The foregoing article is published nearly as it appeared in the second edition of this volume. In the present year, 1882, Mr. Adam Konigmacher Fahnestock, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, has lent me a little memorial which he had prepared of his own family. A passage in it seems to elucidate the history of the clock at Ephrata, which bears on its face “Hoeckers a Creveld.” On St. John’s day, November 13, 1753, Diedrich Fanestuck writes to his brother in Prussia. (The letter is said to have been written near Ephrata.) He writes that his son, who is going to Europe, will stop at Crefeld, “where he is to have some clocks made for us.” He adds, “I pray you to write again. You may send the letters to Crefeld, there are three brothers living there, Wilhelmus, Christophorus, and Lucas Heckers, to them you might send them.”
In a foot-note A. K. Fahnestock says, 1878, October 17: “I had the pleasure this day of seeing one of those clocks (seven feet high), still showing the time of day. It is in the ‘sister-house’ at Ephrata.” (The preposition a on the clock, Hoeckers a Creveld, would seem to indicate that this Hoeckers were French refugees. Perhaps with a translated name.)
In this year, 1882, the writer of this volume again visited Ephrata. One of her acquaintance spoke to her of the community at Snow Hill, on the Antietam. She said, “It’s a large nunnery, and the rooms are all empty; there’s hardly any one there.” She added, however, that there are a good many married Seventh-Day Baptists at Snow Hill.
The old buildings at Ephrata, the brother- and sister-house, are still kept in sufficient repair to make inmates comfortable, and are occupied by unmarried women, widows, and families; not all Seventh-Day Baptists. The farm belonging to the Baptists contains about eighty acres.
As I drew near one of these buildings on Sunday, I saw washed clothes hanging out. Saturday is the Sabbath of these Baptists, and like the rest of the world it appears that such begin their week with washing.
The little community at the time of my visit was grievously exercised over a lawsuit among the members. The matter had been referred to a master in chancery, who thus speaks of them in his report: “At the time of the commencement of the differences from which has sprung the present controversy, and for some years previously, the members of the society in regular attendance at its meetings, and habitually observant of its religious ordinances, were in number about thirty, of whom not less than three-fourths appear to have been women. They seem to be an uneducated or but slightly educated people, in narrow circumstances as to property, the male members being in general mechanics and laboring men, resident in and about the village of Ephrata, in this county, and a considerable proportion of all the members, male as well as female, being dependent for subsistence either wholly or partially upon the funds of the society. They do not appear to have formulated specifically articles of faith or rules of discipline, but profess to take for their guidance simply the Bible and New Testament, and the distinctive features of their practice are, their observance of the seventh day of the week instead of the first as the Sabbath; the administration of the rite of baptism by trine immersion, with forward action, in a stream of flowing water; and by the love-feasts held annually at their communion, and lasting from Friday evening until Sunday morning, at which food is provided for all members, as well as all strangers who may choose to attend the meeting; and by the washing of each other’s feet by the members, previously to the breaking of bread at the communion.... The church at Ephrata, it should be mentioned, is one of four branches, as they are called, of the society of [German?] Seventh-Day Baptists. The other three being established, respectively, at Snow Hill, Bedford, and Alleghany, in this State.”
BETHLEHEM AND THE MORAVIANS.
On August 22, 1873, as I stood upon the tower of Packer Hall, Lehigh University, I saw spread out before me the whole of Bethlehem, with furnaces, railroads, bridges, churches, schools; and the rolling country and cultivated fields of Northampton and Lehigh Counties. Pointing to a wooded hill, my little guide said, “That is Iron Hill, where iron ore comes from.”[89]
In the first house built at Bethlehem, on the 24th of December, 1741, Zinzendorf and his companions celebrated their first Christmas Eve in America. I saw in the town a picture, by Grünewald, of the house in which they met,—a long, one-story log house, with overhanging eaves, the unbroken forest behind admirably expressing the loneliness of the situation. In the beginning, one end of this building was for cattle, as in Switzerland and other parts of South Germany.