| Notes |
If not the same man, then certainly a relation:
From:
RELIGIOUS RADICALISM IN THE COLONIAL SOUTHERN BACKCOUNTRY
A paper given at the Georgia Workshop in Early American History and Culture
August 27, 2004
Peter N. Moore
Georgia State University
Among these emissaries were the “Gifted Brethren (for they
pretend to Inspiration),” who “now infest the whole Back Country, and have even penetrated
South Carolina.” Woodmason was fond of hyperbole, but he was not far from the mark in
connecting Pennsylvania to the Dutch Fork. One emissary in particular was Israel Seymour, a
fugitive from the Ephrata community, a Radical Pietist commune in Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania. Seymour was a man of “special natural gifts” who was ordained at Ephrata and
quickly gained a following there. He ran afoul of the leadership, however, over his questionable
relationship with a young female convert, and the subsequent dispute “caused him to lose his
senses” before he finally fled to South Carolina. There he settled in a community of Seventh
Day Baptists on the Broad River opposite the Dutch Fork. Members of this congregation also
had ties to Ephrata and had migrated from Pennsylvania in the early 1750s. The eighteenthcentury
Baptist historian Morgan Edwards described Seymour as “a man of some wit and
learning, but unstable as water.” He preached at Broad River “while he behaved well.”
Apparently he did not last long, for he later confessed to committing “all kinds of wickedness”
before he finally reformed, moved to the Pee Dee region of South Carolina, and “returned to his
former faith.”26
It is certainly possible that Weber came into contact with the Ephrata Sabbatarians; he
may well have been converted through the charismatic preaching of Seymour, who served the
Broad River congregation in the mid-1750s, during Weber’s spiritual crisis. There is no direct
26 Hooker, ed., Carolina Backcountry, 78 [Woodmason quotations]; Chronicon Ephratense: A History of
the Community of Seventh Day Baptists at Ephrata, trans. by J. Max Hark (New York, 1889, reprint 1972),197-99
[Seymour quotations]; Morgan Edwards, Materials toward a History of the Baptists, vol. 2, South Carolina
(Philadelphia, 1770, reprint Danielsville, GA, 1984), 153-54; Bach, Voices of the Turtledoves, 22.
27
evidence that the Weberites adopted the peculiar practices of this sect – which included love
feasts, ritual foot washing, pacifism, and seventh-day worship – but Weber would have found
something familiar in their Reformed sentiments, and given his penchant for spiritual drama, he
would have been mesmerized by Seymour’s powerful preaching. In addition to the Broad River
Sabbatarians, there were congregations of Dunkers in the vicinity of the Dutch Fork, with whom
Weber could easily have had contact. Weber hardly had to leave the Dutch Fork to gain access
to a range of Radical Pietist influences – from the simplicity and intimacy of the Dunkers to the
inspired, prophetic preaching of Seymour and the mysticism of the Ephrata emissaries.27
The Weberites were not the first of South Carolina’s “deluded fanatics” to come by their
beliefs via Ephrata. Around 1722 the Dutartres, a French Protestant family from the low
country, came under the influence of a traveling Pietist preacher who “filled their Heads with
many wild and fantastic Notions,” as Anglican Commissary Alexander Garden later told it.
Although in one account Garden identified this preacher as Christian George, it was very likely
Michael Wolfhart, a Radical Pietist from Pennsylvania who took a missionary journey to South
Carolina in 1722 and later became one of the key figures at Ephrata.28 In any event, George or
27 Edwards, Materials toward a History of the Baptists, 154; Leah Townsend, South Carolina Baptists,
1670-1805 (Florence, SC, 1935), 167-74.
28 Alexander Garden, A Brief Account of the Deluded Dutartres (New Haven, 1762), 5. There is a
compelling case to be made that Christian George was actually Michael Wolfhart. First, Wolfhart was known to
have taken a missionary journey to South Carolina in 1722; see Bach, Voices of the Turtledoves, 18. Second, the
Dutartres’ preacher relied heavily on the work of Jakob Boehme, a seventeenth-century German mystic who was
central to the spirituality at Ephrata and with whom Wolfhart was very familiar. Third, a second account of the
Dutartres attributed to Garden and reprinted in the nineteenth century does not name the traveling preacher, simply
identifying him as a Moravian. Yet the Moravians did not come to America until 1735. For this account see George
Howe, History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina (Columbia, SC, 1870), 194-97. The earlier account by
Garden identifies Christian George more uncertainly as a “strolling Moravian, Dutch, or Swiss Enthusiast,” which
more accurately describes Wolfhart. These two accounts are very similar but not identical; it is quite possible that
they were based on two different sermon manuscripts.
28
Wolfhart came and went, but over time the Dutartres grew reclusive and eventually came to
believe that “they were the alone Family upon Earth who had the true Knowledge and Worship
of God.” Soon enough one of their number, Peter Rombert, began to prophesy. Through a series
of revelations he announced God’s intentions to destroy the world save for “one Family, whom
he would preserve as he did Noah’s, for raising up a Godly Seed again upon it.” God also
revealed that Rombert was to divorce his wife, who had been previously married and widowed,
and “take to Wife her Youngest Sister who is a Virgin,” all in order that the family’s “Holy Seed
be preserved pure and undefiled.” To this the family reluctantly consented. But when Rombert
announced that the Dutartres were no longer to submit to civil authority and that they must
refuse to participate in the militia, the magistrate swore out a warrant for their arrest. Rombert
urged the family to resist arrest and persuaded them that they were impervious to the bullets of
“the Men of the Earth.” They learned otherwise in the violent encounter that followed, when one
of the Dutartres women along with the militia captain were killed. Five were arrested, convicted,
and condemned to die. Yet “they confidently persisted in their Delusion till their last Breath,”
Garden noted, for “they had obeyed the Voice of God, and were about to suffer Martyrdom for
it.” After the martyrs failed to rise from the dead, the surviving family members “became
sensible of their Delusion . . . and were pardoned.” Yet one son suffered a relapse and murdered
again “for no other Reason . . . but that God had revealed it to him, it was his Duty to do it.”29
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- Bef 1754