Just outside Benton Harbor, Michigan, in the dimly lit Pier 33 restaurant, a middle-aged waitress with a tightly curled helmet of hair is gazing down at my table with a mixture of curiosity and disapproval. What’s caught her attention is the pile of books beside my juice glass concerning southwest Michigan’s legendary House of David and City of David communities. She’s been chatting about Dan Rostenkowski with a table full of fishermen, all of whom think he’s getting a raw deal. Somehow, my books seem infinitely more intriguing.
“I heard they were very peaceful people.”
“Well, you should be all right,” she says. “They’re all pretty old.”
You could say the plight of Benton Harbor is just another manifestation of the destruction of America’s cities. Nearby Saint Joseph flourishes; Benton Harbor collapses. It’s a sign of the times. But to the dwindling memberships of the House of David and the City of David religious communities on the outskirts of Benton Harbor, it’s more than that. It’s the fast approach of the end of the world. It’s a just punishment visited upon the city that has persecuted and spread scurrilous rumors about their religious orders.
Other messengers followed. One of those most germane to the history of the House of David was John Wroe, who lived in the early 1800s and taught his male followers to grow their hair and beards long in accordance with the directive in Leviticus that men should mar neither head nor beard (the same directove that informs Hasidic Jews). He also instructed the men to wear stovepipe hats similar to those Quakers wore, and the women to sport ruffled, plum-colored, heart-shaped bonnets. Wroeites kept kosher and refused alcohol, snuff, and tobacco.
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The Purnell family traveled to the communal “God House” of prince Michael Mills’s “Flying Roller” colony in Detroit, which followed the teachings of James Jezreel. This is where, in 1895, Benjamin Purnell learned in a vision that he was the Seventh Messenger Saint John and Joanna Southcott had projected. Purnell’s announcement did not sit well with Mills’s followers; Benjamin and Mary were cast out. They took to the road again and spent several years wandering the country preaching the promise of eternal life.
Legend has it that the words “Benton Harbor, Michigan” then appeared as if in a dream to Mary Purnell. Since neither she nor her husband had ever heard of the town, they took this vision to be divine. Benjamin and Mary arrived in Benton Harbor with five of their followers and took up residence on Superior Street. The Purnells could easily believe that this bountiful land on which Benton Harbor sat was the intended site of the so-called ingathering, the assembly of the faithful to await the restoration of Eden on earth.
