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Overview
The book opens with an introductory assessment of the Shaker contribution to the history of American social experimentation, as seen from the modern point of view. There follows the often amazing story of Ann Lee and the origins of the movement in eighteenth-century England, its emigration to New England, the early Shaker experiments in communism, and the expansion to the American West. The author then pauses to examine in detail the ideology behind the Shaker dedication to physical labor; Shaker industry and design, including a discussion of the spare, utilitarian folk art so popular today; the highly formalized mode of worship, with its lively songs and dances and its often violent emotionalism; strange manifestations during the revival periods of the 1830s and 40s; the rigid internal organization of the Shaker community and its original economic and sociological theories; Shaker relations with the outside world; and the decline of the sect after the Civil War.
This edition is the first to include the author’s valuable notes, as well as the original appendixes containing the complete text of the Millennial Laws, a statistical breakdown of all the Shaker communities, and a bibliography. This material is especially useful to students of American social and religious movements, but the author’s reliance upon original manuscript material and contemporary illustrations lend this book an exciting immediacy that makes it a pleasure for all readers interested in fascinating people and unique ways of life.
“An excellent history of one of the most interesting of American religious cults.” — Nation.
“Satisfies the exacting standards of historical scholarship and promises at the same time to enlighten and hold the interest of the general reader.” — Saturday Review.
“A substantial contribution to American history.” — The New York Times.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780486144719 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dover Publications |
| Publication date: | 07/18/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 384 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
Read an Excerpt
THE PEOPLE CALLED SHAKERS
A SEARCH FOR THE PERFECT SOCIETY
By EDWARD DEMING ANDREWS
Dover Publications, Inc.
Copyright © 1963 Edward Deming AndrewsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-486-14471-9
CHAPTER 1
Ann Lee Leads the Way
At Manchester, in England,
This blessed fire began,
And like a flame in stubble,
From house to house it ran:
A few at first receiv'd it,
And did their lusts forsake;
And soon their inward power
Brought on a mighty shake.
— Millennial Praises, 1813
ON 14 July 1772, the constable of the manor of Manchester, England, entered in his expense account a bill for seventeen shillings which he had expended to quell a 'disturbance' — noted in the record as a 'breach of the Sabbath.' The outlay represented payment 1 of six pence to each of the twenty-four assistants required for the occasion, plus five shillings, sixpence for ale consumed after peace had been restored.
Five persons had been arrested, among them one John Lees, a blacksmith living on Toad Lane (now Todd Street), and his daughter Ann. The melee must have been rather violent, for charges of assault were later entered against the five, as well as a claim for damages for breakage of the ironwork on the house of a certain widow Shapley. They were arraigned the following day before Justice Peter Mainwaring, a physician serving on the commission of the peace, at the Mule Inn, where ale drinking again accompanied the proceedings. On the twenty-third the constable paid out one shilling, sixpence of the public moneys to the 'Jurors Baillif on prosecuting John Lees and his Daughter Ann,' and a week later presented a 'Bill of expenses at the Mule when Justice Mainwaring attended to examine the Shakers.' At the ensuing quarter sessions of the court, the blacksmith and his daughter were sentenced to a month in prison.
Members of the sect thus popularly designated continued, however, to disturb the peace. On 3 October of the same year, the constable again had to summon aid to disperse a 'mob' which was threatening to pull down the Cannon Street house of John Townley, a bricklayer who had recently joined the order. Obviously a noisy Shaker meeting was in progress, such as occurred two weeks later when the same officer had to break into the Lees house on Toad Lane 'to apprehend the gang' — damaging the 'breaches' to the extent of five shillings, sixpence. One result of that affair was the detention of Ann's brother James until he could find sureties.
Conflict with the law reached its climax late the next spring when 'Ann Lees a shaker' was re-arrested, this time for 'disturbing the Congregation in the old Church,' an offense described in the Manchester Mercury of 20 July as follows:
Saturday last ended the Quarter Sessions, when John Townley, John Jackson, Betty Lees, and Ann Lees (Shakers), for going into Christ Church, in Manchester, and there wilfully and contemptuously, in the time of Divine service, disturbing the congregation then assembled at morning prayers in the said church, were severally fined £20 each.
Inability to pay the fine resulted in a prison term of unrecorded length. The constable's accounts for 30 May state that Ann was detained in the 'Prison room for two days with an attendant, and maintained with meat and drink.' A later reference (28 July) recorded the expenditure of three shillings for 'attending Ann Lees two whole nights.' In a testimony many years later, the blacksmith's daughter said she was kept in a 'stone prison' for two weeks and then transferred to the 'house of correction.'
At the time of these incidents Ann Lees was in her middle thirties, a short, rather stout woman with a fair complexion, blue eyes, and light chestnut-brown hair. 'Her countenance was mild and expressive,' writes one biographer, 'but grave and solemn. Her glance was keen and penetrating; her countenance inspired confidence and respect. Many called her beautiful.'
Up to this period, her life had been uneventful, and even the annals of her family are obscure. The registry of the fifteenth-century Manchester cathedral, the 'old Church' mentioned before, has no record of her birth — which Shaker tradition places on or about 29 February 1736 — but contains an entry of her private baptism on 1 June, 1742. She was the second eldest of eight children, five sons, and three daughters. Her mother receives little notice in Shaker history, and we do not even know her given name, only that she was 'esteemed as a very pious woman.' Her father supplemented his earnings by tailoring. An uncle may have been a London sheriff and an alderman of Algate ward. Ann herself had no schooling, and early in her teens went to work in a textile mill, first as a cutter of velvet and a helper in preparing cotton for the looms, and later as a shearer of hatters' fur. At the age of twenty she was serving as cook in a public infirmary, perhaps the 'house with twelve beds' which had been planned at a meeting in the Old Coffee House in 1752 and for which one 'John Lees' had been appointed, among others, to receive donations. The fact that this institution also received mental cases may account for the rumor, later circulated in the manor, that the 'Lees woman' was once 'confined to a madhouse.'
The turning-point in her life came in 1758, when she was twenty-two. In September of that year she joined a society of religious dissenters led by Jane and James Wardley (or Wardlaw), Quaker tailors living in Bolton-on-the-Moors, a bleak little town twelve miles northeast of Manchester. Some ten years or so before, the Wardleys had come under the influence of the French Prophets, or Camisards, a radical sect of Calvinists from the mountains of the Cevennes, numbers of whom, after the revocation of the Edict of Nahtes in 1685, had sought civil and religious freedom and refuge from persecution in England. Scattered groups of Prophets continued to hold semi-secret meetings in various parts of the British Isles, loosely federated under the leadership of Benjamin du Plan, Antoine Court's associate in France, who had settled in London in 1738. Six years later, according to Tylor, there still existed in that city 'a remnant of the Cevenol prophets, or of their descendants, who, though despised and derided by almost all classes, had even succeeded in gaining some new adherents.' Among these were the Wardleys who, about the year 1747, received from the exiled Prophets that 'further degree of light and power' by which they were separated from the Society of Friends.
Apparently the Bolton tailors had been affected, through du Plan or others, by the more extreme beliefs and practices of the Camisards. In France, Court had dissociated himself from the prevalent fanaticism and disorderly behavior of the so-called inspires, calling for their suppression and the restoration of discipline. But the earliest Shaker worship of which we have a record duplicates, in its ecstasy of spirit and various manifestations, the marvels reported from the Cevennes: the fasts, the trances, the agitations of head and limbs, the prophecies concerning the end of the world and the Second Coming of Christ, the calls for repentance, the miracles of heavenly voices, lights in the sky and other 'signs,' the testimonies of supernatural succor in times of distress. A Wardley meeting might begin in true Quaker fashion, the worshippers sitting awhile in silent meditation. Then they would be taken
... with a mighty trembling, under which they would express the indignation of God against all sin. At other times they were affected, under the power of God, with a mighty shaking; and were occasionally exercised in singing, shouting, or walking the floor, under the influence of spiritual signs, shoving each other about, — or swiftly passing and repassing each other, like clouds agitated by a mighty wind.
Like their antecedents, these early Shakers, or 'Shaking Quakers' as they were sometimes called, had no clearly formulated doctrine. Their prophecies — often, as with the Camisards, the passionate utterances of women — partook of the same millennial, apocalyptic, and anti-clerical character. Thus Mother Jane, the leading spirit of the English movement, would exhort her followers to
... amend your lives. Repent. For the kingdom of God is at hand. The new heaven and new earth prophesied of old is about to come. The marriage of the Lamb, the first resurrection, the new Jerusalem descending from above, these are even now at the door. And when Christ appears again, and the true church rises in full and transcendant glory, then all anti-Christian denominations — the priests, the church, the pope — will be swept away.
England at this time was entering an era characterized by forces of change and popular unrest. The energetic Pitt was assuming political power, and the zealous evangelism of George Whitefield and the Wesleys was producing a revival of religion in marked contrast to the indifference and lethargy which had previously existed. Lancashire was a center of the 'great awakening': the only propertied member of the Wardley order, John Hocknell, had formerly been a Methodist ; and Ann herself had been one of Whitefield's 'hearers,' holding him to have 'great powers and gifts of God.' One cannot help but feel that this new spirit, beginning to arouse the common people to an increasing awareness of their rights, may have had its influence on the discontented toiler in the mills, accounting in part for her defection from the Anglican faith.
For some time after joining the Wardley society Ann Lees does not appear to have been a very active member. But four years later an event occurred which was largely instrumental in confirming her faith, and ultimately in elevating her to the position of leadership. This was her marriage, on 5 January 1762, to Abraham Standerin (or Stanley), a Manchester blacksmith who may have worked for her father, a lusty, good-humored fellow, 'kind according to nature,' but temperamentally unsuited to the woman he had wed. Ann had apparently not yet renounced the Anglican faith, for the banns were published in the cathedral on the three consecutive weeks of 20 and 27 December 1761, and the following January third. Two days later, in the presence of James Shepherd and Thomas Hulme, the ceremony took place, the illiterate principals signing the registry with crosses. There is no evidence that Ann desired the marriage. Perhaps she took the step on the importunity of parents anxious to win their daughter away from the heresies of the Wardley faith.
The next few years were critical ones. Four children were born of the marriage, all of whom died in infancy. The deliveries were difficult, and in the case of the last child, Elizabeth, forceps had to be used, the patient lying for hours 'with but little appearance of life.' The tragic experiences of these years not only undermined Ann's health, both physical and mental, but strongly conditioned her views toward sex and the institution of marriage. Her first reactions were guilt, shame, and aversion. She saw the deaths of her children as a series of judgments on her 'concupiscence.' Fearing to stir up the affections of her husband, her testimony reads, she began to avoid her bed 'as if it had been made of embers.' She was afraid to sleep lest she 'awake in hell'; and night after night she walked the floor in her stocking feet, laboring for a sense of the word of God. So great was her anguish, in this struggle against the flesh, that 'bloody sweat' pressed through the pores of her skin, tears flowed down her cheeks until the skin 'cleaved off,' and she wrung her hands until the blood 'gushed from under her nails' — her only comfort being the thought that when weariness came she would be 'released by the refreshing operations of the power of God.' Groans and cries in the night made the family tremble, and once her agitation was so great that her bed rocked violently and her husband was 'glad to leave it.'
Remorse and misgivings developed in time into the conviction that only by a full mortification of the body could her soul be purified. She not only abstained from sleep but denied herself 'every gratification of a carnal nature,' eating and drinking only what was 'mean and poor' — that her soul 'might hunger for nothing but God.' Her flesh wasted away, and she became so weak that she had to be fed and supported by others. The 'last remains of human depravity' being finally discarded, Ann experienced a complete conversion. 'My soul broke forth to God,' her testimony continues, 'which I felt as sensibly as ever a woman did a child, when she was delivered of it.' She had been born into the spiritual kingdom, she affirmed, feeling at first like an infant bewildered by the colors and objects of a strange world.
Following the death of her last child in October 1766, Ann Lees assumed a more zealous role in the Wardley order. During her ordeal the Wardleys had been a source of personal comfort, and their meetings a means of emotional release. But once her health was restored, participation was infused with a sense of mission. What she had undergone as an individual, she came to believe, was really a universal struggle. In retrospect, the deaths of her children were 'a particular means of increasing her conviction of the deplorable loss of the human race.' 'Cohabitation of the sexes' was the cardinal sin, the source of all evil. Even before she proclaimed this doctrine in the Wardley meetings, she had had violent arguments with Abraham, who complained of his wife's conduct to the cathedral authorities; had antagonized her brothers by outspoken diatribes against 'sin'; and had incurred her father's wrath by warning her mother against acts of 'carnal indulgence.'
Though several years were to elapse before Ann replaced Mother Jane as head of the Shaker sect, its moral discipline gradually became more strict, its testimony against the flesh more pointed. The temporal condition of the order, already strengthened by the advent of the propertied Townley, was also improved, about this time, by the admission of one John Hocknell of Cheshire, his wealthy brother-in-law; John Partington of Mayor-town (Mereton) ; James Shepherd, the witness at Ann's marriage; and the Whittaker family — Jonathan, his wife Ann Lee (a distant cousin of the blacksmith), and their son James. Particularly surprising was the conversion of two members of Ann's own family, her father and her younger brother William — the tall, powerful Father William of Shaker history, who after an apprenticeship with his father had served as an officer of horse in a regiment of the King's guard, the Oxford Blues. Two relatives had also joined, Nancy Lees, a niece of the blacksmith, and Betty Lees, his cousin or sister-in-law. Hocknell supported a number of poor members at his own house, which alternated with the Townley and Partington homes, and later with the Lees's, as gathering places of the 'church.'
Increased membership and sharpened convictions — the open condemnation of lust, criticism of the established church for 'condoning' marriage, denunciation of worldliness of every kind — resulted in more tempestuous meetings, conclaves which often lasted well into the night, disturbing the neighborhood and provoking widespread resentment and suspicion. Tales of the strange worship, with its shakings, tongue-speaking, and dark prophecies, spread throughout the manor and surrounding towns. Charges of fanaticism, heresy, even of witchcraft, were raised against the sect, breeding a spirit of intolerance and leading, eventually, to overt acts of oppression. As narrated by Ann and others, the accounts of such persecution, reminiscent of those told of the French Prophets, throw considerable light on the comparable Shaker mind — the faith in a protective Providence, the belief in miracles and signs, the delusions of grandeur. Witness her testimony of an encounter with one of her brothers who sought to 'overcome her will':
So he brought a staff, about the size of a large broom handle; and came to me, while I was sitting in my chair, and singing by the power of God. He spoke to me ; but I felt no liberty to answer. Will you not answer me? said he.
He then beat me over my face and nose, with his staff, till one end of it was much splintered. But I sensibly felt and saw the bright rays of the glory of God, pass between my face and his staff, which shielded off the blows, so that he had to stop and call for drink.
While he was refreshing himself, I cried to God for His healing power. He then turned the other end of his staff, and began to beat me again. While he continued striking, I felt my breath, like healing balsam, streaming from my mouth and nose, which healed me, so that I felt no harm from his stroke, but he was out of breath, like one which had been running a race.
On another occasion, a mob which had set out to stone Ann and four companions fell into contention when the missiles failed to find their target. 'While they were throwing their stones,' she recalled, 'I felt surrounded with the presence of God, and my soul was filled with love.' Providence interceded again when a 'rabble' bound her hand and foot and tried to throw her from an upper window. Escaping a third time, she lay all one night on the ice of an isolated pond, 'in great peace and consolation and without taking cold.'
(Continues...)
Excerpted from THE PEOPLE CALLED SHAKERS by EDWARD DEMING ANDREWS. Copyright © 1963 Edward Deming Andrews. Excerpted by permission of Dover Publications, Inc..
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Table of Contents
Table of ContentsIntroductionI Ann Lee Leads the WayII Opening the Testimony in AmericaIII Mission into New EnglandIV Early Shaker CommunismV Expansion WestwardVI Temporal Labor: Principles and PracticeVII Spiritual Labor-Mode of WorshipVIII 'Mother Ann's Work IX Internal Order X Relations with the World XI Decline of the Order
APPENDICES
The Millennial LawsStatistical View of Shaker CommunitiesA Note on Sources NotesIndex