CHAPTER XXI.
OTHER PENNSYLVANIA EXPERIMENTS.[ToC]
Our memoirs of the Phalanxes and other contemporary Associations, may as well be arranged according to the States in which they were located. We have already disposed of the Sylvania, which was the most interesting of the experiments in Pennsylvania during the Fourier epoch. Our accounts of the remaining half-dozen are not long. The whole of them may be dispatched at a sitting.
THE PEACE UNION SETTLEMENT.
This was a Community founded by Andreas Bernardus Smolnikar, whose name we saw among the Vice Presidents of the National Convention. Macdonald says nothing of it; but the Phalanx of April 1844, has the following paragraph:
"This colony of Germans is situated in Limestown township, Warren County, Pennsylvania; it is founded upon somewhat peculiar views and associative principles, by Andreas Bernardus Smolnikar, who was Professor of Biblical Study and Criticism in Austria, and perceiving by the signs of the times compared with prophecies of the Bible, that the time was at hand for the foundation of the universal peace which was promised to all nations, and feeling called to undertake a mission to aid in carrying out the great work thus disclosed to him, he came to America. In the years 1838 and 1842, he published at Philadelphia five volumes in explanation of his views; and gathering around him a body of his countrymen, during the last summer he commenced with them the Peace Union Settlement, on a tract of fertile wild land of 10,000 acres, which had been purchased."
That is all we find. Smolnikar begun, but, we suppose, was not able to finish. In 1845 he was wandering about the country, professing to be the "Ambassador extraordinary of Christ, and Apostle of his peace." He called on us at Putney; but we heard nothing of his Community.
THE MCKEAN COUNTY ASSOCIATION.
The Phalanx, in its first number (October 1843), announced this experiment among many others, in the following terms:
"There is a large Association of Germans in McKean County, Pennsylvania, commenced by the Rev. George Ginal of Philadelphia. They own a very extensive tract of land, over thirty thousand acres we are informed, and are progressing prosperously. The shares, which were originally $100, have been sold and are now held at $200 or more."