Tag Archives: Shakers

Goodreads Giveaway

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I have begun a giveaway of ten copies of A Simple Murder, the first in the Will Rees history.

A traveling weaver, Rees goes home after some time spent on the road. He find his son. David, has run away. Rees tracks him to a nearby Shaker community but he has no sooner arrived than the body of one of the Sisters is discovered. Rees is accused but quickly finds the friendly farmer in whose barn he had spent the night.

From being the suspect, Rees goes to being the detective. What he finds in the Shaker community will change his life forever.

Next month we will move on to Death of a Dyer.

Speaking Engagements

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I had a great talk at the Newburgh Library last Wednesday. I have two more coming up. On Sunday, October 23, I will be talking at the Orangeburg Library – in Rockland County, New York. The talk begins at 2.

The following Sunday, I will be speaking about witchcraft at my own library – the Goshen Public Library in Goshen, New York. Hard to believe but I have never spoken there. I felt shy pushing myself into a slot where I work.

Come and ask questions.

Hired men: the Shaker challenge

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Farming is hard work even now with all the modern equipment we use. (Both good and bad don’t you think, but clearly a topic for another time.)   In the 1790s farming was even harder. It remains and was certainly even more so then a very people intensive profession. Lots of help was required, and that is true even now. So hired help was a common feature of early America. Sons and daughters hired themselves out to the neighbors until they had homes and farms of their own. Younger sons, who often never obtained a farm of their own – the older sons inherited – frequently hired on to other farms.  Unattached males traveled from farm to farm exactly as migrant labor does now. This is a long standing practice, continuing right up to modern times. Think of Lennie and George in Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” and the current use of migrant labor. Farms really couldn’t function without this kind of a labor pool.

As usual, I digress.

So Rees and Lydia would have employed help, both inside the farmhouse and outside in the fields. think of Abigail and the boys David took on to help him brng in the harvest.

Even the Shakers employed hired help, primarily men. During the nineteenth century the number of hired men increased as the flow of male converts decreased. (The Shakers always attracted more women than men for a variety of reasons.) The use of hired men within the Shaker community created a number of consequences. Since the men were ‘too much of the World’, they slept in a separate building and were required to eat alone. I would guess that there were still unexpected and forbidden attractions between Sisters and the men. Human biology is very hard to resist and one of the primary sources I read discussed the problems of keeping the boys and girls adopted into the community separate. The attraction the adolescents felt to one another and their efforts to attract attention was a great trial to the Shaker caretakers.

But some of the problems were cultural, if you will. After the Believers had become teetotalers, the Families in Canterbury (New Hampshire), were much exercised over whether to brew beer for the hired men. The community worried that by brewing beer they were risking not only their ideals but also the consequence of drunken men living in the heart of the village. (Described in “The Shakers, Neither Plain nor Simple”. Even though Sisters took on ‘male’ tasks, men were still required.

Shakers and Alcohol

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With a group, particularly a religious group, that has had such a long history, I think there is a tendency to see them as they are and extrapolate backwards. Attitudes toward drinking alcohol have changed so dramatically in the intervening few centuries that that approach is impossible.

Rees’s period, the Federalist period in American History, was a hard drinking age. Ale was used almost like water and was consumed by women and children as well as by men. Cider, which was usually hard cider (it could hardly be anything else without refrigeration) was a common breakfast drink. Many of our founding fathers took a glass of cider first thing in the morning in the same manner we drink our orange juice. Rum was used as part of sailors’ wages. (Rum is made from molasses, a byproduct in the refining of sugar. The more molasses in the sugar, the browner. Sugar has a dark history. Planting and harvesting the cane required more slaves. Cane exhausts the soil so more land was needed. And of course we are all familiar with the health risks of sugar. But I digress.) In any event, rum was the drink of the Colonies. After the Whiskey Rebellion of 1793, whiskey became more popular, more American if you will, just like coffee did in comparison to tea.

The Shakers brewed cider and like the society around them drank ‘spirits’. It was the custom for every Brother and Sister who wished to take a glass in the morning before breakfast and then through out the day. For dinner the Brothers were permitted two gills and the Sisters two thirds of a gill. (Does anyone but me wonder about the livers of all those drinkers?)

But with the Millennial Laws, especially from 1845 (and the rise of the temperance movement) the drinking of spirits (along with coffee and tea – that would have killed me) was forbidden. No cider was made and no liquor was brewed. One of the primary sources I read discussed the struggle among the Family about brewing beer for the hired men.  (More about hired men in another post.)

Eventually spirits had to be offered medicinally from the Doctor and then were banned all together. Like other cultural changes, however, this prohibition changed again and later on the Shakers both made and consumed wine with meals.

So the Shakers, like the World around them, changed as prevailing attitudes changed.

Shakers andPets

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Although the simple life is certainly a draw in this hectic over-scheduled modern life, I would find living as a Shaker difficult, if not impossible. For one thing, I am not obedient. But also the shakers do not have pets.

The Milennial Laws of 1821 and then again in 1845 laid out rules governing every aspect of Shaker lives. They were not allowed pets, primarily because their focus was supposed to be upon God.

For me, this is a deal breaker. I have had a dog since I was ten, with only a few years here and there without. Plus a few cats scattered among the dogs.

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Shelby is my current dog, although she actually, emotionally, belongs to my husband. I wanted a dog for my birthday. When we went to the rescue, she raced to him. Once she’d chosen him, we couldn’t leave her behind. So, I got a dog for my husband for my birthday.

But I digress. Sandy was my previous dog. She looked similar to Shelby – a little lighter in color. Sandy was my best friend. She went everywhere with me. Although a medium dog (65 pounds) she lived to be 17 1/2. The vet was astonished she lived so long. by then she was blind, deaf, and had hip displasia. I was so heart broken I did not get another dog for a few years.

So, having a dog is one thing I could not surrender.

Food in the 1790s

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While talking with a friend about early American food, and the divergence between American cookery and British, he said the differences were due to the influx of immigrants with their regional cuisines.

Yes, that is partly true, but more so later on,

The truth is that what was eaten began diverging right away.

Take the word corn for example. In Britain, corn was a general term for grain. (So in the nursery rhyme ‘the cows in the corn’, the cows could have been in the wheat. the term used for corn was the American Indian word maize.

Corn was a staple of the American diet, eaten in a variety of ways: bread, pancakes, pone (little cakes) and so on. Including something called ash pone which was cooked in the ashes. (Yuck?)

Squash, another Indian name for an American vegetable, was an addition to the American diet.

They did have something they called pumpkin pie but we would not recognize it. It was slices of raw apple and pumpkin sugared and cooked in a crust. (Unappealing, I think. I tried a recipe for a Shaker lemon pie which was slices of raw lemon, heavily sugared and baked in a pie. Incredibly sour, despite the sugar. But I digress). What we would call pumpkin pie (stewed pumpkin stewed with sugar and spices) was called a pudding at that time.

Other differences: corn cobs were used to smoke bacon and cranberry sauce accompanied the roast turkey, cranberries being an American fruit. Mince pie, by the way, was made with meat – usually venison, not apples and raisins as it is now.

One of the early recipes gives directions for spruce beer. Yes, it really does contain spruce, but also hops and molasses. And speaking of molasses, this is a word Americans, even from this time forward, have used in preference to the more British treacle.

Shaker Exhibition

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Because of my goodreads giveaway, I am behind on my blogging. Now that most of the books have been put in the mail to the winners, and the remaining ones ready, I can turn my attention to something else.

A few weeks ago, my husband and I went to an exhibition of Shaker items at the New York State Museum. I”d wanted to attend the program on Children and the Shakers, which was unfortunately canceled. But the display was still up and will be until March.

Despite all my research, I still learned some new facts. One of the pieces on display was a Granny Cradle. The explanation given was that it was used either to comfort the ill adult or to move them.

I did not know that some parents indentured their children to the Shakers. Several contracts were on display.

Here is the board listing a boy’s duties.

shaker boys

The morning began early, at 6:30, with many chores before breakfast and more after. School (from Dec to March for the boys) was fit into the mornings. Photos of smiling children on outings were also on display. It may seem harsh to modern eyes but hard work was usual even for very small children then.

We also paused on our way out to see the exhibit on the World Trade Center. Crushed trucks and heavy beams bent and twisted like licorice sticks. Even after the passage of more than a decade, this exhibit has not lost its power.

world trade center

 

Goodreads Giveaway

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The Giveaway ends tomorrow at midnight; two days left to add your name for the Giveaway.

Will and Lydia travel to New York just outside of Albany after a frantic plea for help from Shaker friend Mouse. There they find Mouse had been accused of kidnapping – and she admits it. Shortly after, the mother of the children is found dead and Mouse is the the primary suspect.