Ephrata Community

▪ American religious group

      U.S. Protestant monastic settlement, an offshoot of the Germantown Dunkers, founded in 1732 by Johann Conrad Beissel (Beissel, Conrad) on Cocalico Creek in Lancaster County, Pa.; the present town of Ephrata grew up around it. Beissel and his followers observed the sabbath on the seventh day and espoused ascetic ideals. In the Ephrata cloisters the members, both men and women, were celibate, worked hard, ate a mainly vegetarian diet, and lived in tiny cells, where they slept on benches with wooden blocks as pillows, interrupting their sleep for lengthy prayer vigils. Frequent hymn singing was part of their regimen. “Outdoor members” were permitted marriage and lived according to a more relaxed discipline.

      The community thrived in the mid-18th century, building quarters of a remarkable architectural originality and establishing a gristmill, a papermill, and in 1745 a printing press. Affiliated communities were founded in Germantown and at Snow Hill in Franklin County. After Beissel's death (1768) the community declined, and during the Revolution the community was decimated by smallpox. Although Beissel's followers were pacifists, they extended hospitality to American Revolutionary soldiers and cared for those wounded in the Battle of Brandywine (1777); the community press printed Continental dollars.

      In 1786 the community first allowed private ownership of property, and by 1814 the remaining members reorganized themselves as the Seventh Day German Baptists. The Ephrata congregation was dissolved in 1934, but two small congregations continued in central Pennsylvania in the late 1970s.

* * *