A Field Ripe for Harvest ~ Shaker Missionaries to Kentucky

What caused the Ministry in New York to set their sights on establishing new communities of Believers out west? News of the "Second Great Awakening" camp revival meetings held in 1801 at Cane Run, Kentucky, made its way north to the Shakers in New Lebanon, New York via The Albany Gazette. "No doubt, the Shakers in New England saw the phenomena as a fulfillment of Mother Ann's prophesy that 'the next opening of the gospel will be in America's 'southwest'," writes Carol Medlicott in her book Issachar Bates, A Shaker's Journey. By this time, Ann Lee had been dead for twenty-five years. Mother Lucy Wright, now head of the Ministry, decided the timing was right to send a small reconnaissance group to the area. Three Shaker men - two unmarried elders, John Meacham, Benjamin Seth Youngs, and one new convert, a married father of nine, Issachar Bates set out with only a vague idea of where to go.

The three men, with their one horse, left early on New Year's Day, 1805 during what was to be a particularly harsh winter. Although his wife Lovina and he were living a Shaker life of celibacy by this point, Issachar would continue to show affection for both her and his children, despite their great distance during the decades that followed.

The believers slowly made their way south, covering sometimes thirty miles in one day. As they traveled through the Shenandoah Valley, they began looking for signs of people who might be receptive to their message but were disappointed by those who were "lost in sin" and "the same carnal creatures in all their conversation and conduct." 

After passing through the Cumberland Gap into Tennessee they were shown a new map of the United States and decided to turn northwest into Kentucky. Here, they undoubtedly were following in the footsteps of the Runyon, Badgett, Parks, and other settlers who entered Kentucky from North Carolina and Virginia along the Wilderness Road, famously pioneered by Daniel Boone.

The group was welcomed at Crab Orchard and later Paint Lick in Garrard County by preacher Matthew Houston. Houston introduced them to Barton Stone, the famed Cane Ridge preacher. They went on to Turtle Creek (what would become Union Village) across the river in Ohio and by then had walked over 1,200 miles in two months and twenty-two days.

In the spring of 1805 Barton Stone was still organizing revivals and Issachar Bates returned to Bourbon County to speak at his invitation. He proved outspoken, openly challenging Stone's preaching about Christ's second coming. Cleverly, Issachar put an emphasis on spiritual value rather than doctrine. Medlicott explains: "He was harking back to the first followers of Christ, who had used the inspired teachings of Jesus to free them from adherence to hidebound Jewish law. This would have been a potent argument for a frontier revival crowd ... a needed correction to the doctrinal strictures of America's large, established church institutions." My hunch is that these arguments must have been quite appealing to Joseph Runyon and others in the family who were the first in the family to convert.

Additional eastern Shakers arrived the following year, including six women. Issachar wisely requested that the Ministry send women specifically to counsel the female frontier converts not only in spiritual matters but in the ways of collective childcare and in appropriate dress. For many potential converts the sticking point was celibacy. A majority of the newly-converted believers were husband and wife still living in close quarters. Issachar once again had the wisdom and experience to counsel in these matters. Over the coming years he would become somewhat of a father figure to new converts (the "young believers") throughout the west.

In November 1806 a large group of Kentucky converts, including Henry Banta, visited Turtle Creek, bringing gifts of food, wool, and cotton. By 1810 a settlement along Shawnee Run in Mercer County had been launched by sending a team of old believers (Shakers from the east) to serve as elders. This settlement would come to be called Pleasant Hill.

Two Brothers or Two Wives?

Not long ago, I wrote about one of the family immigrants to Preble County, Ohio, John William Runyon. He was the husband of Patricia Mary Bennett and they are both said to be buried in Friendship Cemetery, Sugar Valley, Preble County, Ohio. They appear to have been married in Kentucky before the move to Ohio.

There is also William Runyon who married Katherine Low, December 13, 1793, in Rowan County (now within Davidson County near Healing Springs) North Carolina. Are William and John William the same man? What became of Katherine Low Runyon? Was she the mother of Ellen Runyon Rice or Mary Runyon Hornbaker?

Parks to Preble ~ All in the Family

Samuel Parks and his wife Charity Runyon undoubtedly were aware of, and may even have attended, the revival meetings at Cane Ridge in their home county in 1801.  What planted a seed for the Shaker movement likely also contributed to their family's migration north into Ohio, to Preble County.

Samuel and Nancy had both been born in Hunterdon County, New Jersey and were brought by their parents to North Carolina. The two married there in 1792 and soon after headed into Kentucky, settling in Bourbon County. Samuel's sister Nancy Ann Parks married Charity's brother Bafford "Barefoot" Runyon in North Carolina and eventually they too made their way into Kentucky, choosing Barren County, about 100 miles southwest of Lexington.

After the revival meetings at Cane Ridge in Bourbon County, Samuel and Charity with family and neighbors migrated yet again, spreading their own religious beliefs and traditions farther into the frontier. This time it was north, into Ohio, which was admitted to the Union on February 19, 1803.

Six years after the Cane Ridge revival was held near the town of Paris, Kentucky, a preacher by the name of David Purviance, raised a Presbyterian and having embraced the New Light, or Christian faith while in Kentucky, was establishing a church at New Paris, Preble County, Ohio. A great proportion of Ohio's new arrivals were coming in from Kentucky.

Robert Runyon (son of Bafford and Nancy) was among the earliest settlers of Gaspar Township, near Sugar Valley, arriving 1808.  Over the next seven years Samuel and Charity Parks, Bafford and Nancy Runyon, Josiah Conger and his wife Catherine Runyon (Robert's sister), William Gray, and the Rhea family were among the incoming settlers to the area. Most seem to have laid down roots southeast of the county seat of Eaton, in either Gasper or Dixon Townships. Also included was Revolutionary War veteran John William Runyon, another son of Phineas and Charity Runyon, brother of Bafford and Charity Parks. He arrived from Madison County, Kentucky.

The original family members who settled in Preble County are buried in Friendship Cemetery and Gard Cemetery.

Eighty years later when this land ownership map of Preble County was drawn, the impact of their settlement can still be seen in the landowner names, which include Parks, Runyon, Conger, Railsback, Lewellen, Thomas, Huffman, Wilkinson, and Gray.

1887 Preble County, Ohio land owner map

Two sources referenced include:

History of Preble County Ohio: Her People, Industries and Institutions by R. E. Lowry, 1915

History of Preble County, Ohio, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches by H. Z. Williams & Brothers, 1881

Cane Ridge Meeting House ~ Sowing the Seeds

August 1801 - Bourbon County, Kentucky

The 'Second Great Awakening,' a series of religious revival meetings was punctuated by one particularly large and exuberant meeting that took place in early August 1801. The location was the Cane Ridge Meeting House in Bourbon County, about twenty-five miles northeast of Lexington. It must have been a well-planned and well-advertised event to have drawn such a large crowd from the sparsely populated surrounding frontier. Two hundred years later, the site remains rural and agricultural.

The organizer was Presbyterian preacher Barton W. Stone.  During the event, which lasted several days, an estimated ten to twenty thousand people converged on Cane Ridge. Stone had arranged for dozens of Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist preachers to speak. Rousing sermons are said to have induced shrieks, cries, dancing and jerking, trance-like states, barking, speaking in tongues, and visions among the huge crowds. Communion was given, confessions were heard, and hundreds, if not thousands, were saved.

Cane Ridge Meeting House - LOC collection

In less than a decade, Pleasant Hill would be one of several established frontier outposts of Shakerism. All the pieces were falling into place at just the right time.

Bourbon County is the very county that Charity Runyon and her husband Samuel Parks had migrated to from North Carolina seven or eight years before the Cane Ridge event. Mercy Runyon and her husband John Badgett had also made the trek from North Carolina about 1787, settling in nearby Fayette County. By the turn of the century, family patriarch Phineas Runyon and his wife Charity had settled along Otter Creek in Madison County.

We can only speculate about whether any Parks, Badgett, or Runyon family members attended the revival meetings at Cane Ridge. They were certainly influenced by them and the change they sparked over the coming years. As congregations and churches sprang up as a result of the revivals, so did Shakerism.

The Parks family would move on to Preble County Ohio while the Badgett and Runyon families stayed put and would soon make the pivotal decision that would change their lives and the lives of their children forever.

Society of "Harmless, Dreamy Enthusiasts"

THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH [SHAKERS.] 

The implantation of this society of harmless, dreamy enthusiasts, on the soil of Kentucky, and in the Mississippi Valley, generally, was a result of the Great Revival ... an ultimate outgrowth of the Presbyterian church. But little need be said about it. It has done no good, and comparatively but little harm, religiously. It was, especially during its early and medieval history in the west, of no small advantage to the agricultural, horticultural and mechanical interest of those neighborhoods in which its societies were located. The Shakers, wild and vague in their religious notions, but wise and practical in their management of their material resources, were the fore-runners in the improvement of live stock, agricultural and mechanical implements, and the methods of farming and gardening. On this account, if for no other reason, they deserve a brief notice. 

They are a frugal, industrious people, and have acquired considerable wealth. Their religious tenets are too silly and absurd to be worth studying.

this description comes from History of Kentucky Baptists From 1769 to 1885 by J.H. Spencer, publication date 1886

A Mysterious Visitor

In early August of 1847, Brother Zachariah Burnett wrote in his journal that "Visitor Tuntstill West from Monticello, Ky came to see his relations viz Runyons, Suttons, & Ryons."

I have not yet been able to discover the connection between Tunstal West and the Runyons but the year of his visit, Jane Runyon (who with her husband and children were the first of the Runyons to join the Shakers) would have turned 80 years old. Her husband Joseph had been dead for two years. Her son Vincent, a devout Shaker, had died the previous year.

Zachariah mentions Runyons, Ryans, and Suttons, but not Badgetts, Baxters, or Burtons, so unless the connection goes farther back to Phineas and Charity (who are both long dead by this visit), the relation does seem to be with Joseph's line. 

Pleasant Hill is about an 80 mile wagon ride from Wayne County where Tunstal Quarles (T.Q.) West lived, so it would have been a significant trip, especially for a farmer during the growing season. According to his Find a Grave memorial, Tunstal Quarles "T.Q." West was born Jan 10, 1806 to Isaac West and Margaret Russell. 

Tunstal's first wife was Sarah Elizabeth Wray West. The two  had several children together before Sarah's death in November 1841. Less than a year after his 1847 visit to Pleasant Hill, Tunstal married a second time. On March 31, 1848 in Wayne County, Kentucky, he wed Sophia Wilson, 13 years his junior. Sophia may have been a widow, and her maiden name was possibly Wright.

Shaker records tell us that Jane "Ginny" Runyon was born in Fairfax County, Virginia. Isaac West's father Soloman was reportedly born in Virginia and migrated to North Carolina. 

Margaret Russell's parentage is a bit fuzzier but they are in South Carolina or North Carolina, before Margaret ends up in Wayne County, Kentucky. 

Joseph Runyon migrated from New Jersey to Rowan County, North Carolina with his parents. There, he marries Jane about 1784, and their first four children are born there before they migrate to Fayette County, Kentucky.

Could Shaker Jane, wife of Joseph, have been a sister of either Isaac West or his wife Margaret Russell?

If so, Tunstal would have been able to visit his Aunt Jane, cousins Charlotte, Vincent, George, William, and Matilda Runyon, cousin Nancy Runyon Ryan, and his cousin Polly's children, Jane and James Sutton.

Divorce, Shaker Style

I recently finished reading The Great Divorce : A Nineteenth-Century Mother's Extraordinary Fight against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times by Ilyon Woo and it made me more curious about the life of Nancy Runyon Ryan.  

Nancy, at age 20, had married Thomas Ryan in 1807. Within a few years the majority of her family had joined the Society at Pleasant Hill and Nancy and Thomas were busy with twin boys Lawson and Wesley, born in 1808. An interview conducted in 1835 reveals what happened next.

"Mr. Crouch had a sister that married a Ryan. That sister's son, living in Mercer [County, Kentucky] married into a family of Runyons. Runyons lived on this side of the Kentucky River, between there and Lexington. The whole family joined the Shakers, and younger Ryan's wife thought she must go too. She left twins lying in the cradle and went. This brought Ryan into conflict with one, whom he beats himself severely. Another one, that came to his house, he beat nearly to death. The man thought to go to the law but the magistrate advised him to keep away and let Ryan alone."

The interview certainly paints Nancy as a woman who has abandoned her babies but the Shaker journals help explain. They tell us that Nancy became a Believer in 1810, so Thomas' run-in with the brethren must have happened in 1810 when the twins were still quite young. Perhaps they had visited Thomas to proselytize, hoping to persuade him to try the Shaker way of life.  The journals also tell us it was another five years before Nancy was able to live among the faithful at Pleasant Hill. 

Having given birth to a daughter (Nancy Jr., born in 1812) during those years we can speculate that she soon returned to Thomas' household. Was she trying to convince her husband to join with her? Did the Church leadership offer Nancy help or advice based on similar experiences in other communities? Did Thomas die during this time? We know only that she arrived in the Spring of 1815, and that her children joined her there in May of that year. Who brought the children? 

We will likely never know the specifics but, like the protagonist in The Great Divorce, it seems Thomas was vehemently opposed to the idea of joining a celibate commune. 

While Nancy's saga was taking place in Kentucky, Mother Lucy Wright was consulting with the Elders at the community of Watervliet outside Albany. There, James Chapman had left his family to become a Believer. He soon returned home for his children against his wife's wishes. Eunice Chapman, had no legal rights to their children but was not going to give them up without a fight. This is the subject of The Great Divorce. In the NPR clip below, the author explains how women of this period, upon marriage, became "civilly dead." 

At Pleasant Hill, Nancy Runyon Ryan lived to age 65 and died a Believer. Her three children were raised among the Shakers, presumably with no further objection from their father. Each left Pleasant Hill separately while in their teens. 

I'll leave it for you to discover whether James Champman and his children remain Shakers or "go to the world."

Listen to a 6-minute NPR interview with the author here: