The Strange Tale of Snow Hill Nunnery

By Eugene Lincoln

“The Onieda Community, the Amana Society, the New Harmony Movement – all bring memories of early attempts at communal living in the United States. But one of the most interesting communal movements is known to few historians outside of the immediate area in which it is located.

The Snow Hill Nunnery, about three miles north of Waynesboro, Penn., was established by German Seventh Day Baptists in the 1820s. Snow Hill is an outgrowth of Ephrata Cloisters, in Ephrata, Penn. The Cloisters, established by Johann Conrad Beissel in the middle eighteenth century, had grown to the point that the believers decided to establish another settlement farther west. They chose the Waynesboro area.

The built a saal – a meeting place in which they could worship and study, as well as a nunnery. The nunnery served as a living quarters for the monastic and celibate brothers and sisters who would practice communal living in the new location, as they had in Ephrata. In 1829 the members constructed a church building (still used each Sabbath)….”

(this article is an excerpt from the March 1989 edition of the Sabbath Sentinel)

To read the rest of this article, which starts on page 10, click this link: https://biblesabbath.org/media/tss_383March1989.PDF