Back in 1843, when the county buildings were being completed, many Akronites were not giving much thought to the future. Why should they? The world was coming to an end! Right away! To be exact, on April 4th. That was the date of Judgment Day set by the Second Adventists, better known as the Millerites.

In fanaticism, the cult was similar to several others which had won followers in this region not too long before.

The first was made up of converts of Alexander Campbell who held a great revival near Peninsula in the summer of 1831. Thousands attended, many coming from as far as fifty miles away. An old account of one of the meetings stated: "When Campbell closed, low murmurs broke and ran through the crowd; men and women from all parts of the vast assembly came forward with streaming eyes; young men, who had climbed trees from curiosity, came down from conviction and all went forward for baptism."

Hot on the footsteps of Campbell came the Mormons, whose head­quarters then were at Kirtland, near the beautiful Chagrin valley. At least fifty members of this sect lived at New Portage in 1833, occupying dwellings which had been abandoned during the dread black tongue fever plague of 1828.

Why Mormons settled at New Portage is not exactly clear. A little light is thrown on the mystery, however, by an old account of the trials and tribulations of Joseph Smith, Sr., father of the Prophet.

Some time late in 1832, so the story goes, Smith was arrested in a northern Ohio town for performing a marriage ceremony without the necessary authority. Hailed before a justice of the peace, he was fined $3,000. He didn't have that much money, or any small fraction thereof, and was straightway carted off to jail.

Smith did not remain long in confinement. The constable who was his jailer was a convert of Mormonism, and when night came, un‑locked a window and permitted him to escape. Smith fled and eventually came upon the empty dwellings at New Portage. There he went into hiding.

Available records indicate that other Mormons assembled at New Portage during the following year and made it one of their main centers for gathering supplies obtained from converts in the surrounding country—supplies badly needed by their brethren in Missouri who were then having no end of trouble. Apparently they did not remain long at New Portage. Said John Evans in his book, "An American Prophet": "One hundred and fifty of the men left New Portage early in May, 1834, with twenty wagons loaded with clothing for the distressed in Missouri and tents and provisions for the army."

When the Mormons departed, one of the party was Ambrose Palmer who had established a glass factory in New Portage in 1817 and operated it for several years.

The presence of Mormons so close at hand attracted little attention in Akron. So far as is known, they won no converts.

It was quite a different story, however, when Second Adventists began sweeping through the country. Proselytes of "Father" William Miller, the Massachusetts farmer who founded the cult, started holding revival meetings in Akron in the early winter of 1840-41.

One of their first converts was the Rev. James D. Pickands, then pastor of the First Congregational Church. He became so fervid in his new-found belief that he split his congregation asunder. Many mem­bers withdrew on June 8, 1842, and started building a new church at N. Main and Tallmadge (now Federal).

Pickands and his followers for a time held possession of the Con­gregational Church, then located on the northeast corner of High and Quarry (now Bowery). But it was soon pointed out that the land on which the structure stood had been donated by General Simon Perkins to the Congregationalists and not to any off-shoot sect. So the Millerites withdrew and built a tabernacle on the opposite side of High Street.

During the next fall and winter, almost daily revival meetings were held in the tabernacle and the number of converts increased rapidly.

Through a revelation straight from Heaven, Father Miller had been informed that the world would end unquestionably on the 4th of April, 1843. Who could dispute him? So the Millerites sold their possessions, paid their debts, suspended their business, and bought snow-white Ascension Robes to be ready for the flight to a glorious Land of Hereafter.

The 4th of April came and the Millerites gathered at the taber­nacle. Holding tight their loved ones, they waited in awe and prayed most earnestly. Anxiously they looked upward at the skies. They felt the earth to learn if it was trembling. Nothing happened. The sun sank in the western sky, just as it had always done, and the moon rose, bright and clear. And then came midnight—the fateful day had passed.

A few of the Millerites were shaken in their belief by the world's refusal to expire. But not many. Father Miller might have erred a trifle in his calculations but he couldn't be entirely wrong. Sure enough, the good man sent word that he had made a slight error. In rechecking his figures he found he made a year's mistake—Judgment Day would come on April 23, 1844.

Soon afterward he came through with another correction. The April 23rd date was Jewish time. The Gentile time for the big termina­tion, he declared, would be March 22, 1844.

That day finally arrived. No cataclysm occurred. And the Jewish date of April 23rd also came and went. Still nothing happened. But the Millerites kept on gaining strength regardless. Many were the baptisms and testimonials. Father Miller himself came here on August 13, 1844, and all Akron turned out to hear him preach. By that time the father had acknowledged that fixing definite dates for the Second Coming was risky business but his conviction that the end was near, very near, was still unshaken.

Ira Veits, a Cuyahoga Falls convert, hearkened to the Second Ad­ventists' admonition that earthly passions are sinful, interpreted literally a certain verse in the Bible, and mutilated himself with a plane-bit and a mallet. Then he became a raving maniac.

Before long many members of the cult became fiery exponents of "spiritual marriages," women leaving their "carnal husbands" and men their "carnal wives" and then uniting with the blessing of the sect so they could "sleep together spiritually." Quite naturally the courts frowned upon such marriages but the Millerites refused to "bow to the beast" and take the oath against perjury and no convictions resulted. One outraged husband, a well-known hotel keeper, failing to get solace at law for the wrecking of his home, pelted his wife's spiritual affinity with rotten eggs.

One of the Millerites who refused to testify in court and was fined for contempt was William J. Hart, son of the founder of Middlebury and the man who had platted that town. He had sold or given away everything he had during the end-of-the-world scare and didn't have money to pay the fine. So the judge sent him to jail.

On the night of December 23, 1845, Akronites were awakened bya terrific blast. Everyone believed at first that it was just another explosion at the "powder patch," the Austin Powder Company's mills in the Little Cuyahoga valley where the fair grounds later were located.But investigation showed that some ungodly person had blown up the tabernacle. It was almost completely demolished. No arrests were made. Not long afterward the Millerites disbanded. Even the Reverend Mr. Pickands, who had become a prominent leader of the cult throughout northern Ohio, publicly admitted that Millerism was a "humbug and a delusion." Giving up the ministry, he studied law and later became editor of a paper devoted to wool growing. Millerites who could not adjust themselves to the more normal forms of religion joined the "shakers" in southern Ohio.

 

Grismer, Karl H. Akron and Summit County. Akron, OH: Summit County Historical
      Society, n.d.