On the way back last week I drove through the town of Harmony, Pennsylvania. I had a fleeting thought that Harmony was somehow related to New Harmony, Indiana. On the outskirts of town there was a yard surrounded by a weathered old stone fence. That intrigued me so I stopped for a look.
The yard is the cemetery for the Harmony Society, which was a communal sect from Germany that settled Harmony in 1804. George Washington passed through, and was shot at, the site of the town in 1753, when it was a Lenni Lenape village called Murdering Town. Anyway, the Harmonists lasted until 1815 when they sold the town to Mennonites and moved to Indiana to found New Harmony. The Harmonists then returned to found nearby Economy in 1824.
Harmonists covered their graves with rocks and did not erect tombstones. They paid the Mennonites to put up the stone fence in 1869. The gate pivots on a central axis. It was a little scary but I did not get trapped inside.
I know what you're thinking. If the Harmonists did not use tombstones, what's the deal with Johannes Rapp? Johannes was the son of Harmony Society founder Johann Georg Rapp. Junior died in an industrial accident. The gravestone was donated by non-Harmonists, which a nearby sign explained "the society accepted reluctantly".
In English the epitaph reads "Here lies and rests the body of Johannes Rapp... This stone made of clay will stand here until decay breaks down the salt of the earth to a new body (which) happy of live will arise".
I learn the most interesting things here. And "Murdering Town?" What a great name.
Posted by: Dane | 29 October 2008 at 10:38 PM
I aim to entertain and inform! Some may call it infotainment, but I call it enterforment.
Posted by: Joe | 30 October 2008 at 08:40 PM