The "Beisselology: A Visit To God's Acre & The Academy" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Just leaving the Saal Kitchen which is located to the rear of the Meetinghouse on the grounds of the Ephrata Cloister in Ephrata, Pennsylvania.  I walked past the small bakery and headed to the stone-walled God's Acre Cemetery.  Neat place to be buried.  The multitude of oak trees had covered the ground inside the cemetery with a blanket of beautiful leaves and the multitude of acorns eventually served as a treat for my squirrel friends who frequent my back porch in Lancaster.  The people who are buried in this graveyard are nameless on many of the tombstones, worn smooth over time.  But, there are still several interesting grave sites that have numbers next to them with a link to a "Dial and Discover" phone number.  A few of these graves are:

Diedrich and Margarete Fahnestock's headstone was erected in 1878 and tells of an immigrant family who moved from Germany to New Jersey and then to Ephrata after meeting Conrad Beissel.  They were part of the Married Congregation of the Ephrata Cloister.  They had 7 children who remained active in the German 7th Day Baptist Church into the 19th Century.

Nora Connell was the last person to be buried in God’s Acre.  She was from a wealthy Ephrata Family whose mother was a direct descendent from the original members of the Ephrata Cloister.  Before she died she wrote to her uncle, who was a former Governor of Pennsylvania, asking for help with the restoration of the Cloister.

Sister Petronella’s parents were part of the Cloister. Her parents separated and both became part of the Sisterhood and Brotherhood.  She eventually became a member of the Sisterhood and was known as having created the only remaining needlepoint sampler in 1768.  She is buried in God' s Acre near her mother whose gravestone is the oldest grave marker in God's Acre.

Heinrich Miller was not a member of the Cloister, but his father was a married member who ended up living a celibate life.  Heinrich and his wife built an impressive stone home a block to the west of the Cloister.  Heinrich was known to nurse Revolutionary War soldiers and this led to his death in 1778 due to the fever that the soldiers gave to him.

As I exit the beautiful cemetery I find myself next to one of the final buildings that was constructed at the Ephrata Cloister.

This is an altered Polaroid that I made years ago on a visit to
the Ephrata Cloisters. It features the "Academy".

Known as the "Academy", the private school was opened by the Church in 1837.  It served as the school for the Cloister as well as children from the nearby area.  The tradition of teaching school at Ephrata dates back to the mid-18th century when Brother Obed conducted classes for the neighborhood children.  The school eventually became a public school until it was finally closed in 1926.  Well, I hope you enjoyed my four-part look at life in the Ephrata Cloister in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  I thoroughly enjoyed taking you with me for the past few days.  Places such as this have existed at other locations throughout the world in the past and I'm sure will exist in the future.  But, it still gives you, the reader, a chance to see that William Penn's idea of religious freedom in the New World really did exist.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

View of the school today.  It is no longer used as a school.

Another exterior view.

Interior view.

This is the sign you will see when approaching the Ephrata Cloister.