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

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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

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

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The Peg Board 1936 On the 6th of August in the same year they arrived in New York and the little company separated to find employment. Mother Ann remained in New York, as did her husband, Abra- ham Stanley, who, however, in the course of the year, married another woman and left Ann Lee free to pursue her calling. It appears that John Hocknell was a man of some means and not only assisted the little group in other ways, but enabled them all to cross the Atlantic and secured for them after a time a little holding at Niskayuna, now Watervliet, New York, across the Hudson River from Troy. Here in due time the members of the group, minus Abraham Stanley, gathered and were largely occupied with their own affairs for something over three years. In the spring of 1780, however, our little village comes into the picture. At the time -of a religious revival in New Lebanon, interest in Ann Lee was aroused and representatives of the various religious denominations in the village visited the Shakers, some uniting with them and others carrying back the Shaker gospel to their communities. Among the latter was Joseph Meacham, the Baptist pastor in the village, of whom more later. Ann Lee and her followers visited New Lebanon, were ridiculed and persecuted as is indicated elsewhere in this publication and finally, under the guidance of Mother Ann and of her staunch supporter and convert, Joseph Meacham, founded on the slope of the hill where now the school is located, the first Shaker community, dedicated to loyal service to God and to one another. They took as their motto and as their creed the words of Ann Lee which the school has been privileged to adopt, Hands to Work, and Hearts to God. From this original settlement and from Ann Lee's journeys in Eastern New England arose the other Shaker communities-at Watervliet and Groveland in New York, at Hancock just over the mountain from New Lebanon, Tyringham, Harvard, Shirley in Massachusetts, at Enfield Connecticut, at Canterbury and Enfield, New Hampshire, at Alfred and New Gloucester, Maine. Other communities were established in Ohio and Kentucky. Now there remain small groups at New Lebanon, New York, and Hancock, Mass., and communities of somewhat larger size in Canterbury, N. H. and Sabbathday Lake, Maine. The establishment of the New Lebanon community in 1783 about a year before Ann Lee died was due to the desire to separate themselves from the world and practice their religion in peace and in those difficult times by united effort to ease the problem of living. How much their desire to separate themselves from the world was due to theological causes cannot be asserted. It would seem not unreasonable to suppose that their theology was the outgrowth of their experience rather than that their religious beliefs determined their course of action. But it is only proper to say that certainly at a date later than the founding of this community their reason for separat- ing from the world was their belief that Mother Ann embodied the Second Appearing of Christ and that their communities were portions of Christ's Kingdom on earth. For the Shaker belief as we read it today postulated a two-fold God, a principle which they carried throughout all the Crea- tion. God was Male and Female-Father and Mother. God created Man in his own image, male and female, created he them. Christ was the human representative of the F ather-God, Ann Lee, the Messiah in the Female line. As Father, God is the fountain of intelligence and the source of all power ...... but as Mother, God is Love and tenderness. The Second Coming of the Messiah brought Heaven down to Earth where the members of the Shaker community were the sons and daughters of God, where there was no marriage, and no giving in marriage, where all lived a sinless, blameless life and kept themselves unspotted from the world. How they continued for ISO years, how they worked and worshipped is all told in the literature they have left behind them and is briefly outlined in other articles in this issue of the Peg Board. The reasons for their decline and their present almost total eclipse are to be found on almost every page of human history. Certainly they produced great souls, great spirits, who left an indelible impression upon our region and others. Under adversity they prospered, and under prosperity they declined. There seems little doubt that the prosperity which they attained in the middle of the last century was the primary cause of their dissolution. They found a ready market for their produce among the world's people or Adam's kind as they still call us. It appears that their leader- ship changed from a spiritual leadership to a leadership that was at least partly commercial. 8