accounts I have been able to gather, a man of robust frame and sound
health, with great perseverance, enterprise, and executive ability, and
remarkable common-sense. It was fortunate for the community that its
members were all laboring men. In the first year they erected between
forty and fifty log-houses, a church and school-house, grist-mill, barn,
and some workshops, and cleared one hundred and fifty acres of land. In
the following year they cleared four hundred acres more, and built a
saw-mill, tannery, and storehouse, and planted a small vineyard. A
distillery was also a part of this year's building; and it is odd to
read that the Harmonists, who have aimed to do all things well, were
famous among Western men for many years for the excellence of the whisky
they made; of which, however, they always used very sparingly
themselves. Among their crops in succeeding years were corn, wheat, rye,
hemp, and flax; wool from merino sheep, which they were the first in
that part of Pennsylvania to own; and poppies, from which they made
sweet-oil. They did not rest until they had established also a
woolen-mill. It was a principle with Rapp that the society should, as
far as possible, produce and make every thing it used; and in the early
days, I am told, they bought very little indeed of provisions or
clothing, having then but small means.

Rapp was, with the help of his adopted son, the organizer of the
community's labor, appointing foremen in each department; he planned
their enterprises--but he was also their preacher and teacher; and he
taught them that their main duty was to live a sincerely and rigidly
religious life; that they were not to labor for wealth, or look forward
anxiously for prosperity; that the coming of the Lord was near, and for
this they were waiting, as his chosen ones separated from the world.

At this time they still lived in families, and encouraged, or at any