unbroken thread connecting today's community to the immigrant families who first gathered here nearly three centuries ago.
If you visit
Come for the quiet, and come understanding what you are looking at. This is farm-country Pennsylvania, where a church stands as the settled heart of a landscape that has been worked for generations. The setting itself tells the story of the people who cleared and planted this valley.
If you can time a visit to the annual rose ceremony, you will see something genuinely rare: a payment first agreed to in the 1740s, still honored, a red rose changing hands as rent and a white rose given back in thanks. Ask locally about when it takes place — it is the kind of small-town tradition that rewards a traveler willing to plan around it.
Even on an ordinary day, the marker is a good reminder that history is not only battles and famous names. Pair a stop here with a wider drive through Pennsylvania Dutch country — the barns, the fields, the old stone churches — and the rose rent stops feeling like a curiosity and starts feeling like a key to the whole region's roots.
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
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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.
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
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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.