In 1694, Johannes Kelpius and about forty other German Pietists set sail for the recently established colony of Pennsylvania. Unlike others who flocked to the new world to escape religious persecution or in the hopes of new opportunities, Kelpius and his followers came to await the end of days.

University educated scholars and astronomers, the group that called themselves the Society of the Woman in the Wilderness (but came to be known by other colonists as the Hermits or Mystics of the Wissahickon) had determined through extensive study of the Book of Revelations that the second coming would occur in 1694.

Philadelphia was chosen as the ideal location to wait for the heavenly kingdom due to its proximity to the wilderness which allowed the group the isolation they needed to purify their souls through meditation and observation of the heavens. They set up a rudimentary settlement near the banks of the Wissahickon Creek, near present-day Roxburough. When the year passed, the hermits continued to wait through several more years and some even continued to wait after Kelpius’ death in 1708, though most grew disaffected and were eventually absorbed into the nearby settlement of Germantown.

HSP is home to some of the few surviving relics of the Kelpius community, including Kelpius’ own journal from 1694 documenting the group’s hazardous 10-week Atlantic crossing. The journal entries recount their ship’s encounters with impress gangs, battles with hostile French vessels, perilous storms, and even divine intervention. For this ‪#‎FridayReads‬, check out the digitized journal in HSP’s Digital Library: http://ow.ly/UCe9u

If your Latin and German are a bit rusty, check out this English translation:http://ow.ly/UCed8

This “Moorish-style” building was opened on Locust & Broad in 1876 for the crowds of the Centennial Exposition. It was known originally as Kiralfy’s Alhambra Palace, it offered the general public not only theatrical extravaganzas but also a beer garden and an open-air restaurant. J.H. Haverly, owner of a virtual minstrelsy entertainment empire, bought the property shortly after the Exposition. During his brief ownership the building was known as Haverly’s Theatre. By the end of the nineteenth century, the minstrel craze of the 1870s and 1880s waned, and as Haverly stopped his touring the building became known as the Broad Street Theatre until it was demolished in 1937. This building and Haverly’s production are perfect late examples of nineteenth century Orientalism and American traditions of black-face minstrelsy. Rich subjects for research and perspective.

Just a little bit of Forgotten Philly for Friday.

Image Credits:

Free Library of Philadelphia

Library Company of Philadelphia

The poster was imaged here at HSP and will be available on our Digital Library next week.

Thousands Buried Beneath Philly Playground

This week, a team of archaeologists broke the asphalt in four places at Weccecoe Park, digging to a depth of 3 feet to uncover evidence of the 19th century burial site. On Thursday morning, the fourth and final trench revealed a single gravestone.

"Amelia Brown, 1819, Aged 26 years" is clearly carved into the white stone, with this epitaph:

"Whosoever live and believeth in me, though we be dead, yet shall we live."

"There is no grave shaft associated with that stone, it’s just sitting loose in the fill," said Douglas Mooney, senior archaeologist for URS corporation. “It was knocked over at some point, long ago, when the cemetery was filled in in the mid-19th century. It no longer marks an actual grave. It’s just a loose stone in the ground." Read more.

USS New Jersey under construction in the #Navy Yard, Philadelphia July 1942. #WWII #History

 The Euphonia - A Marvelous Talking-Machine

This “marvelous talking-machine" was called the Euphonia. It consisted of a bizarre-looking head that spoke in a “weird, ghostly monotone” voice and was manipulated with foot pedals and a keyboard. By pumping air with the bellows and manipulating a series of plates, chambers, and other apparatus, including an artificial tongue, the operator could make it speak any European language. It was even able to sing the anthem God Save the Queen. The Euphonia was invented in 1845 by Joseph Faber, a German immigrant. A little known fact is that this machine greatly influenced the invention of the telephone.

The Euphonia was first exhibited at the Musical Fund Hall in Philadelphia. Its imitation of human speech was remarkably advanced given the state of technology at the time. Many who viewed the machine in action made the accusation that a small person must have been hidden inside. Apparently anyone who inspected the Euphonia’s mechanical workings was convinced that no trickery was involved, such as Faber employing a ventriloquist.

Frustrated at the lack of interest with his invention, Farber accompanied P. T. Barnum, of Barnum and Bailey’s Circus, to London. The Euphonia was again put on display at London’s Egyptian Hall and for the next several decades, it remained a part of Barnum’s exhibits. The financial returns for Faber, however, were extremely low and he ended up committed suicide without achieving the fame or fortune he had worked so hard for.

In a curious twist of fate, one person who happened to see the Euphonia in London and came away deeply impressed was Melville Bell, the father of the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell.

source 1, 2

Mounted on a wood storage crib at the Naval Aircraft Factory, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 19 October 1918. As the sign indicates, the “Spanish Influenza” was then extremely active in Philadelphia, with many victims in the Philadelphia Navy Yard and the Naval Aircraft Factory. Note the sign’s emphasis on the epidemic’s damage to the war effort.

The golden bull is a symbol of the Mesopotamian sun god Shamash. The bull-headed lyre of Ur is among the most significant artifacts that shed light on early Mesopotamian funerary rituals. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, PA. 

Photo by Babylon Chronicle

Before Rosa Parks- There Was Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

1846 – She began her amazing career as a writer by publishing her first book of poetry, Forest Leaves, at the age of 21.

1858 – She refused to give up her seat or ride in the “colored” section of a segregated trolley car in Philadelphia (100 years before Rosa Parks) and wrote one her most famous poems, “Bury Me In  A Free Land,” when she got very sick while on a lecturing tour. Her short story “The Two Offers” became the first short story to be published by an African American.

1859 – A dedicated abolitionist, Harper was one of the few public figures who did not abandon John Brown after his failed effort at Harpers Ferry, instead writing to him and staying with his wife, Mary, at the home of Lucretia Mott (Philadelphia’s leading Quaker Abolitionist) for the two weeks preceding his hanging.

1865 – In the immediate post-Civil War years, Harper returned to the lecture circuit, focusing her attentions on education for the formerly enslaved, on the Equal Rights Movement and on the Temperance Movement.

Despite all of her remarkable accomplishments, Frances E.W. Harper’s name cannot be found in most history books. 

 http://www.moonstoneartscenter.org/category/francesharper/

Philadelphia circa 1908. “Delaware Avenue, foot of Market Street.”

ca. 1870-79, [tintype portrait of a pantomimist]

via the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photographs Collection

The hand and torch of the Statue of Liberty on display at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, 1876

ca. 1845, [daguerreotype portrait of a stuffed eagle at Independence Hall, Philadelphia], William G. Mason

via the Library of Congress, Daguerreotype Collection

Hotel Walton, Philadelphia c. 1908 (via)

It would be several years before construction started on the actual Capitol of the United States (seen here). In late June 1787, the delegates attending the Constitutional Convention were still weighing their options on the framework of a document and government.

Three conceptual frameworks for the new government had been presented. In addition to Randolph’s Virginia Plan and Paterson’s New Jersey Plan, Alexander Hamilton proposed a third possibility which called for a strong executive branch that reminded many delegates an awful lot of the English monarchy.

 Each plan had its advocates. The Virginia Plan was generally favored by larger states. The New Jersey Plan was generally favored by smaller states. The Hamilton plan was generally favored by Alexander Hamilton.

 The concepts of the two major plans were not rooted in size but in divergent values and priorities deeply influenced by size. Larger states had more people and more natural resources at their disposal, and they believed they deserved a proportional voice in the new government. Smaller states asserted the nation had formed as a union of equal states and that each state deserved an equal voice in the new government.

Nowhere was the conflict between proportional representation and equal representation more evident than in the Convention’s debates about how to organize the legislative branch. Debate about the legislature began on June 20, and the Convention took less than two days to agree it should consist of two houses. The question of how to determine representation in each house was hotly contested for weeks.

On June 29, Oliver Ellsworth from Connecticut proposed representation in the First House be proportional to population and representation in the Second House be equally distributed to each state.

After another week and a half of debates, the Convention finally adopted Ellsworth’s compromise as the foundation of the modern U.S. Congress.

Image: Photograph of the Capitol Building Under Construction in Washington, DC.

ca. 1887, [tintype portrait of Sue Baker, a madam from Philadelphia]

Accompanying the photo is a warrant dated 1887 for her arrest that reads:

via Charles Schwartz Photography

ca. 1870-79, [tintype portrait of a pantomimist]

via the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photographs Collection

Philadelphia circa 1905. North American, Real Estate Trust, City Hall and Land Title Building.