Notes to Introduction

Notes Notes to Introduction 1. Mary Marshall Dyer, Last Will and Testament, May 17, 1853. Papers of the History of Enfield, New Hampshire. Dartmouth College Library. 2. Detailed descriptions of Shaker theology are found in the Shakers' seminal nine teenth-century work on which all later theological works were based, Benjamin Seth Youngs's The Testimony of Christ's Second Appearing, which appeared in four editions (Lebanon, Ohio: John M'Clean,1S0S; Albany, N. Y.: E. and E. Hosford, 1810; Union Village, Ohio: B. Fisher and A. Burnett, 1823; [Albany, N. Y]: United Society Called Shakers, 1856). See also Theodore E. Johnson, Life in the Christ Spirit (Sabbathday Lake, Maine: United Society of Shakers, 1969). 3. Jean M. Humez, '''Weary of Petticoat Government': The Specter of Female Rule in Early Nineteenth-Century Shaker Politics," Communal Societies 11 (1991): 1- 17. See also her edited collection of Shaker thought on this theme: Mother's First Born Daughters: Early Shaker Writings on Women and Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). On the role of women in Shaker communities see also, Lawrence Foster, Women, ramily, and Utopia (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1991); Louis Kern, An Ordered Love (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1981); Marjorie Procter-Smith, Women in Shaker Community and Worship (Lewiston, N. Y: Edwin Mellen Press, 1985); and Catherine Wessinger, ed., Women's Leadership in Marginal Religions: Explorations Outside the Mainstream (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993). Note that the description of Shaker community organization offered here reflects an ideal community, In reality, especially after the Civil War when the Shakers began their numerical decline, there were often situations when there was an absence of qualified individuals to fill these important posts. Some positions were elimi nated and some individuals filled more than one post simultaneously. 188 SHAKING THE FAITH 4. The formal name of the Shaker faith is The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing. The terms Shaker(s) and Believer(s) are used synonymously in this research to refer to the members of the communal group. The Shaker origin story found in contemporary popular works derives more from a nineteenth-cen tury Shaker reinterpretation than eighteenth-century primary documents. Stephen Stein discussed the paucity of sources for the English and early-American period in The Shaker Experience in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992),3- 10. The best treatment of the religious context from which Shakerism emerged is found in Clark Garrett, Spirit Possession and Popular Religion: From the Camisards to the Shakers (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987). On the American emergence of Shakerism, Stephen Marini, Radical Sects in Revolutionary New England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982) described the devel opment of American Shakerism as part of a New England sectarian impulse that also prompted the development of the freewill Baptists and the Universalists. On Americans' early attraction to Shakerism, see Ptiscilla J. Brewer, Shaker Communities, Shaker Lives (Hanover, N. H.: University Press of New Eugland, 1986), 1-12. 5. On the "porous bonndaries" between Shakers and the world, and the ease with which some converts moved across them see Stephen J. Stein, "The "Not-So Faithful" Believers: Conversion, Deconversion, and Reconversion Among the Shakers," American Studies 38 (Fall 1997): 5-20. 6. The exception is a richly informative source of information on the post-Shaker life of Angell Matthewson. In decades of correspondence to his brother Jeffrey, Angell, who left the New Lebanon, New York, Shaker community in 1799, described his varied experiences as he traveled and settled in New York State. Though Augell led no anti-Shaker mobs or published any anti-Shaker material, his Shaker expe rience made an indelible mark on the way he saw the world. Over the years, Angell related to his brother numerous stories of individuals who had been duped or tricked by one rueans or another. His summary comment on these incidents was often that these people "were as ignorant as if lone] had been educated by the [Shaking] Quakers." See, for example, Letter XXXII, "Reminiscences in the Form of a Series of Thirty-nine Letters to His Brother Jeffrey," Shaker Collection, New York Public Library (microfilm, Winterthur Museum and Library). 7. See the discussion in Stein, "The 'Not-So-Faithful' Believers," 8-11. 8. Bryant is described in a letter from Lucy Smith, Pleasant Hill, to Lucy Wright, New Lebanon, August 12, 1825. Edward Deming Andrews Memorial Shaker Collection, The Winterthur Library, Winterthur, Delaware (hereafter cited as Andrews Collection, Winterthur). 9. On print culture in America see Ronald Zboray, A Fictive People: Antebellum Economic Development and the American Reading Public (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). On the act of reading, Cathy N. Davidson, ed., Reading in America: Literature and Social History (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins Uuiversity Press, 1989). On the cultural work fiction performed, Jane Tompkins, Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), and Cathy N. Davidson, Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 10. Richard H. Brodhead, Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), ix,S. 11. Ann Fabian, The Unvarnished Truth: Personal Narratives in Nineteenth-Century History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 4. NOTES 189 12. See, for example, John Bailey, Fanaticism Exposed: or the Schemes of Shakerism Compared with Scripture, Reason, and Religion and Found to he Contrary to Them All (Lexington, Kentucky: Printed at the Reporter Office by W. W. Worsley, 1811). From 1810 to 1869, twelve non-apostate authors penned fourteen anti-Shaker accounts. 13. See, for example, Christopher Clark, A Shock to Shakerism: or, a Serious Refutation of the Idolatrous Divinity of Ann Lee of Manchester (Richmond, Kentucky: Printed for T. W. Ruble, 1812). 14. On representations of the Shakers in popular print see Flo Morse, The Shakers and the World's People (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1980). On Shakers in fiction, see Ruth McAdams, "The Shakers in American Fiction," (Ph.D. diss., Texas Christian University, 1985) and Michael Pugh, "A Thorn in the Text: Shakerism and the Marriage Narrative," (Ph.D. diss., University of New Hampshire, 1994). 15. Valentine Rathbun, An Account of the Matter, Form and Manner of a New and Strange Religion . ... (Providence, RI: Printed and Sold by Bennett Wheeler, 1781),3. 16. David G. Bromley makes the point that the apostate's" ... former status is the basis for their current status" in "The Social Construction of Contested Exit Roles: Defectors, Whistleblowers, and Apostates," in David G. Bromley, ed., The Politics of Religious Apostasy: The Role of Apostates in the Transformation of Religious Movements (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998),38. 17. Daniel Carson Johnson discusses the claims and counter-claims made in apostate narratives with a particular focus on "apostates who never were." His discussion of the narrative anchors of biographical history and contextual history are relevant to apostates who were, as well. Daniel Carson Johnson, "Apostates Who Never Were: The Social Construction of Ahsque Facto Apostate Narratives," in David G. Bromley, ed., The Politics of Religious Apostasy: The Role of Apostates in the Transformation of Religious Movements (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998), 117. 18. Ministry New Lebanon to Ministry Union Village, March 27, 1819, Shaker Manuscripts, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio (hereafter cited WRHS) IV:A-33. 19. A social science perspective on apostasy is offered in Bromley, The Politics of Religious Apostasy, and David G. Bromley, ed., Falling From the Faith: Causes and Consequences of Religious Apostasy (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1988). 20. On the interaction between the published captivity narrative and its reader, see Gary L. Ebersole, Captured by Texts: Puritan to Postmodern Images of Indian Captivity (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995). 21. V. Rathbun, An Account, 9. 22. The Shaker apostate narrative shares these features with apostate accounts of alter native religions from the nineteenth century through present day. On the literary analysis of such accounts see John D. Barbour, Versions of Deconversion: Autobiography and the Loss of Faith (Charlottesville: University Press of Vi rginia, 1994); on the publications and activities of former Mormons see Lawrence Foster, "Career Apostates: Reflections on the Life and Work ofJerald and Sandra Tanner," Dialogue: A .Journal of Mormon Thought 17 (1984): 35-60; Terryl L. Givens, The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); and Roger Launius and Linda Thatcher, eds., Differing Visions: Dissenters in Mormon History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); on defections from contemporary groups see the essays in Bromley, 190 SHAKING THE FAITH Falling From The Faith, and David G. Bromley and Anson Shupe, Strange Gods: The Great American Cult Scare (Boston: Beacon Press, 1981). 23. Aquila Bolton, Some Lines in Verse About the Shakers, Not Published By the Authority of the Society So Called

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