Ora et Labora:
A German Methodist Utopia
By CARL WITTKE*
IN ALL AGES men have toyed with plans
for the regeneration of
the race, and a map of the world
without utopias would be bleak
and uninteresting indeed.1
A new, unsettled land, like the United
States, was especially ap-
pealing to utopian dreamers, and
beginning with the colonial
period, scores of communitarian
experiments flourished, for longer
or shorter periods, in America. Some
were religious in origin and
used a communist pattern as the most
practical way to hold their
group together. Others had no concern
with religion, or were
even hostile to it, and concentrated on
social and economic theory
to find the key to a better social
order.
The great open spaces of the
Mississippi Valley seemed ideal
for such experiments in communal
living. Here there was plenty
of room, and if neighbors were not
always hospitable, they were
generally tolerant. The majority of such
American communities
were located in Trans-Appalachia, but
other well-known settle-
ments could be found in the older East.
The Shakers of New
England and Hawthorne's Blithedale
Romance come immediately
to mind. Most of these experiments were
of short duration; a few
persisted into the present century.
Among the millions of European
immigrants who came to
America in the nineteenth century,
attracted by its political freedom
and economic opportunity, there were
some who dreamed of
establishing an entirely new social
order. Among nearly every
* Carl Wittke is chairman of the
department of history and dean of the graduate
school at Western Reserve University. He
is also a member of the board of editors
of the Quarterly.
1 I am indebted to Lewis Beeson,
executive secretary of the Michigan Historical
Commission, and Philip P. Mason, the
commission's archivist, for help in preparing
this paper.
130
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
nationality group there were men and
women intrigued by the
pattern of communal living. Some were
motivated by strong relig-
ious faith, others were followers of
theoreticians like Robert Owen,
Etienne Cabet, Wilhelm Weitling, and
others. The American map
a century ago was dotted with
short-lived utopias. One scholar
has listed 130 from 1663 to 1858, but
his list is far from complete.2
One of the best-known immigrant
settlements was that of the
German Rappists, who located first in
Harmony, Indiana, and then
in Economy, Pennsylvania, on the banks
of the Ohio, about eighteen
miles below Pittsburgh, in what is now
part of Ambridge, Penn-
sylvania. The group was sufficiently
well known by 1824 in Europe
to be satirized in Byron's Don Juan.
At St. Nazianz, Wisconsin,
there was a Catholic communal society
directed by a German priest
from Baden. The eccentric Wilhelm Keil,
one of Wilhelm Nast's
early converts to German Methodism,
established two communi-
ties, in Missouri and Oregon, in which
he was "the Central Sun"
and his followers, "Princes of
Light." The Bishop Hill community
in Illinois was the home of Swedish
Jansenists. The Amana villages
of Iowa were settled by the German
Community of True Inspira-
tion, and managed to retain their form
of communism until the
1930's. The Icarians of Nauvoo,
Illinois, were French disciples
of Etienne Cabet, author of Voyage
en Icarie and True Christianity,
in which he tried to show that
communism and the Christian
religion were not incompatible.
Communia, Iowa, was Wilhelm
Weitling's foolhardy venture in social
reconstruction. Ohio had
communistic settlements in Kendall,
Yellow Springs, and other
localities. Of these, Zoar, in
Tuscarawas County, was the most
successful. Established by the German
followers of Joseph Baumler
as the "Society of Separatists of
Zoar," it did not officially abandon
communism until 1898. The Garden, the
Great House, and other
structures of the community are now
state property administered
by the Ohio Historical Society.3
In a climate which tolerated such a
variety of social and religious
experiments, it is not surprising that
a band of German Metho-
2 Arthur E. Bestor, Jr., Backwoods Utopias (Philadelphia, 1950),
235-242.
3 For immigrant communist
settlements, see Carl Wittke, We Who Built America:
The Saga of the Immigrant (New York, 1939), Chap. XII, on "Immigrant
Utopias."
ORA ET LABORA 131
dists should plan a "Christian
colony," based on communitarian
organization and the Methodist
Discipline. Though their settle-
ment was finally located in Michigan,
it was the direct offshoot of
the German Methodist movement which had
its cradle in Cincin-
nati and whose founder was Wilhelm
Nast, a highly respected
citizen of the Queen City.
Nast was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in
1807. He was baptized
and confirmed a Lutheran, and like a
number of his forebears,
seemed destined for the Lutheran
ministry. He studied theology
and philosophy at the University of
Tubingen, where Ferdinand
Christian Baur, the famous theologian,
was one of his teachers.
David Strauss, a fellow-student, later
published a Life of Jesus
which provoked violent controversy in
theological circles by its
attempt to dispose of the myths of
Christianity and its emphasis
on the divinity of humanity rather than
on the concept of one God,
turned man.
As a student at Tubingen, Nast drifted
into what he called "the
labyrinth of Pantheism," and
imbibed "the nectar and ambrosia
of classical paganism." He became
so deeply disturbed by his un-
successful attempt to reconcile the new
rationalist theology with
the evangelical, pietistic experiences
of his youth, that he finally
left Tubingen, abandoned his plans for
the Lutheran ministry,
and came to the United States in 1828.
For a while Nast was a private tutor in
Pennsylvania. Then he
went to West Point, to teach German and
to look after the library
at the military academy. In 1834 he
taught in the senior preparatory
department of Kenyon College, in
Gambier, Ohio. It was while
attending a Methodist camp meeting in
Knox County that he
achieved the joys of conversion and
found peace for his troubled
soul.
In 1835 Nast was appointed by the Ohio
Methodist Conference
as missionary to the Germans of
Cincinnati at a salary of one hun-
dred dollars a year. The assignment
proved extraordinarily difficult,
for Cincinnati Germans were either
Lutherans, Catholics, or free-
thinkers, and regardless of their
religious affiliation, practically all
of them regarded the puritanical
Sabbatarianism of the Methodists
as an unwarranted invasion of their personal
liberty. After a year
132
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
of heroic effort Nast succeeded in
organizing a class of twelve
Methodists, but could point to only
three actual conversions.
In 1836 Nast became a German Methodist
circuit rider in Ohio,
covering a circuit of three hundred
miles, with twenty-five preach-
ing stations which he was expected to
visit at least once every five
weeks. The next year he returned to
Cincinnati to begin regular
Methodist services in the German
language. From his pioneering
efforts, and the handful of converts he
made in the early years of
his ministry, the German Methodist
Church developed by the end
of the century into a church of 63,000
members, organized in con-
gregations which extended from the
Atlantic to the Pacific and
from Canada to Texas. The German
Methodist Church established
a number of charitable and educational
institutions, sponsored over
three hundred publications in the
German language, and sent its
missionaries to Europe, Asia, and Latin
America. Nast became the
first president of German Wallace
College, in Berea, Ohio, and for
half a century edited Der
Christliche Apologete, a German weekly,
printed in Cincinnati, which was both a
religious paper and a
journal of general information for
readers still unable to follow
the English language. The Apologete was
the leading religious
journal of the German Methodists in the
United States, and had
an appreciable circulation in Germany
and Switzerland as well.
The story of the little German
Methodist utopia in Michigan
with which this article is concerned is
a minor fragment of the
history of an immigrant church of which
Nast was the founder
and spiritual leader, and the account
of the Michigan community
is reconstructed largely from the files
of the Apologete. Nast neither
approved nor opposed the attempt to
found a "Christian colony,"
but he gave it full coverage in his
paper.
In July 1862 the Christliche
Apologete began carrying notices
and letters describing plans for a
Christian German Methodist
colony to be built on communitarian
lines somewhere in Michigan.
The guiding spirit in this utopian
venture was Emil Gottlob Baur.4
4 In Michigan, a Guide to
the Wolverine State (New York, 1947), pp.
455-456,
there is a brief reference to Ora et
Labora which gives the date of its founding as
1847, and the number of original members
as 288. Both figures must be wrong.
Baur was not in the United States in
1847, and his own account gives the dates
for his colony as 1862 to 1868. Other
evidence indicates that there were never
as many as 288 original members,
although probably a larger number signified
ORA ET LABORA
133
Like Nast, Baur was a native of
Wurttemberg; his father was a
Lutheran pastor, and the son had
studied at the Lower Seminary in
Blaubeuren, and for a short time at the
University of Tubingen,
where his uncle, Ferdinand Christian
Baur, was a distinguished
member of the faculty.
Sometime after the German Revolution of
1848 Baur joined the
Atlantic migration to the United
States, settled in Pittsburgh, and
became one of Nast's early converts to
Methodism. Baur's sister
Bertha was for many years the director
of the Cincinnati Conserv-
atory of Music. As a Methodist
missionary Baur preached in Michi-
gan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. While
active in the environs of
Pittsburgh, he became acquainted with
the leaders of the Harmony
Society at Economy, Pennsylvania, and
visited their prosperous
communist religious community many
times. While at Canal Dover,
Ohio, he came to know the Zoar
community of his fellow Wurttem-
bergers. He also made a study of the
experiences of Brook Farm,
the community of New England
Transcendentalists at West Rox-
bury, Massachusetts.
Baur apparently regarded Nast's Apologete
as the best advertis-
ing medium for his plans. He addressed
numerous communications
to its editor signed "the old
backwoodsman." He apparently was
not concerned about the difficulties of
launching a colony in the
midst of the Civil War, when the
country's man power and eco-
nomic resources were strained to the
utmost. Incidentally, it was
one of his eccentricities to consider
himself as something of an
expert on military matters, and he
wrote numerous letters to men
at the front, with learned references
to past wars, and particularly
to some of the great military heroes of
Germany.
With encouragement from Jakob
Rothweiler, one of the early
stalwarts of German Methodism and a
member of the first faculty
when Wallace College was organized in
Berea, Ohio, Baur pro-
ceeded to arrange with the Michigan
land office for the purchase
their intention to join the settlement
than actually came to Michigan. Lela Puffer's
"Old Ora Labora Colony Rates High
as Area's Leading Historical Spot," in The
Pigeon Progress (Pigeon,
Michigan), June 17, 1949, erroneously gives the earlier
date 1847, and so does the article in Pioneer
History of Huron County, Michigan
(1922), pp. 51-53, by Florence McKinnon
Gwinn, entitled a "Community Experi-
ment." A brief note in Huron County Illustrated
History (1932), p. 45, refers to
288 signers of the articles of
agreement.
134
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
of 3,000 acres of swamp and wood land
along Wild Fowl Bay,
in Michigan, under a complicated plan
which included land grants
by the state in compensation for
reclamation work and ditching
to be done by prospective settlers.
Several preliminary constitutions
were drafted, and on July 21, 1862, the
Apologete printed one of
these documents. Baur had grandiose
dreams not only for his
"Christian German Agricultural and
Benevolent Society of Ora et
Labora" (Pray and Work), also
known as Der Christliche
Wohltatigkeitsverein (Christian Charitable Society), where mem-
bers could combine work with prayer,
and live according to the
Methodist Church Discipline, but he
also planned to build institu-
tions of learning for the diffusion of
literary, scientific, and religious
information, and homes for the care of
widows and orphans.
In Pittsburgh, Baur had come in contact
with city slums and the
evil effects of industrialization upon
the worker's health, and he
hoped to move as many German workers as
possible into the sun-
shine and fresh air of a frontier
community. The majority of the
recruits for his colony were artisans
and laborers who had had
little or no experience with farming.
According to the constitution of July
1862, the Ora Labora com-
munity, as it was popularly known, was
built upon the creed and
discipline of the Methodist Church. All
frivolous amusements,
such as dancing, card playing, and theatricals,
were prohibited,
but the growing of hops to make beer
was permitted on the ground
that impure drinking water might bring
fevers and disease. It
was also intended to have the community
provide a place where
German family life and culture, and the
German language could be
preserved. There were three types of
membership--active, pro-
bationary, and honorary. The admission
fee was five dollars, later
raised to twenty-five, and every member
was supposed to serve a
probationary period of three months.
Each participant invested
whatever capital he had in exchange for
stock certificates with a
par value of twenty-five dollars. A
joint stock company, with 4,000
authorized shares, was to be organized,
with government of the
colony vested in a board of officers
and directors, the latter chosen
on the basis of one for every ten
members. Superimposed upon the
board of directors were seven trustees,
elected for two year terms.
ORA ET LABORA 135
The project was initiated with
twenty-eight applicants, and it was
a foregone conclusion that Baur, the
promoter, would be the
president.
The economic structure of the colony
represented a compromise
between complete communal ownership and
private enterprise.
Members were to be remunerated for
their services to the com-
munity from the common store and in the
form of additional
stock certificates, and all earnings
derived from the sale of the
colony's products were to go into a
common treasury. At the same
time, each member was to receive, as
his individual property, two
cows, two pigs, two chickens, and a
half-acre plot. He was ex-
pected to plant fruit trees and grape
vines, and to work for the
community every day except Saturday and
Sunday. On Saturday he
worked for himself. A day's work of ten
hours was credited at the
rate of a dollar and a half a day. All
members were expected to
arise at 5:00 A.M., when they
were awakened by the blowing of
a horn, and attend devotions a half
hour later. Breakfast was
served at 6:00, and the working day (in
1863) extended from
6:30 A.M., to noon, and from 1:00
to 6:00
P.M. At
nine in the
evening there were religious services.
By the end of 1862 Baur had completed
his inspection of the
terrain in Michigan, and a number of
workers, employed at a dollar
and a half a day plus board, were
cutting down trees and clearing
up the area to prepare for the settlers
who were expected to arrive
soon. Lumber from the clearing
operations was sold for telegraph
poles. Baur also planned to build a
dock to take care of the colony's
anticipated commerce with the outside
world. The site selected
was near East Saginaw, on the eastern
side of Saginaw Bay, in
Huron County, between Caseville and
Wild Fowl Bay, now known
as Bay Port, Michigan. The state land
office had given its ap-
proval to the project, and Baur had
persuaded the prosperous
Harmony Society in Pennsylvania to
advance $20,000, secured by
a mortgage on the colony.5
With the preliminaries out of the way
Baur returned to Ohio
5 In the 1870's the Harmony Society also
loaned money to the Hutterites when
they established their religious
community in South Dakota.
136
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
to stimulate additional support for his
settlement. At a meeting in
Cleveland he described a community of
6,560 acres, much of the
additional acreage having been claimed
or about to be claimed
under the homestead act. On December 6,
1862, Baur wrote Nast
from Canal Dover that he needed more
workers for the winter to
prepare for the families who were
coming in the spring, and Nast
promptly published his appeal in the Apologete.
Baur promised to
send him the first bear skin from his
new domain in payment for
his many favors.
The first settlers landed during a
violent storm on Lake Huron.
Their first task was to drag enough
stones from the bay to build
an "altar of dedication" for
religious services. In 1863 ten houses
were completed and a cemetery was
marked off for the burial of
the daughter of one of the members.
Baur continued to stress that
the primary motive of the community was
to do good and not to
make profits, and boasted that there
would be no speculation at
Ora Labora. "The farmer does not
have to pay profit to the store-
keeper," he wrote on February 2,
1863, "nor the shoemaker to the
tanner, nor the smithy to the farmer or
the farmer to the smithy."
He proudly reported that the colony now
had a post office, and
was to be known officially hereafter as
"German Colony, Ora
Labora, P. O. Huron Co., Mich."
In the summer of 1863 the colony had a
visit from the Rev.
Jakob Krehbiel, another pioneer of German
Methodism, and Kreh-
biel reported his observations at
length for the Apologete.6 He was
greatly impressed by the scenery as he
came by steamer up Saginaw
Bay. He found the Union flag flying
over Ora Labora, a com-
munity which at the time consisted of
fourteen houses for twenty-
eight families. He also found much
sandy soil, considerable marshy
land, and many mosquitoes. At a meeting
of the settlers he dis-
covered that a minority wanted to
dispense with a constitution al-
together and live only by the Methodist
Discipline, but this pro-
posal was voted down on the ground that
such an arrangement
would amount to coercion of conscience
and discourage desirable
non-Methodists from joining the colony.
The settlers lived in blockhouses
arranged in two straight rows
6 July 13, 1863.
ORA ET LABORA 137
and providing shelter for about a
hundred persons. Each family
ate at its own table but received
provisions from the common
store on credit. Fruits and vegetables
were scarce. The community
owned a number of cows, but the nearest
market for butter and
eggs was fourteen miles away, and the
major part of the colony's
income still came from lumbering, and
not farming. Krehbiel con-
cluded his visit in a burst of
optimism. "What Herrnhut was for
the brethren" (Moravians), he
wrote, "and Kornthal for the
pietists [of Wurttemberg] Ora Labora
will be for the German
Methodists."
Despite Krehbiel's rosy forecasts,
serious trouble already had
developed within the colony, and
between the members and their
president. Some of the original
subscribers had neglected to pay
the first installment on their stock
purchase. The potentially profi-
table Saginaw market was thirty-five
miles away, a not incon-
siderable distance for hauling lumber
and stones from the quarries
over rough roads. It proved difficult
to drain the swamp land, and
the colony always suffered from the
lack of fluid capital. Baur
wanted to buy a machine for sawing
lumber, but could not raise
the necessary five thousand dollars to
buy it and transport it from
Chicago. The same lack of capital
delayed the erection of proper
buildings to house the colony's tannery
and mills. Creditors refused
to accept stock certificates in lieu of
cash. Baur also complained
that the colony had to pay exorbitant
prices for supplies, and
heavy freight charges whenever the
settlers had products to sell.
More basic, however, was the growing
controversy over what were
private and what were communal
interests. Baur commented un-
happily, "Saturday was devoted to
the individual interest. There
was lively and enthusiastic work done
on that day." At other times,
however, production fell off sharply,
and members wasted many
hours discussing colony affairs when
they were supposed to be
working for the common good. Finally,
there was constant friction
between craftsmen and farmers, and men
who arrived with their
families often found it difficult to
adjust to frontier conditions.
On July 27, 1863, the Apologete announced
a wild scheme which
Baur had concocted to sell ten thousand
"city lots" to non-mem-
bers. A month later he tried to float a
loan, offering in exchange
138
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
certificates with a face value of two
hundred dollars, bearing in-
terest at six percent for five years,
and guaranteed by mortgages
on 160-acre plots of land. Baur
insisted the investment would be
"safer than the banks," but
investors were unwilling to take the
risk. Differences developed over
policy, and more specifically,
over Baur's leadership, and Krehbiel
and Wilhelm Ahrens, a
German Methodist minister from
Indianapolis who had supported
Baur at the outset, now questioned his
business methods. In 1863
Ahrens wrote the Apologete that
"he would not advise anyone to go
[to Ora Labora] unless he felt God had
called him."
As the number of workmen in the colony
declined because
original settlers returned to the
cities, Baur offered to sell more
stock to outsiders, but without
success. Before the end of 1863
the Michigan land office refused to do
further business with the
society as such, and would deal only in
individual allotments to
individual settlers. In January 1864
Baur still insisted that his
community of 110 people was solvent and
prosperous, but he
admitted that he badly needed more
skilled craftsmen, as well as
a professional hunter, trapper, and
fisherman,7 and he continued
to hope to attract capital and workers
from outside the colony. The
draft law of the Civil War added to his
labor problem by taking
the younger men into the service, and
the colony was without
funds to hire substitutes for them.
In 1865 the colony clerk reported stock
certificates outstanding
in the amount of $17,878, of which
non-members held $7,223.50.
Much of the stock represented
certificates in payment of work done
for the colony and not actual dollars
invested. By March 1865
Baur was under attack on several
counts, and he felt it necessary
to write Nast to refute the lie that
officers of the colony were buy-
ing up stock certificates at
ridiculously low figures, and that he
himself had cheated the colony out of a
thousand dollars, and had
used colony funds to hire a substitute
when his name was drawn
in the draft. But Baur was not yet
ready to abandon his dream of
utopia. He laid out five hundred town
lots, 132 by 165 feet, which
he tried in vain to sell for fifty
dollars each; he made new plans
7 Christliche Apologete, January 4, 1864.
ORA ET LABORA 139
for small factories, and he wrote Nast
to propose that a German
Methodist orphanage be established in
the colony, rather than in
Berea, Ohio, and promised a 640-acre
plot for a building program.
He fought to preserve his community
because "the honor of Christ
and the Christian religion was at
stake"; he hoped God would
provide a good business manager to bail
the colony out of its
financial troubles and enable him to
retire from the management,
and he contrasted the strong Methodist
faith of Ora Labora with
the widely advertised German town of
Egg Harbor City, New
Jersey, "where it is forbidden to
proclaim the word of God."8
By this time it was obvious that the
colony was doomed. The
controversies between Baur and his
critics became so acrimonious
that in 1866 Nast refused to print any
further communications
about the colony in the Apologete. One
of the last reports on the
colony was that of a newspaper man on
the Huron County News
who visited the community in 1865. He
found a group of about 30
families and 140 individuals, of whom
73 were children under
fourteen, and only 36 were qualified
voters. Of the 3,000 acres
of colony land originally acquired,
only about 160 acres had been
cleared, but the colony also owned an
island of 180 acres in Wild
Fowl Bay on which the settlers tried to
grow grapes. Nearly
every family had a cow, pigs, chickens,
and geese, and the colony
still operated a saw mill, flour mill,
a tannery, and a small shop to
manufacture shingles.9 Before
the close of 1866 Baur and two of
his fellow officers withdrew from the
community.
As in the case of other communitarian
settlements, the compli-
cated legal steps by which property at
Ora Labora passed from a
communal to a private basis would
require the examination of
scores of court records. The final
dissolution, according to Baur,
came in 1868. Act 429 of the public
acts of Michigan for 1867
shows that considerable land was
patented to Baur on November
12, 1867, and that, acting as trustee
for the society, he was en-
gaged in settling its debts. When the
colony officially disbanded,
8 For Egg Harbor City, see Dieter Cunz,
"Egg Harbor City: New Germany in
New Jersey," in Twenty-ninth Report, Society
for the History of the Germans in
Maryland (Baltimore, 1956), 9-30.
9 Christliche Apologete, August 21, 1865.
140
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
the Michigan legislature granted
homesteads of forty acres to all
of the settlers who had contributed a
year's labor on public im-
provements, especially digging drainage
ditches, eighty acres for
two years' labor, and a similar amount
for service in the Union
army. On January 2, 1869, Baur, as
trustee, gave a mortgage to
Jacob Henrici and Jonathan Lenz of the
Harmony Society of
Pennsylvania, which held a mortgage of
$20,000 on Baur's colony.
The new mortgage presumably superseded
the older one, and was
made out on all the land donated to the
colony by the state of
Michigan, with the exception of the
individually held city lots.
The amount of the mortgage was $4,500,
and as late as 1871
Baur was still busy raising this amount
through foreclosure pro-
ceedings, and quit claims from the
colonists. Apparently this is
the total amount which the Harmonists
received for their invest-
ment in a sister communal society.
Ora Labora disintegrated, in financial
confusion and controversy,
as its communal property was converted
into private holdings.
Baur moved to Ann Arbor, to teach
German in the high school,
and enjoy gardening and fruit growing,
and to act as secretary of
the county horticultural society and
the state pomological society.
He was one of the leaders in Michigan
of the movement to
abolish capital punishment. He died in
1894, and was buried with
the rites of the Episcopal Church, of
which he had become a mem-
ber. Today there is little left to mark
the spot of the German
Methodist utopian dream on Wild Fowl
Bay, except a few gnarled
fruit trees, rotting timber, piles of
stones, and faint traces in the
sandy soil of what once were village
streets. A few descendants of
the original settlers still live in the
vicinity.