The Zoar Community: A Review of an Ohio Historical Site

Review Essay The Zoar Community: A Review of an Ohio Historical Site In the early nineteenthcentury ,many Americans believed confidently that they could create heaven on earth. Inspired by the democratic promise of the Revolution and the perfectionist faith of evangelical religion,reformers created a number of utopian communities that dotted the landscape of the United States. At Brook Farm in Massachusetts, Nathaniel Hawthorne and other Transcendentalist writers joined George Ripley in an experiment combining literary and manual labon At Oneida in upstate New York, John Humphrey Noyes and his followers engaged in a radical communitarian experiment based on what was termed complex marriages."A good number of utopian communities were religious in nature. As early as 1732, German Dunkers led by Conrad Beissel established the Ephrata Cloister in Pennsylvania. Another German pietist, George Rapp, founded the Harmony Society in western Pennsylvania in 1804. Perhaps the best known a vivid reminder of this important phase of freedom's ferment in American social history. Established by German religious refugees in 1817, the community at Zoar was based on the sharing of labor and wealth. The Zoarites, originally Protestant dissenters known as " Separatists, originated in the Lutheran State Church of Germany. Similar to other German pietistic sects of the eighteenth century , these Separatists renounced worldly possessions , emphasized a direct relationship with God, and believed that the church should be simple und Dairy ( 1841) among the many religious utopias in America were the Shakers, led by Mother Ann Lee who migrated to America in 1774. By the 1830s,the Shakers had founded close to twenty successful communities. One of the most successful religious communitarian experiments in nineteenth century America was Zoar Village in eastern Ohio. Skillfully preserved today in a charming pastoral setting in Tuscarawas County,Zoar Village stands as bereft of all ceremony. In Germany,the Separatists had been aggressive dissenters. They refused to send their children to Lutheran schools and their pacifist beliefs shielded them from military service. The German religious refugees who established Zoar were led by Joseph Michael Baumler ( later changed SUMMER2003 R 51 REVIEW ESSAY to Bimler), who was born in Germ any in 1778. Driven by religious persecution and a famine that struck their communities in 1816, Bimler and his followers left Germany for a better life in America. In October 1817,sympathetic Quakers in Pennsylvania aided the Zoarites by selling them land in the Tuscarawas River Valley in Ohio. Bimler named the new community Zoar,meaning " a sanctuary from evil" after the biblical city in which Lot sought refuge during the destruction of Sodom. On April 19, 1819, Bjmler established the Society of Separatists of Zoar. Driven by economic necessity,the families at Zoar pooled their resources and established what was essentially a communistic society. The organization held all property and wealth, and each member of the Society agreed to follow the decisions of the Society' s three Trust ees, who each served for a terin of three years and who each could be reelected indefinitely. The Trustees appo nted supervisors for each industry in the community and worked with a standing arbitration committee of five to settle all disputes . In return for following the authorZoar Furnace,located in tbe tin sbop ity of the Trustees,members of the Society received food,clothing,and shelter. Zoar was officially incorporated by the Ohio state legislature in 1823. Zoar succeeded in becoming an economically selfsustaining con»munitarian society,aided in part by its location on the OhioEric Canal. Zoarites, in fact, helped to construct the canal by digging seven miles of the trench for which they were paid 21,000 by the state of Ohio. The residents of Zoar also profited from their location by selling food, clothing,and other goods to canal workers. Even without the canal,Zoar prospered. I. ocal residents produced a subsistence for themselves and even created a surplus that they sold in surrounding toWns. The settlement at Zoar included a sewing house,a tailor shop, print shop, pottery, butcher, tannery, and saw mill. Over the course of the nineteenth century,Zoar grew wealthy. By 1874,the Society owned about 7, 000 acres of land and local residents were reputed to be worth more...