Description: Caption on front of photograph reads: "'The Hermitage, ' one of the first six houses, is kept as a sort of shrine to the memory of Alexander Gunn, retired Cleveland hardware man, who lived in it eighteen years." Gunn first visited the village of Zoar in 1879, and eventually purchased this house as well as a brewery when the Society of Separatists of Zoar, a communal society, disbanded in 1898. Gunn, who died in 1900 in Germany, is buried in Zoar. A group of separatists from Germany, eventually known as Zoarites, established the small community of Zoar in Tuscarawas County in 1817. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, they had separated from the official German religion, the Lutheran Church. The community of Zoar was not originally organized as a commune, but its residents had a difficult time surviving in 1818 and early 1819. As a result, on April 19, 1819, the group formed the Society of Separatists of Zoar. Each person donated his or her property to the community as a whole. In exchange for their work, the society would provide for them. In the decades following the establishment of the Zoar commune, the separatists experienced economic prosperity. Due in part to influences from the outside world and the death of original residents, in 1898 the remaining members decided to dissolve the society, and its property was divided among the Zoarites. It was an end to the communistic experience at Zoar.  View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: SA1039AV_B02F01_026_1
Subjects: Gunn, Alexander, 1837-1901; Zoar (Tuscarawas County, Ohio)--History--Pictorial works.; Society of Separatists of Zoar--History
Places: Zoar (Ohio); Tuscarawas County (Ohio)