Peter Miller, in one of his letters, speaks of his baptism (or rebaptism) in the year 1735. He says at that time the solitary brethren and sisters lived dispersed “in the wilderness of Canestogues, each for himself, as hermits, and I following that same way did set up my hermitage in Dulpehakin [Tulpehocken], at the foot of a mountain, on a limpid spring; the house is still extant [1790], with an old orchard. There did I lay the foundation of solitary life.[58]
“However,” he continues, “I had not lived there half a year, when a great change happened; for a camp was laid out for all solitary persons, at the very spot where now Ephrata stands, and where at that same time the president [Beissel] lived with some hermits. And now, when all hermits were called in, I also quitted my solitude, and changed the same for a monastic life; which was judged to be more inservient to sanctification than the life of a hermit, where many under a pretence of holiness did nothing but nourish their own selfishness.... We were now, by necessity, compelled to learn obedience.... At that time, works of charity hath been our chief occupation.[59]
“Canestogues was then a great wilderness, and began to be settled by poor Germans, which desired our assistance in building houses for them; which not only kept us employed several summers in hard carpenter’s work, but also increased our poverty so much that we wanted even things necessary for life.”
He also says, “When we settled here, our number was forty brethren, and about so many sisters, all in the vigor and prime of their ages, never before wearied of social life, but were compelled, ... with reluctance of our nature, to select this life.”[60]
It was, it seems, about the same time that Miller was baptized that the midnight meetings were held at the camp, “for the purpose of awaiting the coming of judgment.”
Not long after the building of the meeting-house called Kedar (says Endress), a widower, Sigmund Lambert, having joined the camp, built out of his own means an addition to the meeting-house and a dwelling for Beissel. Another gave all his property to the society, and now Kedar was transformed into a sister-convent, and a new meeting-house was erected.
Soon after 1738 a large house for the brethren was built, called Zion, and the whole camp was named Ephrata.[61] The solitary life was changed into the conventual one; Zion was called a kloster, or convent, and put under monastic rules. Onesimus (Eckerlin) was appointed prior, and Conrad Beissel named father. (His general title appears to be vorsteher, superintendent or principal.)
It was probably about this time, or earlier, that the constable entered the camp, according to Miller, and demanded the single man’s tax. Some paid, but some refused. Miller says that some claimed personal immunity on the ground that they were not inferior to the monks and hermits in the Eastern country, who supplied the prisons in Alexandria with bread, and who were declared free of taxes by Theodosius the Great and other emperors. But these Ephrata brethren were not to be thus exempted. Six lay in prison at Lancaster ten days, when they were released on bail of a “venerable old justice of peace.” When the brethren appeared before the board of assessment, the gentlemen who were their judges saw six men who in the prime of their ages had been reduced to skeletons by penitential works. The gentlemen granted them their freedom on condition that they should be taxed as one family for their real estate, “which is still in force (1790), although these things happened fifty years ago.” (See Miller’s letters in Hazard’s Register.)
A monastic dress was adopted by the brethren and sisters, resembling that of the Capuchins.[62]