Elbert Eugene Spriggs
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Elbert Eugene Spriggs or Yoneq (as he is known within the Twelve Tribes community) was born on May 18, 1937. His early adulthood is said to have been full of varied troubles. Among these were the death of his father, his divorce, and the general state of the world. Around 1970, he found a renewed enthusiasm for Christ as he understood him.
In 1972, he founded the Twelve Tribes also known as The Church in Island Pond, at this point in time called "The Light Brigade" and made up largely of youths who were unsatisfied with their former belief systems. The group set up a chain of restaurants called "Yellow Deli" in the Deep South. At this point he married again to a former homeless woman he had ministered to.
The group began to withdraw. In part for their own reasons and in part because of hostility from Christians in the South. In 1977, Spriggs moved the group to Island Pond, Vermont. There they began the Common Sense Wholesome Food Store and Restaurant. Around this point the group became increasingly vocal about their belief in spanking children with wooden rods. In his own right his statements that "Jesus wants you to help Him bring about the end" and he is an apostle of "the restoration of the Messianic Jewish New Testament Community of the first century AD."
These things aroused hostility to him and the group. In 1984, social workers and state troopers removed children from them. Since then interest in the group has quieted some and they are elements who argue the group had been unfairly maligned. Still his unorthodox views on child-rearing, and the end-times make him a figure of controversy to this day.
Although he is known to move around the world, living randomly with different communities within the tribes, he was last known to be living with the new community located in Asheville, North Carolina.
