Every school child knows the story of the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 to practice their religion free from persecution in the Old World.

But Butler County was host to another group seeking religious freedom who established a communal religious colony in what is now Harmony in 1804.

Officially known as the United Society of Germans, this group was better known as Harmonists or Economites, according to the “20th Century History of Butler and Butler County, Pa. and Representative Citizens” edited by James A. McKee, published 1909.

The road to Harmony began in the Duchy of Wurttemberg in Germany when the founder of the Harmonists, George Rapp, was born on a farm in the village of Iptingen on Oct. 28, 1757.

“The History” noted he was an avid reader of the Bible “with pronounced views on its interpretation.” He favored common ownership of property and a return to the simplicity of the early Christian life.

“The History of Butler County” published in 1895 by Unigraphic said as Rapp grew older he “took issue with the rationalism of the times and the practices and forms of the established church.”

According to Katina Koontz, executive director of the Harmony Museum and organization board member Nancy Wilson, the Harmonists’ beliefs — they were separatists, Anabaptists (believing in adult baptism), pacifists and millennialists (believing in the imminent Second Coming of Christ) — were all different from the Lutheran Church in Germany at that time. In George Rapp’s opinion, the church had become too worldly.

When he was around 30, Rapp began to publicly announce his beliefs and expound on his ideas on the Scriptures and he gathered an estimated 300 families as followers. However this brought him into conflict with the German government and the Lutheran Church.

When Rapp stopped attending Lutheran services and instead held services in his own home, he was investigated, fined and briefly imprisoned.

According to Koontz and Allen, in 1803, Rapp and his son Johann, along with several friends, sailed from Amsterdam to Baltimore to visit parts of Maryland, Pennsylvania and Ohio looking for suitable land. Ohio was judged too far from civilization, so they signed a deed in what is now Harmony in 1804.

They bought the land from Dettmar Basse, who sold Rapp and his followers nearly 4,000 acres of land. According to “History of Butler County” written by C. Hale and published in 1927. Basse was a scholarly German “with large ideas and ambitions.” After serving as a diplomat for the city of Frankfurt during the Napoleonic Wars, he came to America in 1802 and bought 10,000 acres in Beaver and Butler counties with the aim of establishing a baronial estate. He founded Zelienople which was named after his daughter, Zelie.

Three hundred of Rapp’s followers arrived in Baltimore on July 4, 1804. Meanwhile Rapp and a party of workers founded Harmony and prepared homes for the new colony’s members. A second group led by Frederick Rapp arrived six weeks later in Philadelphia, followed by a third group, which instead located in Lycoming County.

According to the “20th Century History,” There were 135 families in Harmony when the Harmony Society was formed on Feb. 15, 1805. A feature of Harmony was that German was the official language, perhaps due to Rapp’s unfamiliarity with English.

“The Historical Gazetteer of Butler County, Pa.” by Luanne Eisler, Glenn McKnight and Janet Smith” published in 2006 noted the Harmonites maintained equality in all things. “Possessions went into a common fund, houses were built as much alike as possible and the style of dress was uniform.”

Koontz and Wilson said the village was run as a commune, in which food, housing, furniture, clothing and medicine were provided to all members as long as they worked hard for the society.

All members agreed to give up their personal property for the benefit of the community as a whole. In return, they would be supplied with, according to William Wilson’s book, “The Angel and the Serpent,” “all the necessaries for life, such as clothing, meat, drink, lodging for the well and the sick, for the aged and those unfit for labor and for the children of those parents who should die.”

Anyone wishing to withdraw from the society, according to Koontz and Wilson, would renounce all claims to compensations except for the value of the property that they had originally brought to the community. Later, this lead to numerous lawsuits in the Society’s later community of Economy.

All members worked to make money for the society. They also apprenticed orphans to assist with the work. In addition, welcoming orphans helped to keep the Harmonists’ numbers up in their communal society, since celibacy was adopted two years after arriving in Harmony.

According to Koontz and Allen, at its height, the Harmonists had about 800 members living in Harmony.

The new settlers were incredibly industrious. In the first year, the Harmonists had cleared 150 acres and built 50 log cabins, a grist mill, barn, machine shop and a house of worship.

By 1806, 600 acres were cleared, a 4-acre vineyard established and a tannery, distillery, saw mill and a large brick granary were built. The history said, “The progress was astonishing.”

The colony’s industry was illustrated by 1809, when it produced 6,000 bushels of corn, 4,000 bushels of wheat, 10,000 bushels of potatoes, 400 bushels of flax and hemp, 50 gallons of sweet oil, thousands of gallons of whiskey and “more beef, mutton and pork than the community could use,” according to the “20th Century History.”

All work done in Harmony was directed by Rapp.

“A man being employed at one kind of work at all times, except rarely when a large force was needed for the harvest,” according to the history.

The colony was run on a share-and-share-alike basis with none poor and none rich. “They lived in happiness in the midst of plenty,” said the history.

Koontz and Wilson noted the Harmonists did have financial success through their hard work in Harmony, it wasn’t until years later at their third and final settlement in Economy that the society became wealthy.

Koontz noted, that in 1809, only five years after their arrival in Harmony from Germany, “They were an important economic factor in Western Pa.

“They owned around 7,000 acres of land, 2,000 of which they cleared and cultivated, built 150 homes, plus mills, a church, barns, a hotel, a dam, a labyrinth, as well as three tiny outlying hamlets for those members who wanted the advantage of Harmony without submitting to is strict customs, Ramsthal, Eidenau and Oelbrunn,” she said.

According to the Immigrant Entrepreneurship website, Rapp’s agricultural success stemmed from a broader understanding of horticulture based on his knowledge of monastery gardens and sustainable farming practices. After emigrating to the United States, he developed a horticultural blueprint that included quarter-acre house gardens, greenhouse cultivation and large-scale farming. Rapp employed a moveable greenhouse to grow exotic fruits such as oranges, lemons and figs.

A woolen factory was established in 1810. The women of Harmony developed skill in weaving and spinning. The Harmonists raised Merino sheep which produced high quality wool. The clothes made from Merino wool were very expensive to purchase at that time.

“While there may have been some animosity from outsiders, their reputation as impeccable craftsmen was undisputed,” Koontz said. “People were willing to pay above price for Harmonist products.”

Koontz said that the success the Harmonists accomplished in the 10 years they lived in Harmony can be summed up by their amazing talent, incredible work ethic and the collaborative effort of the Harmony Society.

While the Harmonists’ material success was everywhere visible, their spiritual beliefs were a little more nebulous.

The “20th Century History” said, “It was impossible to say with exactness what his views were along spiritual lines because they changed as the years went by.” But in general Rapp’s views included leading blameless lives, celibacy, common ownership of property and a belief in the imminent second coming of Christ. Rapp later determined the Second Coming would occur in 1837, when the world would be destroyed.

In this, the Harmonites were millennialists, believing Jesus Christ was coming to earth in their lifetime to help usher in a thousand-year kingdom of peace on earth. This is perhaps why they believed that people should try to make themselves “pure” and “perfect,” and share things with others while willingly living in communal “harmony” and practicing celibacy. They believed that the old ways of life on earth were coming to an end, and that a new perfect kingdom on earth was about to be realized.

The 1895 history also claimed it was hard to pin down exactly what Rapp’s teachings entailed. It said Rapp believed in Heaven for the just and hell for the unjust, but later that purgatory was “a refining place” for wayward souls.

Rapp believed “celibacy, fasting and prayer brought the practitioner closer to God” but later decided no sexual intercourse at all was preferable.

The Harmonists celebrated three feasts a year beginning in 1805 with whiskey, beer, sauerkraut and rice and ginger cakes served in a large barn and open to all people.

The Feast of Love was celebrated in the early spring, Harvest Home when the small grains, such as winter wheat, rye and oats, were harvested in the late spring or early summer and the Feast of the Ingathering, when all harvesting was finished in the fall. The Harvest Home celebration was continued to be observed in Harmony for years after the Harmonists had departed for Indiana.

Rapp, deciding the Harmony area was not suitable for grape growing, offered the property for sale in 1814, listing 130 buildings, a tavern, a spinning and weaving building, a dying building, a four-story granary, two distilleries, two grist mills, two saw mills, a tannery a potash factory, a hemp mill, a brickyard, a rope walk, a brewery, a smithy, a nail factory, four large barns with stables and seven large sheep barns.

The sale also included 20 buildings and a barn in Ramsthal, a similar number of buildings in Eidenaw and 10 barns in Oelbrunn, as well as 3,000 cleared acres, two orchards, two vineyards, sugar camps and 3,000 sheep, 600 cattle and a number of horses.

According to Koontz and Wilson, their reasons for heading west was the Harmonites wanted more land, the grapes they used to make wine needed a milder climate, the Connoquenessing Creek was unnavigable and roads were practically non-existent and very difficult to travel.

Father Rapp, which he became known as, also wanted to shift from agriculture to more manufacturing.

And, according Koontz and Wilson, outsider dissent may have also added reasons for moving. They were pacifists and therefore did not send men to fight in the War of 1812, much to the annoyance of their non-Harmonist neighbors who were also jealous of their prosperity and suspicious of their communal lifestyle.

Abraham Ziegler, a Mennonite leader from Lehigh County, contracted to buy the whole of the properties for $100,000.

According to Koontz and Wilson, in the spring of 1814, approximately 100 Harmonists loaded on flatboats and floated down the Ohio River and up the Wabash River in what is now the state of Indiana to prepare the site for their new town for the next wave of Harmonists to arrive that fall and the remainder in the spring of 1815. All the Harmonists moved to this new town, which today is known as New Harmony, Ind.

In 1825, the Harmonists returned to Pennsylvania where they started a third Harmony and the village of Economy in Beaver County, where Rapp died in 1847.

However, the Harmonists’ celibacy and their refusal to proselytize to gather new members whittled down their numbers to the point there were only 18 living members left by 1894. The society was dissolved formally in 1906.

Koontz said, “Celibacy, which they adopted in Harmony in anticipation of being pure enough to be part of the Millennium, definitely reduced their numbers.

“Numbers were kept up through the years by adopting orphans and taking in widows, primarily wives, and their children. However, the population aged, and others left because they were angry that Christ had not returned during their lifetime as promised by Father Rapp,” she said.

Today, one of the last remaining vestiges of the Harmonists in Harmony is the old cemetery surrounded by stone walls where deceased Harmonists were laid to rest before the society moved west to Indiana.

“Also, I would like to note that their cemetery is also very unusual,” said Koontz. “They believed all were equal in life and death, so no tombstones mark the almost 100 graves of those who passed away here in Harmony.

“The graves were marked by flowers, but when they moved, they commissioned the Mennonites to build a stone wall around the cemetery to preserve the sacredness of their burial area,” she said.

“The entrance to the cemetery is marked by a large, heavy stone gate that one pushes to enter. This is purposeful by the Harmonists as the revolving door symbolizes eternal life, when you leave this life then you enter eternal life. The shape also mimics the shape of the Tablet of the 10 Commandments,” said Koontz.

Koontz said, “Despite leaving Germany for religious freedom which is not uncommon in history, their story is certainly unique due to their beliefs, particularly celibacy, and their communal living arrangement.”

The Feast of Love was celebrated in the early spring, Harvest Home when the small grains, such as winter wheat, rye and oats, were harvested in the late spring or early summer and the Feast of the Ingathering, when all harvesting was finished in the fall. The Harvest Home celebration was continued to be observed in Harmony for years after the Harmonists had departed for Indiana.

Rapp, deciding the Harmony area was not suitable for grape growing, offered the property for sale in 1814, listing 130 buildings, a tavern, a spinning and weaving building, a dying building, a four-story granary, two distilleries, two grist mills, two saw mills, a tannery a potash factory, a hemp mill, a brickyard, a rope walk, a brewery, a smithy, a nail factory, four large barns with stables and seven large sheep barns.

The sale also included 20 buildings and a barn in Ramsthal, a similar number of buildings in Eidenaw and 10 barns in Oelbrunn, as well as 3,000 cleared acres, two orchards, two vineyards, sugar camps and 3,000 sheep, 600 cattle and a number of horses.

According to Koontz and Wilson, their reasons for heading west was the Harmonites wanted more land, the grapes they used to make wine needed a milder climate, the Connoquenessing Creek was unnavigable and roads were practically non-existent and very difficult to travel.

Father Rapp, which he became known as, also wanted to shift from agriculture to more manufacturing.

And, according Koontz and Wilson, outsider dissent may have also added reasons for moving. They were pacifists and therefore did not sent men to fight in the War of 1812, much to the annoyance of their non-Harmonist neighbors who were also jealous of their prosperity and suspicious of their communal lifestyle.

Abraham Ziegler, a Mennonite leader from Lehigh County, contracted to buy the whole of the properties for $100,000.

According to Koontz and Wilson, in the spring of 1814, approximately 100 Harmonists loaded on flatboats and floated down the Ohio River and up the Wabash River in what is now the state of Indiana to prepare the site for their new town for the next wave of Harmonists to arrive that fall and the remainder in the spring of 1815. All the Harmonists moved to this new town, which today is known as New Harmony, Ind.

In 1825, the Harmonists returned to Pennsylvania where they started a third Harmony and the village of Economy in Beaver County, where Rapp died in 1847.

However, the Harmonists’ celibacy and their refusal to proselytize to gather new members whittled down their numbers to the point there were only 18 living members left by 1894. The society was dissolved formally in 1906.

Koontz said, “Celibacy, which they adopted in Harmony in anticipation of being pure enough to be part of the Millennium, definitely reduced their numbers.

“Numbers were kept up through the years by adopting orphans and taking in windows, primarily wives, and their children. However, the population aged, and others left because they were angry that Christ had not returned during their lifetime as promised by Father Rapp,” she said.

Today, one of the last remaining vestiges of the Harmonists in Harmony is the old cemetery surrounded by stone walls where deceased Harmonists were laid to rest before the society moved west to Indiana.

“Also, I would like to note that their cemetery is also very unusual,” said Koontz. “They believed all were equal in life and death, so no tombstones mark the almost 100 graves of those who passed away here in Harmony.

“The graves were marked by flowers, but when they moved, they commissioned the Mennonites to build a stone wall around the cemetery to preserve the sacredness of their burial area,” she said.

“The entrance to the cemetery is marked by a large, heavy stone gate that one pushes to enter. This is purposeful by the Harmonists as the revolving door symbolizes eternal life, when you leave this life then you enter eternal life. The shape also mimics the shape of the Tablet of the 10 Commandments,” said Koontz.

Koontz said, “Despite leaving Germany for religious freedom which is not uncommon in history, their story is certainly unique due to their beliefs, particularly celibacy, and their communal living arrangement.”