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The community house at Snowhill provided sleeping quarters, common rooms, kitchen, dining area, and a chapel (Saal) for the monastic society. The structure is actually four buildings erected at different times (1814-43) as membership increased (to about thirty). It is almost 150 feet long and has over 50 rooms.

The churches hold Communion once a year, around Passover, and practice footwashing, using wooden tubs that date back at least to the 1800s, perhaps earlier.

Initially, the members would fill them from a nearby stream, soaking them first to swell the seams so the water would not leak out. With the addition of indoor plumbing, eliminating the need to fill them from a distance, someone added a watertight copper lining.

General Washington, in gratitude for the humanitarian service the Ephrata community performed for his troops, commissioned the making of three cherry Communion sets, each set consisting of two goblets and a pedestal plate. One set is in the Smithsonian Museum. Another set was sold at auction to a private collector. The third set, however, is still in use.

We no longer fill the goblets, individual cups having replaced the common cup several years ago, but we still distribute the bread (on a cloth) from the pedestal plate.

The task of historical reconstruction is difficult when records are scanty. We are missing fifty years of church minutes (1910-1960), their having disappeared as the secretary’s post changed hands more than once. Fortunately, one of the Salemville ministers, Frank R. King (a printer by trade), published Church News, a quarterly newsletter documenting some of what transpired in that period, and we have almost an entire run (1914-1955, and sporadically before that).

He modeled this modest venture on Advocate and Herald, an earlier publication his father, Christian L. King, and others had helped to prepare. This weekly paper reported on world and local events as well as on church matters. We do not have a complete series (1894-1895) but do possess several copies, although they are very brittle.

It included advertisements, which are also interesting.

In the late nineteenth century, Obed Snoeberger a member of the Snow Hill congregation, published a monthly magazine from his home. It was first titled The Poet, then The Traveler and the Poet, and finally The Historian, The Traveler, and The Poet. The title indicated its content, much of which was from a religious or contemplative perspective, We do not have a complete series (1874-1879) but do possess a bound edition of several copies.

Although there were no national or local news items, each edition included a weather summary of the preceding month. To ease the burden of an essentially one-man publication, he also reproduced most of the previous issue each month.

The church printed several of its early publications on this press (c. 1740), used first at Ephrata (perhaps for the Martyrs’ Mirror), then at Snowhill (for The Historian, the Traveler, and the Poet), and finally at Salemville (for the Advocate and Herald).

The press is currently on permanent display at Juniata College (Juniata, PA), courtesy of the Frank R. King Estate and through the efforts of his son, Crist King (who appears above).

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