Zoar Village

At a glance

Overview

Zoar is a village on the Tuscarawas River in Lawrence Township, built from 1817 by German religious dissenters from Wurttemberg who called themselves Separatists and had been jailed and fined at home for refusing church schools and military service. Helped across by English and Philadelphia Quakers, they bought about 5,500 acres on credit, and in April 1819, too poor to pay for the land family by family, they signed articles holding all property in common. Under their leader Joseph Bimeler they paid off the land by digging part of the Ohio and Erie Canal, then built mills, furnaces, a woolen factory, a hotel and a store, and by the 1870s owned about 7,000 acres worth more than a million dollars. After Bimeler's death in 1853 the society slowly lost its young people, and in 1898 the members voted to end communal ownership and divided the property. The village survives with much of its 19th-century plan and buildings, listed as the Zoar Historic District in 1969, named a National Historic Landmark in 2016, and saved from possible removal by a levee repair finished in 2023.

The name

Named for Zoar, the town to which Lot fled from Sodom and Gomorrah, to mark the Separatists' own flight from persecution in Germany. (source)

Native American history

Nothing is recorded of a Native settlement on the Zoar tract itself, but the land sat in the heart of the Delaware (Lenape) country of the upper Tuscarawas. The 1884 History of Tuscarawas County says the Delawares began settling on the Tuscarawas and Muskingum between 1740 and 1750 on land granted by the Wyandots, and that their first capital in the valley, the town of Tuscarawas (also called Beaver's Town, and said to have been occupied earlier by Senecas and Wyandots), stood on the plain opposite the mouth of Sandy Creek near present Bolivar, a few miles upriver from Zoar. Major Robert Rogers counted about 180 warriors and 3,000 cleared acres there in January 1761; the Moravian Christian Frederick Post built a cabin nearby that year; and Colonel Henry Bouquet's army reached the site on October 13, 1764, on the march that forced the Ohio nations to give up their captives. The same history records that settlers and Indians burned the river bottoms each fall to drive game, which kept the plains open, and describes a circular earthwork of about half an acre in the Sugar Creek valley below Strasburg, attributed to the Mound Builders. During the Revolution the Continental Army built Fort Laurens about a mile south of Bolivar in 1778; the Delaware chief White Eyes died of smallpox that November while guiding the army there, the force that besieged the fort in January 1779 was, by Delaware chiefs' account, mostly Wyandots, Shawnees, Mingoes and Munsees with only four Delawares, and the garrison left in August 1779. The 1795 Treaty of Greenville line ran down the Tuscarawas to the crossing place above Fort Laurens and turned west there, and the Native nations ceded their claims to the land east and south of it, which included the future Zoar tract; the land was later patented as military lands, the part the Separatists bought having passed from Jonathan Dayton (1803) to Godfrey Haga (1804).

• Tuscarawas (Beaver's Town), first Delaware capital in the valley: village, Plain opposite the mouth of Sandy Creek, near Bolivar, a few miles north of Zoar, c. 1750s-1760s
• Bouquet's crossing and camp at Tuscarawas: camp, Tuscarawas River in Lawrence Township near Bolivar, October 13, 1764
• Fort Laurens: battle, About a mile south of Bolivar on the Tuscarawas, 1778-1779
• Treaty of Greenville line, crossing place above Fort Laurens: treaty, Tuscarawas River near Bolivar, 1795
• Circular earthwork below Strasburg: earthwork, Sugar Creek valley, about three-quarters of a mile below Strasburg, Ancient (attributed to Mound Builders in 1884)

Stories

Why a village of individualists became a commune

The Separatists did not come to Ohio to share property. They bought their land as a group only so it could be divided, and each family was expected to pay for its own share. By early 1819, with many old, sick and poor members, some hired out to neighboring farmers, the leaders saw the settlement would fail and the people scatter. After weeks of discussion the whole society signed articles for a community of goods that April. 'We could never have paid for our land, if we had not formed a community,' older members told Charles Nordhoff in 1874. The 1884 county history adds a twist: the plan was pushed by members who opposed Bimeler's leadership and adopted against his advice, after which he set out to make it work. (source)

Paying for Zoar with a shovel

The land cost $15,000 on credit, due in three payments of $5,000 in 1828, 1829 and 1830, with Bimeler personally bound for the whole debt. When the Ohio Canal was laid through the valley in the late 1820s, the society took a contract and every able-bodied member worked on it until it was done. The county history says this earned much of the money to meet the debt. The county history says the society also restricted marriage in these years, housing husbands and wives apart in 'artificial families,' because it could not afford more mouths; an 1830 count lists 67 men and 106 women in such households. Over the same years the society built grist mills (from 1821), a woolen factory (1830), iron furnaces and a hotel (1833). (source)

Joseph Bimeler, the lame schoolteacher who ran everything

Joseph Bimeler had been a teacher among the Separatists in Germany for ten years before the crossing (Charles Nordhoff adds that he began as a weaver, and that neighbors' spelling of his name, Baumeler, stuck so firmly that the Zoarites were called 'Bimmelers'). He was their general agent and first and only pastor, and by Nordhoff's account their physician, practicing homeopathy. The county history describes him as lame, with one eye much larger than the other, reserved with members and warm with visitors. His sermons, written down from memory by John Neff, were collected after his death, and one was read aloud at each service in place of a new sermon. All the society's land was in his name until, ten days before he died in 1853, his will acknowledged the trust and left it to the society. (source)

The New Jerusalem garden

Besides each family's own plot, the society kept a public garden of two and a half acres in the middle of the village. A visitor quoted by William Alfred Hinds in 1908 described it as laid out like a wheel: the hub a circular arborvitae hedge around a spreading Norway spruce, which the Zoarites called 'the New Jerusalem,' with paths as spokes. It held zinnias, roses, dahlias, heliotrope, boxed lemon and pomegranate trees, and beds of vegetables, berries and healing herbs. Hinds thought it one of the few signs of a love of beauty in an otherwise plain village. (source)

No room for the Emperor's man (a told story)

The Separatists kept their heads covered before dignitaries, called one another by first names and said 'thou' to everyone. Hinds retold two stories about it, both hedged as hearsay ('It is related,' 'as runs the story'). In Germany, it was said, the imprisoned Separatist Johannes Goesele was brought before Napoleon and warned him of the judgment awaiting a man who sent so many souls to their deaths; the Duke of Wurttemberg then let Goesele go because he had spoken to the Emperor exactly as he spoke to the Duke. At Zoar, 'as runs the story,' an agent of the Emperor of Austria demanded a room at the full hotel, was told twice 'There is no room,' and left angry. (source)

The end of the commune, 1898

By the 1870s the leaders already worried: trustee Jacob Ackermann admitted to Hinds that the younger generation had, in Hinds's words, 'fallen into the fashions and ways of the world,' and at the Sunday meeting Hinds attended no more than a third of the members came. Some 171 people, counting hired workers' families, lived on wages paid by the society. When Hinds came back in 1900 the property had been divided. Former teacher Simon Beiter told him a minority had first wanted change, then a majority, 'because they wished to own property separate from others.' Three outside commissioners appraised everything and gave each member an equal share, the members signed a written compact in March 1898, and by 1900 no meetings were held. (source)

Timeline

• 1750: Delawares have been settling on the Tuscarawas and Muskingum since about 1740, on land obtained from the Wyandots. (source)
• 1761: Major Robert Rogers stops in January at the Delaware town of Tuscarawas opposite Sandy Creek and counts about 180 warriors. (source)
• 1764: Colonel Henry Bouquet's army reaches the Tuscarawas in present Lawrence Township on October 13. (source)
• 1778: General Lachlan McIntosh builds Fort Laurens about a mile south of present Bolivar and leaves 150 men under Colonel John Gibson. (source)
• 1779: The half-starved Fort Laurens garrison abandons the post early in August. (source)
• 1795: The Treaty of Greenville line runs down the Tuscarawas to the crossing above Fort Laurens; the land east and south, including the future Zoar tract, is ceded. (source)
• 1804: Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey, patentee since 1803, sells the southwest quarter of the township to Godfrey Haga, from whom the Separatists will buy. (source)
• 1817: The Separatists land at Philadelphia in August and contract with Godfrey Haga for their Ohio land on fifteen years' credit. (source)
• 1817: Joseph Bimeler and a few able-bodied men build the first log hut at Zoar on December 1. (source)
• 1818: Three feet of snow falls in February and lies until an April flood; the main body of settlers arrives that spring. (source)
• 1819: About 225 men, women and children sign articles for a community of goods in April. (source)
• 1821: The society builds its first grist mill (rebuilt 1848; a second mill follows in 1837). (source)
• 1824: An amended constitution is adopted in March. (source)
• 1827: The Ohio Canal is built through the neighborhood; Zoar's young men work on it and the society sells supplies to contractors, earning enough to pay for the land. (source)
• 1830: The early ban on marriage is lifted between 1828 and 1830, and Bimeler himself takes a wife. (source)
• 1830: A woolen factory is established. (source)
• 1832: The Ohio legislature incorporates the Separatist Society of Zoar in February. (source)
• 1832: New arrivals from Germany bring membership to its peak of nearly 500; members later told Hinds that cholera had swept off nearly a third of the old members before hiring of outside labor began about 1834. (source)
• 1833: The Zoar Store, the commercial center of the community, is built. (source)
• 1833: The society builds the Zoar Hotel. (source)
• 1834: A second iron furnace goes up between Zoar and Bolivar and runs until about 1852, at times at a loss to keep a hundred neighboring families employed. (source)
• 1835: The Number One House is built at the southwest corner of Main and Third Streets. (source)
• 1845: The practice of raising all children over three in separate boys' and girls' houses is dropped. (source)
• 1853: Joseph Bimeler dies in August; ten days before, his will turns over the property held in his name to the society. (source)
• 1862: Bimeler's successor Jacob Sylvan dies on October 13; Christian Weebel and then, from 1871, trustee Jacob Ackermann lead the society. (source)
• 1874: Journalist Charles Nordhoff finds about 300 members, over 7,000 acres and property worth more than a million dollars. (source)
• 1898: The members vote to end the society; outside commissioners appraise the property and divide it equally among the members. (source)
• 1936: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers builds a Tuscarawas River levee to protect the village. (source)
• 1969: Most of the village is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Zoar Historic District. (source)
• 2012: With levee removal and demolition of up to 80 percent of the village under study, the National Trust lists Zoar among America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. (source)
• 2013: In November the Corps of Engineers drops levee removal from consideration. (source)
• 2016: The Interior Department designates the Zoar Historic District a National Historic Landmark in November. (source)
• 2023: The Corps finishes a $14 million levee repair, and a ribbon cutting marks the village's protection. (source)

Sources

• en.wikipedia.org: Zoar, Ohio
• ohiohistory.org: zoar village
• ohiohistorycentral.org: Joseph Bimeler
• archive.org: communistsocieties00nordrich djvu.txt
• archive.org: oh tuscarawas 1881 warner djvu.txt
• archive.org: 08 hinds americancommunities djvu.txt
• doi.gov: secretary jewell director jarvis announce 10 new national historic landmarks
• savingplaces.org: village of zoar levee project finished and landmark town protected
• historiczoarvillage.com: explore
• avalon.law.yale.edu: greenvil