First home in Zoar, Ohio   Save
Ohio Guide Photgraphs
Description: Reverse Reads: "A residence of historic Zoar. The first home built in 1818." The picture depicts a log house on the corner of a dirt road. The house is covered in ivy with a porch facing the road. Zoar, a small community in Tuscarawas County, was founded by a group of German separatists in 1817. These separatists, who soon became known as Zoarites, were originally from an area of Germany known as Wurttemburg. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, they separated from the official German religion, the Lutheran Church. Separatists faced severe persecution in Wurttemburg, including confiscation of their properties and imprisonment. The group's leader, Joseph Bimeler (or sometimes spelled Joseph B�umeler), decided to bring the separatists to the United States. Several members of the group traveled west to Ohio in the fall of 1817 and began to construct the community's first buildings. The rest of the separatists, approximately two hundred in all, arrived at Zoar in the spring of 1818. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: SA1039AV_B14F01_028_001
Subjects: Zoar (Tuscarawas County, Ohio)--History--Pictorial works.; Society of Separatists of Zoar--History; Log structures
Places: Zoar (Ohio); Tuscarawas County (Ohio)