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214 chapter twelve Separation, Empowerment, and Flight from Pennsylvania She [Frau Reynier] then asked me for advice about this matter and was of the opinion based on what Ephrata members had told her that she was completely within her rights to separate from her husband. But I could not believe that she had taken this step [that is, gone to Ephrata] just because she desired celibacy. I asked her then, if she could in good conscience assure me that this really was the reason why she had wished to live separately from men. When she could not do this, I used the words of Paul to guide her back to her husband. Then I told her, if misfortune comes his way, then it will be your fault.1 —Ezechiel Sangmeister, describing his conversation with Maria Barbara Reynier on her marital separation, Ephrata cloister, 1764 or 1765 In 1786, the Chronicon Ephratense included the following story about the return of “John Reïgnier” to the celibate cloister from 1762 to 1765, this time with his wife. Georg Conrad Beissel, now seventy-one years old, was still the leader of the cloister when Reynier returned. Beissel placed Reynier ’s “Delilah” (Delilam) in the sisters’ convent, which pleased Reynier, who joined the brothers’ convent. But soon his wife regretted the separation and demanded that he come to her for sex. Reynier complied, against his will, and the shock of the experience drove him to madness for the second time in the cloister. When he recovered, Reynier’s old hatred for Beissel returned, and he began once again to slander and tell lies, now about the “whoredom” (Hurerey) that took place in the cloister. For his insolence he was removed from Ephrata.2 Sangmeister and the Ephrata chronicler were members of opposing factions in the cloister and presented dramatically conflicting views of life there, Separation, Empowerment, and Flight 215 but they agreed on one important point about Maria Barbara Reynier: She wanted badly to go to the Ephrata cloister and it was not because of its commitment to celibacy. So why did the Reyniers go there? Thirty years prior, Jean-François had had a horrible experience at Ephrata. Nearly twenty years prior, he had rejected the communal spiritual life of Bethlehem, which had nearly destroyed his marriage, though Maria Barbara eventually submitted and followed him. Now the couple returned to another communal spiritual society in the Pennsylvania backcountry. Something had changed in their relationship for this to have happened, and both the chronicler and Sangmeister point toward what or who caused it—Maria Barbara Reynier. This “Delilah ,” driven by spiritual ambition and powerful sexual impulses, took them to the communal life she had always desired, thus contributing to the fall of her husband. She could have abandoned him for good, but in the end she followed Sangmeister’s advice and decided to keep him. This meant, however, that they had to flee Pennsylvania. The path from the individualist paradise of Bermudian that Jean-François preferred to the communal world of Ephrata that Maria Barbara sought was not far in a geographic sense. But it was a complicated path, one that took the couple more than ten years to complete. During that interval, the Reyniers experienced a lot together. Their initial years in the dispersed community of Bermudian in York County were marked by economic prosperity and the most family life they would ever have together. In addition to their medical work, the Reyniers pursued economic opportunity and endured a terrifying war that swirled around them in Bermudian. In the summer of 1749, Jean-François applied to have their 200-acre tract in Reading Township warranted for survey.3 At this time, most colonists in Pennsylvania lived and farmed on land that they did not own or even rent— they simply settled on it. To acquire formal legal ownership, settlers had to request and pay for a warrant to survey the land they had improved. After the colonial survey office in Philadelphia completed its work, settlers could then apply and pay for a legal patent or deed, which secured their property rights. Many immigrants had to take these important steps to settle down and begin making a good living in the colonies. In 1755, however, the Reyniers sold the interests in part of the land they had improved and moved to a smaller, seventy-five-acre tract near Round Hill, also in the Bermudian area. By this time, the Reyniers knew they...

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