Bishop Hill Colony
Bishop Hill, Illinois, United States
A Swedish Pietist communal colony in Illinois founded in 1846 by Erik Jansson and his followers, dissolved in 1861 and preserved today as a state historic site with a living craft tradition.
Erik Jansson and his followers fled the Swedish Lutheran establishment for the Illinois prairie in 1846, naming the colony after Biskopskulla parish, and built a communistic society with shared property, a flour mill and brickworks, and an artistic tradition: the primitivist painter Olof Krans documented the community in portraits that now hang in its museums. The colony's authority broke early: Jansson himself was killed in 1847, and the 1850 murder of John Root by Jansson's kinsmen and the ensuing trial fractured the society; communalism ended in 1861.
The village survived as a town. The Bishop Hill Heritage Association, organized in 1962, restored the Colony Church, the 1854 Steeple Building and other structures, and the village now runs as an Illinois state historic site with working artists, museums, and Swedish heritage festivals.
Visiting
The Bishop Hill Heritage Association museums are open year round (Steeple Building Museum weekdays from 10am, free-will donation); the state historic site listing carries seasonal building hours.
Photo: The Steeple Building, [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Steeple_Building_2_Bishop_Hill_Colony.jpg), CC BY-SA 3.0, Kepper66.
Visitor stories