Harmonist Cemetery
Jackson Township, Butler County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Burial place of Harmonist Society, 1805-15. Graves were not marked. The stone wall was built in 1869, after the Harmonists had returned from Indiana and settled at "Old Economy," in Beaver County.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
This walled ground holds the graves of members of the Harmony Society, the German pietist commune that settled here between 1805 and 1815. In keeping with their beliefs the graves were left unmarked, plain and equal in death as the Harmonists sought to be in life. The stone wall came later, in 1869, built after the society had returned from its sojourn in Indiana and settled at "Old Economy" in Beaver County.
Why it matters
The cemetery is a quiet monument to one of America's most successful communal religious experiments, part of the broader current of German immigration and utopian idealism in the early republic.
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Related people
- · George Rapp
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Harmony
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The town of Harmony was the first American home of the Harmony Society, a communal religious settlement founded in 1804 by George Rapp and his German followers. Seeking to live simply and hold property in common while awaiting the millennium, the Harmonists prospered here before moving west to New Harmony, Indiana, in 1814. A decade later they returned to Pennsylvania, settling at Economy in present-day Ambridge in 1825.
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