ready to sail from Rotterdam. About forty members of his brotherhood
settled in the forests on the heights near Germantown, Pennsylvania,
and, under the guidance of Johann Kelpius, achieved a unique influence
over the German peasantry in that vicinity. The members of the
brotherhood made themselves useful as teachers and in various
handicrafts. They were especially in demand among the superstitious
for their skill in casting horoscopes, using divining rods, and
carving potent amulets. Their mysterious astronomical tower on the
heights of the Wissahickon was the Mecca of the curious and the
distressed. To the gentle Kelpius was ascribed the power of healing,
but he was himself the victim of consumption. The brotherhood did not
long survive his death in 1708 or 1709. Their astrological
instruments may be seen in the collections of the Pennsylvania
Philosophical Society.

The first group of Dunkards (a name derived from their method of
baptism, _eintunken_, to immerse) settled in Pennsylvania in 1719. A
few years later they were joined by Conrad Beissel (Beizel or Peysel).
This man had come to America to unite with the Pietist group in
Germantown, but, as Kelpius was dead and his followers dispersed he
joined the Dunkards. His desires for a monastic life drove him into
solitary meditation--tradition says he took shelter in a cave--where
he came to the conviction that the seventh day of the week should be
observed as the day of rest. This conclusion led to friction with the
Dunkards; and as a result, with three men and two women, Beissel
founded in 1728 on the Cocalico River, the cloister of Ephrata. From
this arose the first communistic Eden successfully established in
America and one of the few to survive to the present century. Though
in 1900 the community numbered only seventeen members, in its prime
while Beissel was yet alive it sheltered three hundred, owned a