COLUMNS

From Jonesport to Palestine

Staff Writer
Telegram & Gazette

The 19th century was a time of religious enthusiasms, some unusual. For example, Rev. William Miller’s campaign in the 1840s about the Second Coming of Christ. He convinced hundreds that the Day of Judgment was at hand and that they should abandon their worldly possessions and prepare to meet their Redeemer. And many did, much to their later chagrin.

At about the same time at Oneida, New York, John Humphrey Noyes founded his “Perfectionist” commune that regulated the birthrate by means of male self-control.

A few years earlier, also in upstate New York, Joseph Smith had proclaimed that an Angel Moroni had shown him gold plates inscribed with the teachings of what was to become the Church of Latter Day Saints, or Mormons.

There were other groups and communes in various places - Robert Owens' New Harmony, Bronson Alcott’s Fruitlands, for example. One of the oddest took place in Jonesport, a coastal village in northern Maine, where a fiery itinerant preacher, George Joshua Adams, was making a name for himself.

Adams had a colorful past. He had begun his religious career as a Mormon and was for a time a close confidante of Joseph Smith, founder of that faith. He later became a follower of James Strang, a dissident Mormon, and after that a preacher in what he called The Church of the Messiah, a movement much obsessed with the Second Coming of Jesus. Adams established his headquarters at Indian River, near Jonesport, and soon was enthralling the locals with his dramatic pulpit performances.

One summer day in 1865, he electrified one of his startled flocks with the news that he had had a vision and that they, the people sitting in the pews before him, were destined to board a ship and sail to Palestine. There, they would meet their Maker. Rev. Adams had been assured in a vision that the Second Coming was at hand. The idea caught on and enraptured the Jonesport region.

Amazingly, Rev. Adams actually carried out his preposterous scheme.

The supposedly practical Mainers in and around Jonesport spent the next year building and provisioning a 600-ton ship. They entrusted their meager savings - thousands of dollars - to Reverend Adams. In August 1866, as hundreds watched and cheered from the shore, the Nellie Chapin shipped anchor and headed for Palestine with 156 passengers determined to begin their new lives after the Second Coming. They arrived in September, disembarked at Jaffa (now part of Tel Aviv), and began constructing their modest dwellings with lumber brought from Jonesport. Some of them have been preserved as historical mementos by the Israeli government.

The new settlers struggled with the harsh weather, swarms of flies and other insects, polluted water, Bedouin beggars always demanding “baksheesh,” and the lack of basic supplies. Some died of “fever.” Charges were brought against Rev. Adams for improperly withholding funds that had been entrusted to him by his gullible flock. In a few months, most were disillusioned. Jesus had never shown up, the land of milk and honey turned out to be as bleak and primitive as in Biblical times. By coincidence, their plight was observed and recorded by a skilled reporter, name of Mark Twain. He was visiting the Middle East with the idea of writing a book about it - “Innocents Abroad.” His description of the Jonesboro pilgrims is cutting.

“The colony was a complete fiasco. Such as could get away did so from time to time. The prophet Adams - once an actor, then several other things, afterward a Mormon and a missionary, always an adventurer - remains at Jaffa with his handful of sorrowful subjects. The forty we brought away with us were chiefly destitute, though not all of them. They wished to get to Egypt. What might become of them then they did not know and probably did not care - anything to get away from hated Jaffa.”

The colony gradually disintegrated. Some were take away by U.S. Navy ships, others on commercial vessels. A few stuck it out for a few years. As far as is known, few ever returned to Jonesport or to Maine.

Rev. Adams, the once charismatic leader, left the remnants of his flock in Jaffa and in 1868 sailed back to the United States, but first by way of England. He continued his career as an itinerant preacher, but seldom mentioned his Palestine adventure. Once, confronted by some Jaffa survivors in Philadelphia, he professed not to know them or what they were talking about.

Jonesport today, a placid lobstering and vacationers village, seems a long way from the excitement of 1866, when religious passions agitated society and led to extraordinary endeavors.

Albert B. Southwick's columns appear regularly in the Telegram & Gazette.