Ebenezer Society

…where they established the communal Ebenezer Society. In 1855 about 1,200 members moved westward to Iowa, where 18,000 acres (7,300 hectares), later expanded to 26,000 acres (10,500 hectares), had been purchased. This new home was called Amana (after a mountain range in Lebanon referred to in Song of Solomon 4:8…

…settled in 1842 by the Ebenezer Society Amana colonies, a German religious sect that purchased 5,000 acres (2,000 hectares) of the Seneca Indian Reservation. The town, organized as Seneca in 1851, was renamed in 1852 to avoid confusion with another Seneca farther east. Between 1855 and 1862, the Ebenezers, concerned…