Darrow School - Shaker Post Yearbook (New Lebanon, NY)

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The Peg Board 1936 SISTERS EMMA J. AND SADIE NEALE 6

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Volume 4 New Lebanon, N. Y., June, 1936 Number 3 A Word from the President of the Board of Trustees DURING the depression of 1873, which followed the Civil War, my father's firm failed and he turned over everything that he had to his creditors and started life anew. The first thing that he did was to come to New Lebanon and rent from the Shakers the little white house which still stands opposite the residence of Mr. H. Cox. There my mother, my two older brothers and I lived for about three years, and it was due to that fact that my acquaintance with the Shakers, and especially with Sister Emma, began at the early age of three. My mother and Sister Emma had been friends, almost from girlhood, and in spite of the busy life which Sister Emma then lived, she used to find the time to come down and spend an afternoon with my mother, every once in a while. In that way it happened that I cannot remember the time when her Shaker garb and her serious mien were not familiar sights to me, but they were always tempered by her bright red cheeks and her .sparkling eyes and her slow and infectious smile. During my boyhood it was still my mother who kept me in constant touch with Sister Emma and the Shaker Store. Many a time I drove Mother up there to call. But later I began to go on my own account, for there was an atmosphere and an attraction about the whole Shaker village which appealed to me. You could not go among the Shakers without being conscious of the fact that they were different from other people. There was a tranquillity in their demeanor, an unhurried but sure precision in their movements, a certainty underlying their faith when they spoke of it and a love for perfection in their handiwork which set them quite apart from any other people whom I have ever known. Of course they were human and I suppose that some of them must have had short tempers, like the rest of us, but during the sixty years that I have known them I have never heard one of them speak a hasty word. Perhaps the most striking picture which stands out in my memory of the Shakers of fifty years ago is that of their Sunday services in the Shaker Meeting House of which we are still so proud. It was a thrilling sight to see the brothers and sisters from the different families march to the Meeting House, two by two-hundreds of them. Their ideas were different from ours and we knew it, but they were to be respected as one would have respected the early Pilgrims. During the 1 50 years that the Shakers have lived on the slopes of the Lebanon Valley they have been good citizens of the nation and a striking example to the community. I wish that every one who reads this number of the Peg Board might have known Benjamin Gates and Mary Hazard and many another Shaker of the earlier days, but most of you have known Sister Emma and Sister Sadie and they are true to the earlier traditions. It is fitting that we should have a Shaker number of our School paper, fitting that we should preserve the records of Shaker history and everything else which will keep alive the Shaker ideals of simplicity, industry, honesty, temperance, and clean living-ideals which have endured, for they were responsible for the founding of The Lebanon School. I like to think that it was Abner Hitchcock who penned our School hymn. He had known the Shakers much longer than I have, and he was himself hardly convinced of the spiritual truthsg and yet it was he who wrote: Those cloistered halls which knew of old The silence of the prophets' thought- Let not our tramplings overbold Efface the symbols that they wrought. O, Master, keep our wayward feet True to the paths thy servants trod, While we their votive pledge repeat Of Hands to Work and Hearts to God. C. S. H. 5

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1936 The Pegfilaoafd The Shakers and Their Theology N AUGUST 6, 1774, there landed in New York from England six men and two women under the leadership of Ann Lee, a native of Manchester, and the foundress of the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, as the Shakers officially call themselves. Ann Lee was born on the 29th of February, 1736, in Toad Lane, Manchester, England. Her father, John Lee, was a blacksmith-poor, honest, industrious, and highly respected in his com- munity. She was one of eight children-five sons and two other daughters-and, at an early age, set out to work in a cotton factory, as a cutter in a hat-maker's shop, as cook in the Man- chester Infirmary. It appears that she distinguished herself in these various occupations for her neatness, faithfulness, common sense, and thrift. In fact, it appears that she was above her station in life and above her education, or rather her lack of it, for she could neither read nor write. Her relations with her mother seem to have been unusually close and to her she confided from an early age her doubts, her fears, and her repugnance to many features of the life about her. At the age of sixteen and in spite of her own disinclination, she was married to Abraham Stanley, a young blacksmith. From this union there were four children all of whom died in early infancy. In the year 1758, when Ann Lee was twenty-three years of age, she came under the influence of James and Jane Wardley, and joined their group of individuals who were apparently even then known as Shakers. The Wardleys, who were man and wife, were former Quakers, and the members of their society, we are told by the historian, were of blameless deportment and were distinguished for the clearness and swiftness of their testimony against sin, the strictness of their moral discipline and for the purity of their lives. Ann Lee herself, according to the same historian, Frederick W. Evans, thus describes the influence of this group upon her: I love the day that I first received the Gospel. I call it my birthday. I cried to God without intermission for three days and three nights that he would give me true desires and when I received a gift of God I did not go away and forget it and travail no further, but I stayed faithful day and night, warring against all sin and praying to God for deliverance from the very nature of sin ........ And when I was brought through and borne into the spiritual Kingdom I was like an infant just born into the natural world. They see colors and objects, but they know not what they see. It was so with meg but before I was twenty-four hours old I saw and I knew what I saw. Ann Lee was wrought upon after this manner for the space of nine years ........ By these means the way of God and the nature of his work gradually opened upon her mind with increasing light and understanding. Her mind, ...... ever intent upon the great work of salvation, was greatly affected concerning the lost state of mankind. Through these influences and through her own unusual powers, Ann Lee became the leader of this group, the origin of which is variously ascribed to the Quakers and to the Camisards of France, the little group of Protestant peasants of the Cevennes who, for some years after 1702 carried on military resistance against the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. There is little, if any, evidence as to the ultimate origin of the Shakers, but from the time of Ann Lee's association with the Ward- ley's in 1758, her course is well marked. Nine years thereafter Ann Lee was preaching her Gospel of sinlessness and celibacy in the neighborhood of Manchester, was persecuted, imprisoned, and, according to the record, met with supernatural experiences. She was charged with dancing, shouting, shaking etc. in the worship of God on the Sabbath Day. She was accused of blasphemy and tried before a court of four ministers of the Established Church who acquitted her. When they released her, they cautioned the mob not to molest her, but the mob took Mother Ann and her three companions and stoned them, happily and miraculously without unfortunate results. Efforts were made to banish Ann Lee and her disciples from the country, but in the last two years before their departure, their persecution seems to have ceased and they were enabled to practice their religion unmolested. On the 19th of May 1774, Ann Lee for Mother Ann as she was now calledj set out from Eng- land for New York accompanied by Abraham Stanley Cher husbandj, William Lee Cher brotherj, James Whittaker, John Hocknell 'and his son Richard, James Shepherd, Mary Partington, and Nancy Lee. 7