Abstract
Abijah Alley had the gift of prophecy. He also wrote, painted, farmed, and traveled. Sources tell us his peregrinations took him to the Shaker community at Union Village, Ohio; later to Cincinnati and across the Ohio River to Covington, Kentucky; to visit the president in Washington; to Europe; to the Holy Land; to Texas. And that when he returned to his family’s Appalachian property he constructed a replica of King Solomon’s temple for his home.
A mercurial religious visionary, Alley blazed an irregular trail through the first half of nineteenth-century America. Despite his remarkable life he has thus far eluded biographers. This article attempts to bind together the disparate threads of his pilgrimage into a narrative telling of his spiritual journey.
Date
July 2017
Volume
11
Number
3
First Page
143
Last Page
183
Journal Title
American Communal Societies Quarterly
ISSN
1939-473X
