Economy is the home of the "Harmony Society," better known to the outside world as the followers of Rapp. It is a town of about one hundred and twenty houses, very regularly built, well-drained, and paved; it has water led from a reservoir in the hills, and flowing into troughs conveniently placed in every street; abundant shade-trees; a church, an assembly hall, a store which supplies also to some extent the neighboring country; different factories, and a number of conveniences which villages of its size are too often without. Moreover, it contains a pleasant pleasure-garden, and is surrounded by fine, productive orchards and by well-tilled fields.
At present Economy is inhabited by all that remain of the society which was founded by George Rapp in 1805. These number one hundred and ten persons, most of whom are aged, and none, I think, under forty. Besides these, who are the owners of the place and of much property elsewhere, there are twenty-five or thirty children of various ages, adopted by the society and apprenticed to it, and an equal number living there with parents who are hired laborers; of these hired laborers, men and women, there are about one hundred. The whole population is German; and German is the language one commonly hears, and in which on Sunday worship is carried on. Nevertheless all the people speak English also.
The Harmonists themselves are sturdy, healthy-looking men and women, most of them gray haired; with an air of vigorous independence; conspicuously kind and polite; well-fed and well-preserved. As I examined their faces on Sunday in church, they struck me as a remarkably healthy and well-satisfied collection of old men and women; by no means dull, and very decidedly masters of their lives. Their working dress has for its peculiarity the roundabout or jacket I have before mentioned; on Sunday they wear long coats. The women look very well indeed in their Norman caps; and their dress, wholesome and sensible, is not in any way odd or inappropriate. Indeed, when Miss Rapp, the granddaughter of the founder of the society, walked briskly into church on Sunday, her bright, kindly face was so well set off by the cap she wore that she seemed quite an admirable object to me; and I thought no head-dress in the world could so well become an elderly lady.
II.—HISTORICAL.
George Rapp, founder and until his death in 1847 head of the "Harmony Society," was born in October, 1757, at Iptingen in Würtemberg. He was the son of a small farmer and vine-dresser, and received such a moderate common-school education as the child of parents in such circumstances would naturally receive at that time in South Germany. When he had been taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography, he left school and assisted his father on the farm, working as a weaver during the winter months. At the age of twenty-six he married a farmer's daughter, who bore him a son, John, and a daughter, Rosina, both of whom later became with him members of the society.
Rapp appears to have been from his early youth fond of reading, and of a reflective turn of mind. Books were probably not plentiful in his father's house, and he became a student of the Bible, and began presently to compare the condition of the people among whom he lived with the social order laid down and described in the New Testament. He became dissatisfied especially with the lifeless condition of the churches; and in the year 1787, when he was thirty, he had evidently found others who held with him, for he began to preach to a small congregation of friends in his own house on Sundays.
The clergy resented this interference with their office, and persecuted Rapp and his adherents; they were fined and imprisoned; and this proved to be, as usual, the best way to increase their numbers and to confirm their dislike of the prevailing order of things. They were denounced as "Separatists," and had the courage to accept the name.
Rapp taught his followers, I am told, that they were in all things to obey the laws, to be peaceable and quiet subjects, and to pay all their taxes, those to the Church as well as to the State. But he insisted on their right to believe what they pleased and to go to church where they thought it best. This was a tolerably impregnable platform.
In the course of six years, with the help of the persecutions of the clergy, Rapp had gathered around him not less than three hundred families; and had hearers and believers at a distance of twenty miles from his own house. He appears to have labored so industriously on the farm as to accumulate a little property, and in 1803 his adherents determined upon emigrating in a body to America, where they were sure of freedom to worship God after their own desires.
Rapp sailed in that year for Baltimore, accompanied by his son John and two other persons. After looking about in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, they concluded to buy five thousand acres of wild land about twenty-five miles north of Pittsburgh, in the valley of the Connoquenessing. Frederick (Reichert) Rapp, an adopted son of George Rapp, evidently a man of uncommon ability and administrative talent, had been left in charge in Germany; and had so far perfected the necessary arrangements for emigration that no time was lost in moving, as soon as Rapp gave notice that he had found a proper locality for settlement. On the 4th of July, 1804, the ship Aurora from Amsterdam landed three hundred of Rapp's people in Baltimore; and six weeks later three hundred more were landed in Philadelphia. The remainder, coming in another ship, were drawn off by Haller, one of Rapp's traveling companions, to settle in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania.