The Koreshan Unity was a communal utopia formed by Cyrus Teed, a distant relative of Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement. The Koreshans followed Teed's beliefs, called Koreshanity, and he was regarded by his adherents as "the new Messiah now in the World". After moving from New York to Illinois, the group eventually settled in Estero, Florida. The last person to officially admit membership to the Koreshans died in 1982. Founding The Koreshan Unity started in the 1870s in New York City, where Teed started preaching his beliefs. Teed took the name "Koresh" from the original Persian form of his name Cyrus. He formed short-lived groups in New York City and Moravia, New York. After finding it hard to find converts in New York, he moved to Chicago in 1886. Teed's followers formed a commune in Chicago in 1888 called Beth-Ophra. Koreshan affiliated "study groups" also appeared in Baltimore, Portland, San Francisco, Springfield and Lynn, Massachusetts, and elsewhere. Beliefs The Koreshan Unity, led by Cyrus Teed, was a religious cult that followed the ideals of celibacy, community, and equality to attain immortality. Teed described God as a hybrid of male and female. Due to this belief, he and the cult as a whole were very open to feminism and the equality between the sexes. The ruling body of the Unity was the Planetary Court; it was composed exclusively of females aside from Teed as the leader of the Court. Celibacy, according to Teed, was the guiding principle humans should live by in order to attain immortality. Teed preached that women were slaves in their marriages and a way for them to be liberated was to move to the commune and practice celibacy, which was very appealing to women at the time. Teed denounced commercialism and wished for the Unity to eschew personal property. However, archaeological research has shown that some members did keep private keepsakes and an iron-key was discovered, showing that even if the Koreshans called for communal ownership, some places or things were off limits. The group was also known to sell excess goods to locals who lived outside the commune. The Unity also believed in a concave hollow Earth. They thought the world was on the inside crust of the planet and the sky was the inside of the earth. Teed backed this up with a device he invented called the "Rectilineator" which measured