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Johannes Kelpius, by Christopher Witt, 1705.
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Johannes Kelpius led the first religious communitarians to settle in Pennsylvania.

Credit: Historical Society of Pennsylvania

In 1694 Johannes Kelpius led a small group of Pietist monks from Germany to Pennsylvania, where they settled on the banks of the Wissahickon Creek above Philadelphia. There the celibate men who comprised the "Society of the Woman in the Wilderness," the first religious communitarians to settle in Pennsylvania, waited for the second coming of Christ.

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