Word: rapp
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...angel descended to the green earth. Many later saw the angel's footprint, embedded in a slab of stone; but only one man, a six-foot patriarch with snowy beard and flowing white locks, saw the angel himself. The lone wit ness was Father George Rapp, founder of the first of two Utopias that flowered and withered in New Harmony early last century. Exploring their brief history. Mar guerite Young has written a sometimes difficult, often fascinating book whose erudite, poetical meandering explores some forgotten corners in the attic of U.S. history...
...escapist Utopias that mush roomed in the shadow of the industrial revolution. Father Rapp's was the least suggestive of milk & honey. His first ven ture was in Germany. The spiritual leader of a flock of phlegmatic German peasants, Peasant Rapp was a mystic with a sound business head. In 1804 he brought his peo ple to the U.S. ''not because he believed that God's voice would speak out of the marsh more clearly than it had spoken out of the vineyard in Wiirttemberg - but be cause the land was fierce and cheap." Celibate Communists...
When the young wife of John Rapp, the leader's son, became pregnant, vengeance struck quickly. John was found dead and castrated near the Rappite piggery. The Rappites stood in awe in the face of such Divine Wrath, though there were whispers that young Rapp's earthly father had done the deed...
Whether because of the whispers or not, Father Rapp soon adopted another son, sold the Pennsylvania property and moved on to Indiana. There his well-disciplined communists prospered even more, while the new son, Frederick, asked himself: Was not this holy continence "merely the end result of a system of covetousness?" In time such doubts were to spread through the Rappite harmony - but not for many years. Meantime Rapp had taken his flock to greener pastures in Economy, Pa. In May, 1824, Harmony, Indiana, was sold lock, stock & angel's footprint to a dreamy Welshman, Robert Owen, who believed...
...advertisement in the London Times offering a town for sale, he "saw, beyond the rolling seas, the promise of America, a place where there would be an end to the concocting of holy lies." He gathered a group of disciples and sailed to the Utopia vacated by George Rapp...