Communal living has not had a history of success in Illinois, and one of its early failures was the Bishop Hill colony in Henry County.

Erik Janson had high hopes for the new community when he sent Olaf Olson to America in 1845 to purchase land for a New Jerusalem where his flock could reign through the millenium. Olson purchased 60 acres in Red Oak Grove for $250. Janson himself purchased another 480 acres and named the site for the home town in Sweden from which he had been forced to flee in 1846.

Janson's persecution by Swedish Lutheran leaders stemmed from the extreme nature of his doctrine of personal religious experience. Believing himself a prophet of God, Janson proclaimed that Jansonists were no longer guilty of sin and need not read a confession at communion. A militant anti-intellectual, he burned religious books as "idols."

The Illinois group faced conflicts from the start. Janson refused to allow marriages in the commune, and banned all medicine and physicians. During the first winter the new settlers lived in inadequate sod huts, and 100 died. Janson declared that illness was proof of a failure of belief in himself as the chosen leader of God, but modified that dogma somewhat when his own wife died of cholera in 1848. He declared her death the will of God, and promptly reversed his position on marriage - taking a new bride four weeks later.

Janson's power over women was considerable. The subject of rumors of lechery both in Sweden and Illinois, he was shot and killed by a jealous husband in 1850. After his death, the community attempted to institute a democratic rule, but without success. In a desperate attempt to return to the true belief, the group re-instituted the rule of celibacy in 1854.

The economy of the commune depended on agriculture and the spinning of flax. The prosperity of the group which held all property in common was shattered both by unwise investments and the crash of 1857. The commune, once numbering 1500 people, was dissolved between 1860 and 1862 although financial litigation continued for many years. In 1946 the state established Bishop Hill State Park and maintains two of the community's buildings there as museums.