[1][better source needed] Kelpius felt that the seventeenth-century Province of Pennsylvania, given its reputation for religious toleration at the edge of a barely settled wilderness, was the best place to be.

Philadelphia had been founded in 1682, but the city and the Province of Pennsylvania had quickly become a tolerant haven and refuge for many pietist, communitarian, or free-thinking groups who were leaving the Old World for the congenial religious climate of the British colony.

Though no sign or revelation accompanied the year 1694, the faithful, known as the Hermits or Mystics of the Wissahickon, continued to live in celibacy, searching the stars and hoping for the end.

At the university he had been drawn to Pietism, initially a reaction against the formalism of orthodox Lutheranism, but a term that sometimes included various esoteric or heretical Christian ideas.

He became a follower of Johann Jacob Zimmermann, a mathematician, astronomer, and cleric, whose pastoral position had ended in 1685 due to his prediction of the imminent advent of a heavenly kingdom, as well as his criticism of the state church.

Some of the forty or so who traveled with him aboard the Sarah Maria Hopewell[7] were Heinrich Bernhard Koster, Daniel Falckner, and Johann Gottfried Seelig.

A few newcomers, including Conrad Matthai and Christopher Witt joined the group, but the community began to decline, especially after the death of Kelpius.

The same account suggests that Kelpius possessed the legendary philosopher's stone, which at his direction was cast into the Wissahickon or Schuylkill River shortly before he died near Germantown in 1708.

Deep in the woods, where the small river slid Snake-like in shade, the Helmstadt Mystic hid, Weird as a wizard, over arts forbid,

Shall bid all flesh await, on land or ships, The warning trump of the Apocalypse, Shattering the heavens before the dread eclipse.

Scott imagines Kelpius shortly before his death offering this advice to a fellow seeker of wisdom: "... how precious are friendships and how difficult are goodbyes!