George J. Adams - Palestinian Settlement

Palestinian Settlement

Adams' friendship with Orson Hyde heavily influenced his decision to move to Palestine. Hyde was the first Mormon envoy to Jerusalem, and Adams "dreamed of replicating Hyde's pilgrimage to the Holy Land." After migrating around the Northeast for some years, Adams settled in Indian River, Maine, and prophesied that the prerequisite the Second Coming was "the Jews' restoration to Palestine."

In 1865, Adams and Indian River's postmaster, Abraham McKenszie, traveled to Palestine and arranged for the purchase of a tract of land near Jaffa. Upon returning to the United States, Adams organized the Palestine Emigration Association to coordinate his church's move. In February 1866, Adams was received by U.S. President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward at the White House. Seward agreed to expedite a petition from Adams and his church members to the government of the Ottoman Empire to ensure that the American settlers' title to the land Adams arranged to purchase was respected.

One hundred and fifty-six members of the Church of the Messiah sailed from Boston to Jaffa on the Nellie Chapin, arriving on September 22, 1866. The colony began by camping on the beach, relying on local Arabs for food and water. Within a month, six children and three adults had died. By November, the colony had erected a number of simple frame houses.

The pilgrims secured a 10-acre (40,000 m2) plot of land outside of Jaffa, where they founded the American Colony, named Amelican in Arabic, or Adams City in English, between today's Rechov Eilat and Rechov haRabbi mi-Bacherach in Tel Aviv-Yafo. However, the settlers quickly encountered problems. Scavengers ravaged their crops and the community faced famine heading into the winter of 1866-67. This and the climate, the insecure and arbitrary treatment by the Ottoman authorities, made many colonists willing to return to Maine.

But their leader Adams withheld their money, which the colonists had earlier conveyed to him. So the missionary Peter Metzler of the Protestant mission in Jaffa bought the land of five colonists, providing them the funds to leave. Adams was drinking heavily at the time and had lost his control over the colonists. In April, a group of colonists appealed to the American consul to the Ottoman Empire for assistance in returning to America. By the end of the month, the U.S. government had arranged for 26 settlers to return. By the end of summer, after the colony's crop harvest was a disastrous failure, only Adams and 40 other settlers remained. By October 1867, the U.S. State Department had appropriated $3000 for the return of any of the remaining colonists who wished to leave Palestine, while by December 1867, the colony had run out of money and resources.

Some of the colonists traveled back to America on the ship Quaker City; Mark Twain was a passenger on the same journey and he wrote about the failed settlers in his chapter 57 of his 1869 book The Innocents Abroad. Upon returning to the United States, many of Adams' former followers joined the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In June 1868, Adams and his wife left Palestine and sailed to England. Twenty of the original colonists remained in Palestine, some of them permanently.

The colonists who left would sell much of their real estate in the colony to newly arriving settlers, called Templers, coming from Württemberg in 1869. On 5 March 1869 also Metzler sold most of his real estate to the new colonists, thus Adams City became later known as the German Colony of Jaffa.