Part 18 (2/2)

gives their number at four hundred about 1825, but I follow the account given me at South Union.] Most of the members are Americans, but they have some Germans and a few English, and they had at one time several French Catholics.

They own nearly six thousand acres of land, of which three thousand five hundred acres are in the home farm, the remainder about four miles off.

The South Union Shakers were early famous for fine stock, which they sold in Missouri and in the Northwestern states and territories. They still raise fine breeds of cattle, hogs, sheep, and chickens, and this is a considerable source of income to them. Some of their land they let to tenants, among whom I found several colored families; they have also extensive orchards; the remainder they cultivate, raising--besides the pasturage of their stock--corn, wheat, rye, and oats. They have also a good grist-mill, from which they s.h.i.+p flour; they own a large brick hotel at the railroad station, which, I was told, is a summer resort, there being a sulphur spring near it, also a store, both of which they rent to ”world's people;” and they make brooms, put up garden seeds--which was formerly an important business with them--and prepare canned and preserved fruits, which they sell largely in the Southern States. I saw here on the table those very sweet ”preserves” which a quarter of a century ago were to be found on every farmer's table in New England, if he had a thrifty wife, and which, after breeding a kind of epidemic of dyspepsia, have now, I think, entirely disappeared from our Northern tables. It seems they are still served on ”company occasions”

in the South.

They have for their home use a tannery, and shops for tailoring, shoemaking, carpentering, and blacksmithing; and they employ fifteen hired people, all Negroes.

Their buildings, which are both brick and frame, are all in excellent condition; and the large pines and Norway spruces growing near the dwellings (and ”trimmed up”--or robbed of their lower branches, as the abominable fas.h.i.+on has too long been in this country), show that the founders provided for their descendants some grateful shade. Near the Church Family they showed me two fine old oaks, under which Henry Clay once partook of a public dinner, while at another time James Monroe and Andrew Jackson stopped for a day at the country tavern which once stood near by, when the stage road ran near here. ”Monroe,” said one of the older members to me, ”was a stout, thickset man, plain, and with but little to say; Jackson, tall and thin, with a hickory visage.”

Naturally, this being Kentucky, Clay was held to be the greatest character of the three.

Here, too, as I am upon antiquities, I saw old men who in their youth had taken part in the great ”revival,” and had seen the ”jerks,” which were so horrible a feature of that religious excitement, and of which I have previously quoted some descriptions from McNemar's ”Kentucky Revival.” To dance, I was here told, was the cure for the ”jerks;” and men often danced until they dropped to the ground. ”It was of no use to try to resist the jerks,” the old men a.s.sured me. ”Young men sometimes came determined to make fun of the proceedings, and were seized before they knew of it.” Men were ”flung from their horses;” ”a young fellow, famous for drinking, cursing, and violence, was leaning against a tree looking on, when he was jerked to the ground, slam bang. He swore he would not dance, and he was jerked about until it was a wonder he was not killed. At last he had to dance.” ”Sometimes they would be jerked about like a c.o.c.k with his head off, all about the ground.” The dancing I judge to have been an involuntary convulsive movement, which was the close of the general spasm. Of course, the people believed the whole was a ”manifestation of the power of G.o.d.” There is no reason to doubt that McNemar's descriptions are accurate; from what I have heard at South Union, I imagine that his account is not complete.

The South Union Shakers have no debt, and mean to obey the rule in this regard; they have a very considerable fund at interest. They eat meat, but no pork; drink tea and coffee, and some of them use tobacco--even the younger members. They have as their minister here a somewhat remarkable man, who studied Latin while driving an ox team as a youngster, and later in life acquired some knowledge of German, French, and Swedish while laboring successively as seed-gardener, tailor, and shoemaker. His mild face and gentle manners pleased me very much; and I was not surprised to find him a man greatly beloved in other societies as well as at South Union. Nevertheless his example does not appear to have been catching, for I was told that they have no library. They read a number of newspapers, but the average of culture is low.

They have no baths; have lately bought a piano, and had a brother from Canterbury to instruct some of the sisters in music. The singing was not so good as I have heard elsewhere among the Shakers. They have a school during five months of the year; and they like to take children--”would rather have bad ones than none.” They have brought children from New Orleans and from Memphis after an epidemic which had left many orphans.

The young people ”do tolerably well.”

The founders of this society were ”New-Light Presbyterians;” since then they have been reinforced by ”Infidels,” Spiritualists, Methodists, and others.

It is certainly to their credit that, living in a slave state, and having up to the outbreak of the war a great part of their business with the states farther south, these Shakers were always anti-slavery and Union people. Formerly they hired Negro laborers from their masters, which, I suppose, kept the masters quiet; it did not surprise me to hear that they always had their choice of the slave population near them. A Negro knew that he would nowhere be treated so kindly as among the Shakers. During the war they suffered considerable losses. A saw-mill and grist-mill, with all their contents, were burned, causing a loss of seventy-five thousand dollars. They fed the troops of both sides, and told me that they served at least fifty thousand meals to Union and Confederate soldiers alike. There was guerrilla fighting on their own grounds, and a soldier was shot near the Church dwelling. ”The war cost us over one hundred thousand dollars,” said one of the elders; and besides this they lost money by bad debts in the Southern States. Since the war they lost seventy-five thousand dollars in bonds, which, deposited in a bank, were stolen by one of its officers; but the greater part of this they hope to recover. Like all the Shakers, they are long-lived. A man was pointed out to me, now eighty-seven years of age, who plowed and mowed last summer; two revolutionary soldiers died in the society aged ninety-three and ninety-four; one member died at ninety-seven; and they have now people aged eighty-seven, eighty-five, eighty-two, eighty, and so on.

During ”meeting” on Sunday I saw the children, many of them small, and all clean and neat, and looking happy in their prim way. They came in, as usual, the boys by one door, the girls by another, each side with its care-taker; and took part in the marching, kneeling, and other forms of the Shaker wors.h.i.+p. After the war, the South Union elders sought out twenty orphans in Tennessee, whom they adopted. Last fall, when Memphis suffered so terribly from yellow fever, they tried to get fifty children from there, but were unsuccessful. Considering the small number who stay with them after they are grown up, this charity is surely admirable. And though the education which children receive among the Shaker people is limited, the training they get in cleanliness, orderly habits, and morals is undoubtedly valuable, and better than such orphans would receive in the majority of cases among the world's people. Nor must it be forgotten that the Shakers still, with great good sense, teach each boy and girl a trade, so as to fit them for earning a living.

_Pleasant Hill._

The Pleasant Hill Society lies in Mercer County, seven miles from Harrodsburg, on the stage road to Nicholasville, and near the Kentucky River, which here presents some grand and magnificent scenery, deserving to be better known.

They have a fine estate of rich land, lying in the midst of the famous blue-gra.s.s region of Kentucky. It consists of four thousand two hundred acres, all in one body. They have five families; but the three Church families have their property in common. In 1820 they had eight families, and between 1820 and 1825 they had about four hundred and ninety members. At present the society numbers two hundred and forty-five persons, of whom seventy-five are children or youth under twenty-one.

About one third are males and two thirds females.

Pleasant Hill was founded in 1805, and ”gathered into society order” in 1809; at which time community of goods was established.

The members are mostly Americans, but they have in one family a good many Swedes. These are the remnant of a large number whom the society brought out a number of years ago at its own expense, in the hope that they would become good Shakers. The experiment was not successful. They have also two colored members, and some English. They have among them people who were Baptists, Methodists, Adventists, and Presbyterians. A considerable number of the people, however, have grown up in the society, having come in as children of the founders; and one old lady told me she was born in the society, her parents having entered three months before she came into the world.

They eat meat, but no pork; use tea and coffee, and tobacco, but ”not much;” have baths in all the families; have no library, except of their own publications, of which copies are put into every room, and a good supply is on hand, especially of the ”Sacred Roll and Book,” and the ”Divine Book of Holy Wisdom,” which appear to be more read here than elsewhere. They have no musical instruments, but mean to get an organ ”to help the singing.” They receive twenty newspapers of different kinds; and they are Spiritualists.

The buildings at Pleasant Hill are remarkably good. The dwellings have high ceilings, and large, airy rooms, well fitted and very comfortably furnished, as are most of the Shaker houses. Most of the buildings are of stone or brick, and the stone houses in particular are well built. In most of the dwellings I found two doorways, for the different s.e.xes, as well as two staircases within. The walks connecting the buildings are here, as at South Union, Union Village, and elsewhere, laid with flagging-stones--but so narrow that two persons cannot walk abreast.

Agriculture, the raising of fine stock, and preserving fruit in summer are the princ.i.p.al industries pursued at Pleasant Hill for income. They make some brooms also, and in one of the families they put up garden seeds. They have, however, very complete shops of all kinds for their own use, as well as a saw and grist mill, and even a woolen-mill where they make their own cloth. Formerly they had also a hatter's shop; and in the early days they labored in all their shops for the public, and kept besides a carding and fulling mill, a linseed-oil mill, as well as factories of coopers' ware, brooms, shoes, dry measures, etc. At present their numbers are inadequate to carry on manufactures, and their wealth makes it unnecessary. They let a good deal of their land, the renters paying half the crop; and they employ besides fifteen or twenty hired hands, who are mostly Negroes.

Hired laborers among the Shakers are usually, or always so far as I know, boarded at the ”office,” the house of the trustees; and this often makes a good deal of hard work for the sisters who do the cooking there.

At Pleasant Hill they had two colored women and a little boy in the ”office” kitchen, hired to help the sisters; and this is the only place where I saw this done.

They have a school for the children, which is kept during five months of the year. They do not like to take children without their parents; and very few of those they take remain in the society after they are grown up. They are troubled also with ”winter Shakers,” whom they take ”for conscience' sake,” if they show even very little of the Shaker spirit, hoping to do them good. They were Union people during the war, and a few of their young men entered the army, and some of these returned after the war ended, and were reinstated in the society after examination and confession of their sins. During the war both armies foraged upon them, taking their horses and wagons; and they served thousands of meals to hungry soldiers of both sides. Their estate lies but a few miles from the field of the great battle of Perryville, and this region was for a while the scene of military operations, though not to so great an extent as the country about South Union. The Confederate general John Morgan, who was born near here, always protected them against his own troops, and they spoke feelingly of his care for them.

This society has no debt, and has never suffered from a defalcation or breach of trust. Some years ago they lost nearly ten thousand dollars from the carelessness of an aged trustee.

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