Excerpt from America, Vol. 6 of 6 Eighteen miles from Pittsburg is the town of Economy, where are the fine farms and oil-wells of the quaint community of Harmonists. Georg Rapp, of Wurtumberg, believing he was divinely called to restore the Christian religion to its original purity, established a colony there on the model of the primitive church, with goods held in common, which in 1803 he transplanted to Pennsylvania, set tling in Butler County. A few years later they re moved to Indiana, but soon came back, and founded their settlement of Economy in Beaver County in 1824. Originally they numbered six hundred, and grew very rich, but being celibates, their community dwindled until there were only eighteen, who owned a tract of twenty-five hundred acres with valuable buildings and much personal property, so that if divided it was estimated each would have more than The baby Harmonist then was over sixty years old, and to perpetuate the community, in 1888 they began accepting proselytes, who assumed all the obligations with vows of celibacy, and thus the number was increased to fifty. Economy is a sleepy village, its vine-covered houses built with gables towards the street and without front doors, all being entered from side-yards. They now labor but little themselves, their factories are silent, and their noted brand of Pennsylvania Economy whiskey is no longer distilled. Their church-bell rings them up at five o'clock in the morning, they breakfast at326 america, picturesque and descriptive. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.