Gunsmith Charles Flowers: Harmony’s Charles Flowers made percussion long rifles in the classical Pennsylvania style ca. 1850-1890. A former coal miner, he changed careers at about the age of 30 to build custom rifles by hand when relatively inexpensive factory-made rifles were becoming readily available. Flowers rifles have a long barrel engraved "C. Flowers" or "C.F." in script on the top flat, and are fully stocked in curly maple with back-action locks. A most distinctive feature is a brass plate protect the stock from corrosive effect of percussion cap flash. Other elements that generally distinguish Flowers' rifles include incised butt and fore stock carving, decorative patch box and German silver escutcheons, inlays and other silver or brass mountings, incised lines framing the sights, fore stock wear plates of German silver or brass, and decorated muzzle faces. Flowers, a Civil War veteran, died in 1897 and was buried behind the Mennonite meetinghouse north of Harmony. His shop was behind the family home two blocks from the town diamond. Neither survived the 20th century.

The Harmony Museum’s remarkable Ball Collection exhibits 10 rifles spanning Flowers’ career. Generally reflecting the requirements of those for whom they were built, they range in appearance from plain to ostentatious. Among them  are the earliest known example of Flowers' work (ca. 1850-55), and the lavishly decorated rifle pictured in Henry J. Kauffman's book “The Pennsylvania-Kentucky Rifle.”
 

Native Americans: The earliest known native occupation of southwestern Pennsylvania was ca. 14,000 B.C.  A much later people called the Monongahela, of whom little is known, disappeared from the region early in the 17th century. Although the region never had a large permanent native population, a number of settlements appeared and disappeared between the late 1600s and late 1700s. Most were Lenni Lenape, called Delawares by Europeans, and Shawnees. In 1753 George Washington visited a Delaware village on the Connoquenessing Creek where Harmony would be established by German immigrants 51 years later. The Harmony Museum’s History Room exhibit includes native artifacts representative of the region’s 18th century Native American populations. Many, although not all, were collected locally. The collection includes war clubs, ax heads, arrow and spear points, and fish hooks.
 

Washington Starts French & Indian War: George Washington precipitated the first global war with a 1753 military mission to what would become western Pennsylvania. American history would likely have been much different had he been killed in either of two very close calls here late that December. In the region, only the Harmony Museum has a permanent exhibit describing his mission and its route. Butler County has marked highways and Moraine State Park hiking and biking trails with “Washington 1753” signs for the convenience of tourists wishing to follow Washington’s approximate path within the county, and other counties are preparing to do so. 

Britain won its contest with France for the unsettled Ohio Valley and Northwestern Territories in what came to be called the French and Indian War, the North American part of what expanded into the global Seven Years’ War.

On Oct. 31, 1753, Virginia militia Major George Washington, then 21, left Williamsburg for Ft. LeBoeuf, south of Lake Erie, with Gov. Robert Dinwiddie’s demand that the French withdraw from British territory and to assess the French military. Traveling in bad weather and guided by Christopher Gist, he slept Nov. 30 at a Delaware Indian village where Harmony would be established a half-century later. At Ft. LeBoeuf the French responded to Dinwiddie’s ultimatum by demanding the British get out of New France, and war was assured. On Dec. 27, Washington and Gist returned to the Indian village visited weeks before, where one of “a party of French Indians” offered to show them to the Forks of the Ohio, then led them off course and shot at Washington but missed. Two days later Washington survived a spill into the ice-choked Allegheny River. He arrived in Williamsburg on Jan. 16, 1754.

The French soon evicted Virginians from the Forks of the Ohio and built Ft. Duquesne there. In the first skirmishes of the French & Indian War, Lt. Col. Washington’s militia attacked a small French unit on May 28, 1754, at Great Meadows (near Uniontown), and a substantial force won revenge with Washington’s humiliating surrender July 4 at nearby Ft. Necessity.

Click to view the map
of Washington's Trail.
 

Harmonist Log House: A museum annex on the north side of Mercer Street two blocks east of the main museum building, it was a gift from a local company and reconstructed on a donated lot. It stood originally in the west end of old Harmony.

Vineyard Hill & Rapp’s Seat: On Evergreen Mill Road at the north end of the Mercer Road bridge in Harmony, the heavily wooded hillside overlooking the Connoquenessing Creek was the site of the Harmony Society’s vineyard. A seat carved into a rock outcrop is where society leader Georg Rapp meditated. Partially accessible by a steep, difficult trail.
 

The Region's Oldest Barn: On the west side of Mercer Road just north of the bridge, it was purchased in 1999 to prevent demolition of the last surviving barn among the three communities built by the Harmony Society. The 1805 barn housed the Society’s Marino sheep and was re-roofed ca. 1850, perhaps as the consequence of tornado damage, by David Ziegler, a son of Harmony’s Mennonite “second founder” Abraham Ziegler. Restoration to the1805-1850 period was completed in 2005      
   

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