Category Archives: Shakers

First peek at “A Simple Murder”

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By late afternoon Rees was past Rumford and heading southeast, almost to Durham and the coast. “Time to start looking for a place to stay,” he thought, eyeing dusk’s purple fingers clawing the rutted track. He’d look for a likely farm where he could camp for the night. Maybe some kind farmer would allow him space in the barn. Hollowed out by fury for most of the day (damn his sister! How could she push David, Rees’ little boy, out?) Rees was tired enough now to fall asleep in the wagon seat.

The cluster of buildings that was Durham appeared suddenly from bracelet of woods and farms. He plunged into the small village. Choose a road, any road, he thought, noting the possibilities branching off the central square. And he saw a tavern, The Cartwheel, if no generous farmers offered him the use of a barn. He turned onto the road doglegging south and soon after he spotted a white clapboard farmhouse, rising from a thin screen of trees on the western slope. A weathered red barn rose behind it, squatting on the edges of the fields wrested from the rocky soil. Rees directed Bessie onto the narrow bridge spanning the muddy creek. Perhaps anticipating fresh water and oats and the comfort of a stall, she jerked into a weary trot.

The house was a narrow clapboard, the boards weathered gray, with a small porch jutting from the front door. At the sound of hooves striking the stony drive, the farm wife stepped out from the front door and stared at Rees curiously. He pulled right up to the small porch and clumsily climbed to the ground. Driven by rage and fear, he’d pushed on without a break all day and now his body punished him for it. He staggered, awkward with stiff joints and muscles, up

the stairs towards her. A tiny woman with gray hair, she appeared younger close up. “Pardon Mistress,” Rees said, pulling off his dusty and travel stained tricorn, “I’m on my way to the Shaker community and I wonder if you might have space in your barn where I could sleep tonight.” Wiping her hands upon her apron, she glanced at the canvas-shrouded loom in the wagon bed.

“You a weaver?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m not looking for work right now though.” He paused and then, thinking she was most likely a mother, he burst out, “My son ran away from home.” Fatigue and the emotional stew of anger and fear made him more talkative usual. “My sister said he went with the Shakers.” The woman’s expression softened.

“I’ve lost family to them,” she said. “Of course…”

“What do you want here?” demanded her husband belligerently, stepping out from the house behind her. Much darker than his wife, he was black of hair and eyes.

And black of nature? Rees wondered, eyeing the other man’s scowl. Most farmers were hospitable to a traveling weaver.

Putting her pale freckled hand upon his mahogany dark tanned arm, his wife drew him inside. Rees clearly heard the work ‘Shakers’. A few moments later the farmer came back outside. “You can sleep in the barn,” he said, pointing with his chin at the red structure. “What’s your name? Mine is Henry Doucette. My wife Jane.”

“Will Rees,” Rees said, extending his hand. “Thank you.”

“Your horse looks all in,” Doucette said, casting a critical eye over Bessie. “You’re welcome to an empty stall.”
Rees nodded his thanks and climbed back into the wagon. With the day’s journey finally nearing its end, both Rees and Bessie allowed fatigue to overtake them.  Rees wasn’t sure they could make even the short trip across the yard to the barn.

Rees got Bessie settled in with fresh water and a nosebag of oats. When he returned to his wagon, he found a boy of about twelve waiting for him with a napkin covered dish and a jug of water. “My stepmother sent this up for your supper,” the boy said, thrusting the dishes into Rees’ hands. Although fair-haired, the boy was almost as darkly tanned as his father right down to his bare feet. And of an age with David, Rees thought.

“Thank her for me,” Rees said, staring down at the plate in grateful surprise. “This is very kind of her. What’s your name?”

“Oliver. She says stop by tomorrow morning and she’ll give you some breakfast,” the boy said with a flash of white teeth.

“Thank you.” With an awkward nod, the boy fled down the hill at a run.

Rees sat down on a seat of fresh straw, his back to the wagon wheel looking upon the green valley before him. The road on which he’d arrived unwound like a silvery ribbon in the last rays of sunlight. The lowing of the cattle sounded from a nearby pasture and Bessie’s contented whicker floated out from the barn. Peaceful. Dolly would approve. He sighed. Eight years since Dolly’s death in 1787, six of them spent as a traveling weaver. Two years he struggled to keep his farm going without Dolly; two solid years. But he couldn’t do it without her. And since he made more money weaving than farming he’d offered the management of his land to his sister and her husband in exchange for raising his David with their own kids. He’d thought his eight- year old son would be safe with them while he worked. Sighing, he lifted off the napkin and dug into the stew.  For five years and more he’d gone home intermittently. Not often enough; he saw that now and he’d do his best to make it up to David.

When he tried to sleep, the rage he’d tamped down during the day flared up again, hotter and fiercer than before. He could just slap his sister!  He’d begun yearning to see David again after his experiences on the western frontier during the Rebellion two years previously, and as soon as winter ended he headed north.  Several profitable weaving commissions delayed him in Massachusetts so he arrived in Maine the summer of 1795, a year later than he expected, but he rode home with a strongbox almost too heavy to lift.

Caroline greeted him with hostile surprise. “We weren’t expecting to see you until winter,” she said.  She did not at first admit that David was gone. Instead she forced him to ask several increasingly agitated questions until he realized the truth. Then, when he exclaimed in furious disbelief,

“David’s gone? How could you allow that to happen?” She and her husband stood shoulder to shoulder and defied him.

“He’s a man grown,” Sam cried angrily. “We couldn’t stop him.”

“He’s fourteen,” Rees snapped.

“There’s nothing for him here,” Charles said. Rees glared at his oldest nephew as the boy added rudely, “Let him seek his fortune elsewhere.” Neither of his parents reprimanded the lad for his unmannerly behavior.

“He couldn’t wait to leave,” Caroline said sneeringly. He knew then that David was simply an inconvenience. He pressed them again and again until they were all shouting but all they would say was that they thought David went off with the Shakers.  Rees flung out of the house he and Dolly had shared and raced towards Durham, and the Shaker settlements near it.

Communes – and the Shakers

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The communal style of living which is now so much a part of our picture of the Shakers was actually not a part of their beliefs. When they moved to the Colonies, however, relocating around Albany, financial stresses compelled them to living in a communal setting

f you have begun thinking of tie-dye, put it out of your mind.

Their belief in the dual nature of God; a masculine half and a feminine half, led directly to the equality between the sexes. However, the celibacy that marked them from most of the other new faiths sprang directly from Ann Lee and her experiences in childbirth. She believed that all sin came from the sexual act between Adam and Eve and that only by overcoming fleshly desires could true salvation be attained. The sexes therefore were separated, living on separate sides of the Dwelling House. Personal property was abolished as well, all the property being held communally. New converts brought with them and gave to the order all of their worldly possessions. Even though they accepted anybody, including those who were penniless, the Church became quite wealthy.  Of course when the economy in the United States shifted from farming and handcrafts to factories, the Shakers couldn’t compete and their numbers began to dwindle. Celibacy was part of the problem. Once there were governmental agencies that cared for the poor and for the abandoned children and the number of converts declined, the number of Shakers diminished rapidly.

The Millenium Church, as they named themselves, was not a democracy. All decisions came from the top down. Obedience was a strict requirement.

However, they remain once of the most successful ‘communes’ ever established.

How sweet it is; honey and the Shakers

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In A Simple Murder, Lydia Farrell is a beekeeper or apiarist. The Shakers regularly used outside contractors for certain jobs and I thought it logical that a former Shaker, ejected from the community, might stay on, especially if she possessed a useable skill. Photographs of Shaker communities, obviously from later in their history, sometime show the recognizeable white hives.

Honey is the oldest known sweetener; cave paintings from 10,000 years ago show people collecting honey. Sugarcane was grown on the Indian subcontinent and became a trade item when someone discovered how to extract crystal sugar from the sugarcane juice. It traveled by the trade routes to the Middle East and from there the Crusaders took it home to Europe and the British Isles. Christopher Columbus is commonly named as the one who brought sugarcane to the New World. Sugarcane is another crop, like cotton, that had a tremendous impact on the United States. It was grown in the south and since it required tremendous amounts of labor for the cutting and processing it necessitated lots of slaves.

The Native Americans made and used maple syrup as a sweetener.

Sugar came in cones and each piece had to be chipped from the cone. Most people in the early United States used both maple syrup and honey for sweetening, especially on the frontier. Most of the Shaker communities kept bees both for their honey and the beewax for candles.

Since this was before the age of petroleum, paraffin was not known and tallow, a substance made from animal fat, was sometimes used for cheap candles instead of beeswax.

 

The Simple Life?

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As I struggle to negotiate the programs for blogging and all the other digital equipment we deal with, I thought how appealing the ‘good old days’ were.

But were they?

The Shakers strove for a simple life but the culture then was essentially agrarian. The women cooked, sewed, canned and performed all those thrify housewifely virtues. Since talking was frowned upon they were essentially alone even in the midst of a crowd. And although they were equal in influence to the Brethern, everyone had to give up sex. I think most of us would agree that that is a tough sacrifice.

Outside the Shaker communities, women were not important at all. Documents of the period show that they were referred to almost exclusively by their married name, if that. Some are listed simply as wife. Talk about loss of identity. Women, as helpmeet to husbands, was a concept taken very seriously. Although most boys were taught to read and ‘figure’, many girls were not. It wasn’t seen as necessary and besides, they were all very busy. No wonder so many of them died young.

The women who had jobs outside the home were usually women who helped husbands, fathers or sons in a business. Sometimes they continued after they were widowed but not always. Many of the wills from that time put women firmly under the control and care of the eldest son.

Weaving was one of the very few non-gender professions. The male weavers, like my character Will Rees, took their looms from house to house. Those who traveled the roads were called factors (I wonder if there is a connection to the word factory? I’ll have to research it). Weaving was an honored middle class profession. William Findlay, one of the first legislators from the Pittsburg, Pa area and a moderate voice during the Whiskey Rebellion, was a weaver.

Shakers and the Simple Life

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The Shakers formed in the middle of the 1700’s and moved to the United States in 1774. So, at the time of  “The Simple Murder” in 1795 they were already established and rapidly growing. During the mid- nineteenth century the Shakers numbered between 4,000 and 5,000 members living in 19 communities that stretched from Maine to Kentucky. Several of these remain as museums. The converted community in Hancock, Mass has  interpretive guides after the Williamsburg model:  www.hancockshakervillage.org. Today, there are still three living Shakers residing in the Sabbathday Lake community near Auburn, Maine.

The more formal name for the Shakers, which they gave themselves, was United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, or the Believers for short, but they were called The Shaking Quakers for the dancing, singing and twirling in their services. They also called their Church the Millennium Church since they expected their Church to last a thousand years.

            From the very beginning women played a significant role in the formation and shape of the sect. Ann Lee, who joined in 1758, claimed revelations regarding the fall of Adam and Eve, and preached celibacy. She became a highly influential and revered leader, called Mother Ann by her followers.  Many of her admonitions became part of the Shaker canon.

               “Good spirits will not live where there is dirt.”

            “Do your work as though you had a thousand years to live and as if you were to die tomorrow.”