The cemetery contains about 100 graves of Harmony Society members who passed away during the society’s ten years in Harmony, Pennsylvania—1804 to 1814. This land was the only ground kept by the society when they relocated to their next home, New Harmony, Indiana.
In 1869 the Harmonists hired Mennonites, who had resettled the area around Harmony, to build a stone wall around the cemetery site. The wall includes a unique revolving stone gate that weighs about one ton. The gate symbolizes the soul’s entrance into the afterlife. See if you can move this mammoth rock and enter onto the grassy cemetery.
The Harmonists did not believe in marking graves with the names of the deceased. However, visitors today will find the headstone of Johannes Rapp, son of Harmony Society founder George Rapp. It reads in part: "Here lies and rests the body of Johannes Rapp, who was born Dec 19th, 1783 and died on July 27th, 1812." Why this marker was added by non-Harmonists, long after Johannes’ death, remains a mystery.
