BISHOP HILL, Ill. — The Swedes around here love to spin yarns for anyone who stops for rhubarb pie and a cup of coffee or just to pay respect to the hamlet's very own 19th-century "messiah."
And the villagers have a lot to draw from: Bishop Hill is a rich lode of stories.
In fact, there are many Americans of Swedish ancestry who can trace their roots to this quasi-communistic settlement founded by Erik Jansson, a wheat flour peddler turned dissident preacher and self-proclaimed messiah.
Historians say Swedish immigration to America largely sprang from Jansson and his 400 followers, who in 1846 set about creating a utopia on this oak- and walnut-covered hill that was to become their "Bishop Hill Colony."
It's a story the village never tires of telling.
Nowadays, though, there aren't many people left who come to learn from Jansson's ideas on how a strict reading of the Bible leads to a sinless existence. Even Jansson's descendants — the kind of men like Ted Myhre one finds around town — are frank about the merits of being related to a messiah.
"That and 50 cents will get you a cup of coffee at the Filling Station," Myhre said.
Instead, Bishop Hill gets to tell its story because scores of travelers come to snatch glimpses of its quixotic pioneer days — and eat, dance and while away time.
This village of 150 people is hidden on the Illinois prairie, about 150 miles southwest of Chicago. Forty years ago, it was falling into disrepair and oblivion. Now, it's a wonderfully preserved National Historic Landmark.
"Honestly, this place is like living a hundred years ago — it's weird," says Linda Spring, a co-owner of the Filling Station, a meeting place and coffee house rolled into one.
The traveler is smitten. Bishop Hill is an oasis where most of the original buildings — many designed along Greek Revival styles — stand to this day.
The old Colony hospital has been turned into a bed-and-breakfast, the Colony's carpentry and paint shop is now a post office, the three-story administrative offices building has been converted into a museum, and services are occasionally held at the old Colony church.
It's a friendly place where the people — about a third descended from the original Colonists — work their farmland and keep their town untarnished by neon signs, condos and big business.
That's not to say visitors aren't welcome.
Janssonists "always welcomed outsiders," says state historian Ed Safiran. "They were pretty progressive, and they didn't shun the outside world."
In fact, the Colonists operated a hotel with rooms at 50 cents a night. They exported thousands of brooms and other goods to the markets and embraced the United States as their adopted country.
Cheryl Wexell Dowell, a village leader and museum curator, says the Janssonists didn't want the outside world to see them as a cult.
After all, they'd been through harrowing times in Sweden where they were stoned, raided and imprisoned by the Lutheran Church because of their beliefs.
Nonetheless, Jansson and his flock were odd pioneers on the American prairie.
"It was all communal, there was no personal property," Safiran says.
Historians say Jansson organized the Colony based on descriptions of the early church in the Bible, in which everyone "had things in common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need."
The Colonists, who grew to number more than 1,000, slept in communal buildings, one family per room. The largest one, the "Big Brick," was 3 1/2 stories high with 96 rooms. The Big Brick's basement was large enough to accommodate the entire Colony at meal times.
Out of the Colony's communal spirit, the Janssonists farmed 21 square miles of land together. They made bricks and milled lumber to construct apartment blocks, a hospital and school, a bakery and brewery, a flour mill, barns and a church. They churned butter, manufactured wagons and carriages, wove linen.
And to this day, some vestiges of communal ownership persist.
The village folk run the Colony store in common, putting proceeds into a general fund for town improvements.
Quaintly, a dozen or so villagers have their own sets of keys to the Filling Station cafe. They let themselves in before the sun rises, brew coffee and get breakfasts going — well before the owners show up.
The communalism of the hamlet comes alive in the paintings of Olof Krans, who lived in the Colony as a boy. He is recognized as one of the country's foremost 19th-century folk artists.
His paintings, on display to the public in Bishop Hill, depict men and women working fields and boys driving teams of oxen. It's also through Krans' portraits of the stern, gnarled and grim faces of the Colonists that Swedes and outsiders alike can peer into the past.
The original settlement unraveled and dissolved after Jansson was shot and killed in a courtroom in May 1850 by John Root. Root and Jansson fought long and bitterly over Charlotta Lovisa, a cousin of Jansson's whom Root married and tried to take away from Bishop Hill.
"When he was shot, everybody thought he would rise again in three days. But he didn't, so they had to bury him," Myhre says matter-of-factly about his great-great-grandfather's death.
A lot of this history remains today.
Jansson's grave stands in the village's cemetery, as does the old timber church where he preached. His writings are stored in the Bishop Hill Heritage Association's library, and vast Swedish genealogical records are held in the Vasa Order of America National Archives, Bishop Hill's treasure trove for researchers.
And the Colony's heritage lives on, as both Swedes from nearby towns such as Galva and Galesburg and Swedes from afar make Bishop Hill a kind of mecca to this day.
Throughout the year, they show up for Bishop Hill's folk concerts, craft shows, art exhibits, Maypole dancing, summer and winter markets, historical re-enactments, village reunions and Christmas Day candlelight services in Swedish in the old, unheated, church.