University Colloquium: Koreshan State Park

Cyrus Reed Teed was very narcissitic and considered himself to be the next messiah. He would bring followers to Estero in 1894 to build the "New Jerusalem" for his new faith, Koreshanity. Koreshanity is a set of religious beliefs put forth by Teed himself. Famous sci-fi authors back in the day like Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs, believed that the Earth was hollow and habitable within. So Teed was not too far off from what was considered an acceptable science at the time. He explained that the known world is on the concave, inner surface of a sphere, outside of which there is only a void. However, this concept of the Earth being concave could not be validated or disproved.

A lot of the Koreshan beliefs were more along the lines of social beliefs. The Koreshans did not go to church as they had no church building in their community and they did not have a designated day of worship. Koreshanity is more of a social religion where the goal was to essentially better the community and eventually better the world as they had high aspirations that Koreshanity would be the official religion of the world. Also, unlike many cult leaders, Teed never used his immense power over his followers for personal benefit.

The colony, known as the Koreshan Unity, has an infamous founding that is still unknown to this day but what is known though was that Teed was trying to find his place in this world and trying to find a way to make himself matter by becoming part of a community. Cyrus Teed was trying to build a community from the ground up, however, the only person who truly knows his motivations at the time was none other than Teed himself. The colony began fading after Teed´s death in 1908, and in 1961 the last four members deeded the land to the state.

The Koreshan community was surprisingly enlightened for its time regarding the equality of the sexes, and many of its earliest followers were women. It was expected in the Koreshan colony that the husband would live in the male dormitory and that the wife would live in the female dormitory. They tried to maintain a sense of purity within the population by seperating the genders. In the Koreshan Unity, the individual was not necessarily the most important thing as this was a communial society where one was always working towards bettering the community as well as towards the common and greater good. All in all, the Koreshans were genuinely productive, a peaceful community, and aside from an unsuccessful attempt into local politics, they got along well with surrounding towns.