Guide to the Shakers Collection

History of Shakerism and Individuals Relevant to this Collection

The Shakers Collection comprises the history of a unique religious sect. Encountering persecution from their origin in England to their first settlement in the New World, they found eventual tolerance and acceptance in the Ohio Valley, in particular, at Watervliet Village. They gained a reputation for honesty, hard work and skill in agriculture and hand crafts. Doomed to decline and eventual extinction by their celibate way of life, their history was preserved by dedicated Shaker chroniclers such as Richard McNemar, Issachar Bates, Stephen Ball and Nancy Moore, and by non-Shaker researchers such as William J. Hamilton and J. P. MacLean.

Shakerism was born in Manchester, England in 1772 under the direction of Mother Ann Lee, who felt for humanity and had a passion for saving and purifying mankind. Ann Lee was the daughter of William Lee and the wife of Abraham Stanley. She was one of seven children and had no formal education. She was born in Toad Lane, Manchester, on Feb. 29, 1736, when King George II was King of England. Religious leaders had forgotten that emotion is a part of all true religious experience. Shakerism was announced to the world for those who, like Jesus of Nazareth, thought of religion as something to live by; Shakers actually practiced what they preached. The tenets of the religion were four: confession of sin, celibacy, community property, and withdrawal from the world. The official name of the sect was "The United Order of Believers", but they largely received the popular name "Shakers" because members often shook with emotion during their religious services.

Because of the persecution which they experienced in England, the Shakers looked to America as an ideal world. The formation of the sect nearly coincided with the War of Independence. Shortly before that, Mother Ann Lee received a divine promise that "the Word of God would greatly increase, and the millennial church would be established in that country." She left with some of her followers on May 19, 1774, from Liverpool for New York on the ship "Mariah" and arrived Aug. 6, 1774, in the New World. They settled in an area near Albany called Watervliet, New York, where they first found a real home of their own. They began forming other Shaker communities based on Lee's teachings soon after her death in 1784. The largest, in New Lebanon, New York, was founded in 1787 and served as the Shakers' mother community. In about 1850, when the Shakers were at their height of popularity, about 6000 members lived in communities from Maine to Kentucky.

Since the Shakers didn't believe in marriage or bearing children and depended on conversions and adoptions to maintain membership, the number of Shakers began to decline after the end of the Civil War in 1865. The few remaining Shakers (probably less than one dozen) lived in two communities - Sabbath Day Lake, Maine, and Canterbury, New Hampshire.

The history of the Shakers in Ohio begins in 1805 with the arrival of three Shaker missionaries from Mt. Lebanon, New York, at Turtle Creek in Warren County. The Presbyterian community at Turtle Creek, led by their pastor Richard McNemar, adopted Shakerism within a few days and changed the name of the settlement to Union Village. Twenty-two miles to the northeast, in Van Buren Township in Montgomery County, a sister Presbyterian congregation existed called Beulah. In 1806, two of the Mt. Lebanon missionaries, Benjamin Youngs and Issachar Bates, were invited to preach at Beulah. As a result, most of the congregation became Shakers. In 1813 the community, occupying 800 acres of farmland, was formally renamed Watervliet Village in honor of the first Shaker home in the New World in Watervliet, New York. The life of Watervliet Village lasted until about 1900. According to the book Summers at Watervliet by Melba L. Hunt, the settlement had approximately 100 individuals at its peak and about 55 at the end.

Mentioned frequently in the collection are five individuals: William J. Hamilton, Richard McNemar, Issachar Bates, Stephen Ball and Nancy Moore.

William J. Hamilton was director of the Dayton and Montgomery County Public Library from 1936 to 1956. He felt that this library should establish a Shakers collection because of local historical interest and because some rare books on the Shakers were already in the library. From 1942 until his retirement in 1956, he was active in enlarging this collection. He was born August 26, 1884, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and died on July 20, 1974, in Kokomo, Indiana. His life encompassed fifty years of active library work. He came to Dayton from the Gary, Indiana Public Library. He had two sons, Philip and Carl, both of whom also became librarians. Mr. Hamilton was active in library legislative work and was OLA President in 1940. During his tenure at the Library his accomplishments were extraordinary. He directed the Library throughout the difficult years of the Great Depression and World War II. His character and work enriched the cultural and intellectual life of the entire Dayton community. He had fought to extend library services and meet the increasing demands of a burgeoning metropolitan area. He built an excellent staff, developed a library with a variety of books, music, and films for all age groups and imbued a vital institution with his own spirit of community service. Most of all, he knew the value of old rare books and was willing to spend time and effort to preserve them and make them available to the public.

The most important collection that he built was the Shakers Collection. He spent many years and much effort in locating material and corresponded with many historical societies and libraries. Using J.P. MacLean's Bibliography of Shaker Literature, he wrote a bibliography of all the material published in Watervliet during the 1830's, especially the publications of Richard McNemar, who, under the pseudonym of Eleazar Wright, had issued many pamphlets and books. Mr. Hamilton helped to untangle some confusion regarding Shaker publications, especially those of McNemar.

John Patterson MacLean was born March 12, 1848 in Franklin, Warren County, and died August 12, 1939, in Greenville, Ohio; he is buried in Franklin, Ohio. He was a clergyman and studied at Normal University and St. Lawrence Seminary. He became a Universalist minister and preached in Ohio and other states until 1906. He wrote many books, articles, and reports, including the biography of Richard McNemar, 1905.

Richard McNemar was a printer and an editor at Union Village and Watervliet Village until 1836. He was an outstanding figure in Western Shakerism. He was the eternal adventurer, the practical frontiersman and honest thinker unafraid to follow his convictions wherever they might lead him - the prototype of all that was best in the Shaker Church. He was born in Tuscarora, Pennsylvania, on Nov. 20, 1770, of Scotch-Irish parents. At the age of 16 he left home and taught at various schools. In 1791 he entered school at Maysville, Kentucky (then called Limestone), to study Latin, and was characterized as a "classical scholar who read Latin, Greek and Hebrew with ease." He was licensed to preach at Caneridge, Kentucky, in 1797. He was a prolific writer of sermons and songs yet today is seldom mentioned except in connection with bibliographical puzzles which tease collectors and librarians. McNemar bought a farm in 1802 at Turtle Creek in Warren County, west of Lebanon, and in 1805 he came to live there. The Turtle Creek Presbyterian Church followed McNemar, its pastor, into the "New Light" religious movement and was the largest of the western churches of that order. In 1810 McNemar had been appointed as a "High Priest in Zion" by Mother Ann Wright (the woman who replaced Mother Ann Lee). She renamed him Brother Eleazar Wright. At the age of 65 he was released from his duties at Watervliet. On Jan. 13, 1836, he left for Union Village to pass the remainder of his life. He died Sept. 15, 1839.

The Collection includes the diaries of Issachar Bates, Stephen Ball, and Nancy Moore. Issachar Bates was born in Kingum or Kingham City, which is part of Suffolk County Massachusetts, on Jan. 29, 1758, and died March 17, 1837. He was the son of William and Mercy Joy Bates. He was brought up as a Presbyterian and was one of eleven children. He was a hard-bitten soldier of the Revolution and merry singer of ballad tunes, who gave up everything to join the Shakers, becoming their most indefatigable missionary to the "Southeastern Territory." It was he who travelled thirty-eight thousand miles in ten years, most of it on foot, converting eleven hundred people to Shakerism. It was he who wrote from Busro, Indiana in 1811, "My health is not very good, probably in consequence of having to travel seven miles every day to and from my work at the mill, sometimes in mud and water up to my knees, but my faith is everlasting and I mean to keep it." (Diaries)

Stephen Ball was one of a group of one hundred Millerites who came to the Whitewater Community of Shakers at New Haven in Hamilton County after the prophecies of William Miller failed to come true. Many of the families, in anticipation of the Resurrection had given away all their belongings and were destitute, but they proved to be hard working, earnest additions to the community. Ball, who had two daughters, was an elder at various times in both the Watervliet and Whitewater Communities. One of his daughters, Fanny, left Watervliet with another member, Epraim Frost. The two were married and gave up the communal life.

Nancy Moore was born in Logan County, Kentucky, in 1808. She wrote her diaries in two volumes. Two copies of her diaries existed, one, vol. 2, which is original, at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and the other, vol. 1, which is a copy, in the Dayton and Montgomery County Public Library. The copier is unknown. Mr. Hamilton was of the opinion that it was Moses Eastwood, an elder of the South Union Church who had also copied Issachar Bates' diaries, but this has not been verified. Moses Eastwood was the son of John Eastwood, who joined the Watervliet group in 1807. He was for years the "first in care" or Elder of the Watervliet community. In the second volume, only the information pertaining to the Civil War that was related to Logan County was copied; this is of special importance to Kentucky local history.

Scope and Content

The Shakers Collection, both of national and local interest, covers the period 1804-2002. The Collection includes many rare and valuable books, pamphlets, diaries, photographs and correspondence.

The Shakers were simple Christians with distinct beliefs, and this led to a unique experiment in association. From this collection it is evident that the United Order of Believers, or Shakers, formed a significant chapter in American history: by virtue of its communal principles; its status as a separatist sect; and its diverse social and economic contributions.

These ideas and experiments attracted a lively contemporary interest and a continuing curiosity. Thousands joined such communities. The extensive literature about the Shakers, especially from the 1780s to the present, is evidence of the attraction the movement had for people from various educational and economic backgrounds, many of whom recorded their impressions via the printed word and which are presented in this collection. This information is made available in: diaries, pamphlets, rare books, correspondence, music, and photographs.

Also, this collection is of importance because of the Shaker contribution to local Dayton history. It will help historians and researchers to locate information since many Shaker diaries and personal records were destroyed or misplaced after the Watervliet Village of Dayton was closed down. Finally, Shakers made a great contribution to agriculture, wood growing, broom-making and woodworking. Shaker furniture was highly regarded for its practical design and sturdy construction; the development of improved seed banks for many of the crops grown in southwestern Ohio contributed greatly to the development of agriculture in this state.

Statement of Arrangement

Restrictions on Use

Items in this collection are protected by applicable copyright laws.

Suggested search engines for locating other relevant materials:
National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC) and
OCLC WorldCat .

No separated material.

Indexing Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.

Subjects:

Persons:

Provenance

The Collection was built and enriched by the efforts of Mr. William J. Hamilton, a previous director of the Dayton and Montgomery County Public Library. Mr. Hamilton thought that the Library had a responsibility to locate material about the local Shaker community in Watervliet, since it formed an important part of Dayton history. He wrote a bibliography along with a short biography of Richard McNemar.

Preferred Citation

The Shakers Collection, a special collection of historical materials at the Dayton Metro Library, Dayton, Ohio.

Acquisition Information

Much of the material was donated by Mr. and Mrs. John Stephen, who were formerly members of the Whitewater Shaker Community at New Haven in Hamilton County, Ohio. This material, however, had been given to them by Andrew Barrett, a traveling Shaker minister, after the Whitewater Community was disbanded in 1911. They regretted that much similar material had been burned when the community ceased.

Other Finding Aid

A more detailed finding aid, which includes item-level description of all items in this collection, is available on the Dayton Metro Library's Local History web page at the following URL:
http://home.dayton.lib.oh.us/archives/shaker/shakers.html .

DML Local History also has an online exhibit with images of several items from the collection:
http://home.dayton.lib.oh.us/Archives/Shaker/Exhibit/ShakerExhibit.html .

Detailed Description of The Collection