Ohio History Journal

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A "Backwoods Utopia":

A "Backwoods Utopia":

The Berea Community of 1836-1837

 

By DAVID LINDSEY*

 

 

In April 1836 three remarkable men--a farmer-turned-circuit

rider, a farmer-turned-evangelist and a teacher-turned-farmer--met

on the banks of the Rocky River in northeastern Ohio. Each man

had come a devious route to that spot. James Gilruth, born of Scotch

immigrant parents in western Virginia in 1793, fought briefly in the

War of 1812 before taking up a farm in Ohio's Scioto River valley.

Undergoing a deep religious conversion in 1819, he became a circuit

rider in the Ohio Conference of the Methodist Church. A con-

temporary remembered him as "a giant in stature, weighing some

250 pounds . . . of enormous strength. . . . His feat of throwing

an axe over the steeple of the Court House in Franklinton has be-

come historic."1 A tireless Biblical student, he whiled away his

hours while traveling between stations on his circuit by reading the

Scriptures.2 Combining preaching with farming, Gilruth managed

to do well materially and by the time he was forty had acquired a

sizable amount of property.

Henry O. Sheldon, born in Connecticut in 1799, moved west and

farmed in Huron County, Ohio, for several years.3 His religious

conversion in 1823 convinced him that "the Holy Spirit was on

earth fulfilling the promise of Christ" and that "it is the duty of

 

* David Lindsey is visiting associate professor of history at Oberlin College.

His regular post is at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea.

1 J. C. Gilruth to R. C. Snyder, November 27, 1930, quoted in Robert A. Gilruth,

"The Community of United Christians at Berea, Ohio, in 1836" (Unpublished

bachelor's thesis, Princeton University, 1946). This study contains major portions of

James Gilruth's journal and will hereafter be cited as Gilruth, "Journal."

2 "Some of the Early Pioneer Business Men," "Old Northwest" Genealogical

Quarterly, XV (1912), 104-105.

3 Henry O. Sheldon, "Personal Reminiscences of Rev. H. O. Sheldon," Firelands

Pioneer, XII (1876), 106-107.