Aurorans practiced faith a world apart

Colony Village founders came to Oregon in the 1850s, keeping their European customs

In the years around 1929 when I was a youngster not yet in high school, my father might say, if it was a sunny Sunday: "Let's get in the old ninety, drive out to Aurora and visit Aunt Elizabeth."

"The old ninety" was his affectionate term for our automobile, an Overland touring car. "Ninety" referred not to the car's maximum speed (which was much less than 90), but to the maker's model number: 90, 91, 92, etc.

Great Aunt Elizabeth Forstner was 89 years old and one of the surviving members of the Aurora communal society. To go there was to step back into the Europe of 1800. Their ancestors had immigrated to the United States from the Kingdom of Wrttemberg -- now part of Germany -- to seek religious freedom.

From 1803 to 1805, several shiploads of people came to Pennsylvania. They built a village and lived communally in simple piety. Then in about 1840, some followed evangelist William Keil to Missouri, where they built a village named Bethel and lived "separate from the world and its material distractions" as Keil preached.

By 1850, Bethel's population was about 650, and the world was encroaching. A railroad was built across Missouri with a station stop only a few miles from the village. Keil decided to move to a new frontier. He took half of the Bethelites with him, and they headed for Oregon in a train of 35 covered wagons. Here, they built yet another communal village. Keil named it Aurora, after one of his daughters.

The Aurorans liked music and had a band that was famous in Oregon. Its director, Henry Conrad Finck, had first come to Bethel as a 27-year-old selling musical instruments. He was born in Stuttgart and continued a tradition beloved in the old country -- open-air concerts. But the Aurorans added a new dimension. When they built their church, they put a platform around the steeple. The band occasionally played from that perch, the music floating over the village.

Among those who came west with Keil was Karl Ruge from Prussia. In Aurora, he was "the professor." He taught in the style of old Europe -- the classical basics, with no frills. And he must have done a good job because one of Henry Finck's sons -- Henry Theophilus Finck -- was educated there and was one of the first young men from Oregon to enter Harvard University. He later became a music critic and for 40 years wrote reviews for the New York Post. He also wrote an autobiography and recalled his youthful days in Aurora. The colonists, he said, were "mostly without higher education, but extremely kind, good-natured, sensible and mutually helpful."

Aurora was European in custom and habit. The communal society and its beliefs set residents apart from their neighbors. Within the commune, money was rarely used. Keil handled all monetary relations with "the world."

When he died in 1877 at age 65, the communal feature of Aurora ended. No one could be found who was able and willing to take his place. All property was divided and given to individual families, but the communal spirit continued for many years, in the sense of caring for one another.

Aunt Elizabeth lived with two other unmarried women, Clara Will and Bertha Stark. The house belonged to Clara. Elizabeth and Bertha lived with her in a mutually convenient arrangement, a carryover from the old days when everyone looked after everyone else and saw to it that no one was without a suitable place to live.

We would all sit in the parlor, a nicely furnished room that was never used except for company. They would serve sweet wine they made from Concord grapes and wear black silk dresses that they made themselves, just as their European ancestors did.

Portland historian and author Eugene Edmund Snyder has written extensively about local history, including "Aurora, Their Last Utopia: Oregon's Christian Commune, 1856-1883." *

*Available in the Gift Shop of the Old Aurora Colony Museum.  Click on the link "Gift Shop"