Hands To Work, Hearts To God

The 1985 Ken Burns production of The Shakers can be viewed online by members who can access PBS Passport (58 minutes). 

Through diaries, archival photographs, music and stunning cinematography, Ken Burns creates a moving portrait of this particularly American movement, and in the process, offers us an unusually moving way to understand the Shakers.

of note -- 

26:00 - The Kentucky Revival 1800

27:00 - In 1805, the same year that Lewis and Clark were exploring the great northwest, the ministry at Mount Lebanon [New York] sent three Believers to Kentucky to gather in the restless...

27:45 - On a bluegrass hill near the Kentucky River in Mercer County, forty-four converts signed the covenant and established a village called Pleasant Hill. The river was their road, connecting the Shakers to markets down the Ohio and the Mississippi.

29:27 - The Western Shakers had a particularly progressive Shaker spirit ...

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.

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:

159 Years Ago ... the "Swede Stampede"

"No better opening had presented itself for the proselyting of new members than the Swedish community," wrote Clark and Ham in Pleasant Hill and its Shakers.

In 1855, Benjamin B. Dunlavy and George Runyon went to Bishop Hill (Henry County near Galesburg, Illinois) as missionaries. There they preached the sanctity of a female Messiah, and the doctrine of celibacy and were rewarded for their efforts by the conversion of Andrew Bloomberg and his family. In turn, Bloomberg became a missionary and over brought many converts to Pleasant Hill.

In his book The Shaker Experience in America: A History of the United Society of Believers, Stephen J. Stein notes that Bloomberg later served as an Elder in the West Family and in 1866/1867 traveled to his homeland of Sweden to prepare a number of families who had accepted Shaker ideals. 

Ten months later, Bloomberg returned with several Swedish converts. Others followed, but most stayed a short time. The ministry journal refers to these departures as the “Swede Stampede."