Thrilled to finally see "The Ballad of Anne Bunnell: Troubled Families in the Shaker West, 1805-1825" in print!
Read MoreDeath by Pancakes on C-SPAN
This week, C-SPAN’s American History TV channel will rebroadcast “Death by Pancakes & Other Incidents in the History of New Light Evangelicalism,” a public lecture I presented online for the Newberry Library last May.
Here’s the official blurb from the original Newberry event:
In this illustrated lecture, historian Douglas Winiarski will explore the varied ways in which the people called “New Lights”—progenitors of today’s evangelical Protestants—resolved perplexing mind-body problems associated with their transformative conversion experiences. Winiarski will use engaging stories featuring an eclectic cast of religious radicals—hailing from New England and Maritime Canada to the trans-Appalachian west—to reveal how the transatlantic evangelical awakening of the 18th century fueled controversies over marriage, the family, sexuality, and the body.
And the full C-SPAN schedule:
Saturday, August 28: 4:00 p.m.
Sunday, August 29: 4:00 a.m. (for early risers!)
Sunday, September 5: 3:59 p.m. (sharp!)
Monday, September 6: 3:59 a.m. (seriously?)
Following the last airing, C-SPAN will archive the program on their free video library. It’s also available on the Newberry Library website.
Enjoy!
“Seized by the Jerks” Wins Article Award!
I’m pleased to announce that my recent William and Mary Quarterly article, “Seized by the Jerks: Shakers, Spirit Possession, and the Great Revival,” has been named the Outstanding Publication Article Award for 2019 by the Communal Studies Association. Founded in 1975, the CSA sponsors a wide range of professional programs and publications designed to “encourage and facilitate the preservation, restoration, and public interpretation of America’s historic communal sites” and “provide a forum for the study of intentional communities, past and present.”
The CSA annual meeting is taking place this weekend at the spectacular Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library near Wilmington, Delaware. Yesterday, I presented “The Ballad of Anne Bunnell: Troubled Families in the Shaker West, 1805–1825,” alongside fellow Richmond-area historian Ryan Smith (Virginia Commonwealth University) , who delivered a fascinating paper on the material and spiritual dimensions of Shaker tables. Christine Heyrman served as the moderator, and, for the first time in three decades, my dad was able to attend one of my conference presentations. Very much looking forward to the awards banquet tonight!
To learn more about my work on the jerks and other somatic religious phenomena associated with the revivals in the trans-Appalachian west, check out “Seized by the Jerks,” my two-part “Shakers & Jerkers” articles, and “History of the Jerks: Bodily Exercises and the Great Revival (1803–1967),” a curated digital archive of primary texts chronicling this fascinating religious practice and its controversial role in the development of American evangelicalism.
Interview on the History News Network
Elisabeth Pearson of the History News Network invited me to share some preliminary insights from my current research on frontier revivalism, anti-Shaker violence, and the pan-Indian religious movement associated with Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee Prophet. Check it out!
George Catlin, Ten-sqúat-a-way, The Open Door, Known as The Prophet, Brother of Tecumseh, 1830, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr., 1985.66.279.
The “Strange Work” of Caleb Callaway (Logan County, Kentucky, 1811)
In my current research, I’ve been searching for sources that reveal how and why western settlers converted to Shakerism during the years following the Great Revival (1799–1805). The Shakers kept detailed records of all sorts, but most were written by the leaders of the sect. Few rank-and-file believers described their experiences, especially during the critical early years of the Shakers’ expansion into Kentucky and Ohio. Even fewer shared those experiences with the “world’s people”—the friends, neighbors, and family members they left behind.
Shaker convert Caleb Callaway scrawled his signature on this 1829 financial agreement. Caleb Callaway, deed of gift to John C. Callaway, June 30, 1829, box 1, Shakers—South Union, Ky., Business and Legal Papers, 1769–1893, MSS 154, Manuscripts and Folklife Archives, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Ky.
That’s what makes the following letter by Caleb Callaway (1761–1829) so valuable. Tucked away in one of the sprawling notebooks of John Dabney Shane, a nineteenth-century Presbyterian minister and amateur historian, is a brief note that Callaway penned to his brother-in-law, James French, during the summer of 1811. At the time, Callaway had been living for two years at the Gasper River (later South Union) Shaker village near Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Callaway provided a detailed exposition of the “faith and manner of life that I now live.” Like many western revivalers and recent Shaker converts, he believed he was living in an extraordinary new dispensation in which “Christ has made his 2nd and last appearance into the world.” Interestingly, Callaway did not associate Christ’s return with the figure of Shaker founder Ann Lee. But he did presume, as did all Shakers, that Christ was not a man but rather an inward principle, an “anointing of the Holy Ghost,” available to all of the “sons of God.” For those who crucified the flesh, gloried in the celibate “cross of Christ,” forsook all “natural relations,” and devoted themselves to the communal life of the Shakers, it was possible to “live a holy life” on earth “clear from sin, from day to day,” with a “peace & union the world knows nothing of.” And that choice was voluntary, as Callaway explained in the final lines of the letter. “Salvation is free for every soul,” he encouraged his brother-in-law, “they may choose or refuse it. All are free Agents as to that.” Utterly confident in the rightness of his new Shaker faith, Callaway proclaimed he would not “exchange my present situation, for the whole world.” He concluded the letter with an exhortation: “Come and see us, and know for yourself.”
Callaway’s crooked road to Shakerism began in what is now Bedford County, Virginia. He was born in 1761, the son of Richard and his first wife, Frances Walton. The elder Callaway had fought in the Seven Years War, and he later joined Daniel Boone in blazing the Wilderness Road to Kentucky. Caleb spent his early years at Fort Boonesborough, where he witnessed the capture of his sister and the death and mutilation of his father at the hands of the Shawnee. Early in the 1780s, Caleb sold his share in his father’s lands and lucrative ferry operation, returned to southwestern Virginia, and married Elizabeth Callaway, his first cousin once removed. He appeared regularly on the Virginia property tax rolls for Campbell County during the next two decades, slowly rising through the ranks of society as he accumulated material goods and enslaved servants. The Callaways had at least seven children between 1784 and 1802. Then, in 1804, Elizabeth died unexpectedly—“passed away to the Summerland,” according to later Shaker records—and Caleb vanished.
Some evidence suggests that Callaway moved his family to North Carolina. Or he may have fallen on hard times and sought refuge with relatives. But when he resurfaced in Ohio County, Kentucky, five years later, Callaway was a changed man. Like so many of his contemporaries, he had passed through the fires of the Great Revival and been transformed. According to Shaker missionary Benjamin Seth Youngs, who encountered him for the first time on June 1, 1809, Callaway had joined the Halcyon Church, one of the most peculiar religious sects of the early American republic. Founded around 1806 in Marietta, Ohio, by a quixotic prophet named Abel Morgan Sargeant, the Halcyons renounced the traditional Christian doctrine of the trinity, rejected Calvinism, and advocated universal salvation. Denounced as an imposter by his opponents, Sargeant claimed to communicate with angels; he traveled throughout the Ohio Valley with a group of twelve female apostles; and he exhorted his small group of followers to live “without sin” and “become so holy as to work miracles, heal the sick and live without eating.”
Following his encounter with Youngs and the Shakers, Callaway abandoned the Halcyons and moved with family to the newly organized Shaker settlement at Gaspar River in Logan County, Kentucky. The following year he wrote to James French explaining his new faith.
Callaway’s two-decade life among a Shakers was uneventful, although not without challenges. In 1815, he indentured his three teenage sons, John Constant, Henry, and William, to the believers at South Union, who agreed to provide food, lodging, education, and trade skills until the boys turned twenty-one. John Constant remained with the Shakers until his death in 1830, as did a daughter, Matilda, who lived into the 1880s. Caleb’s other two sons, along with their two older brothers, Elijah and Elisha, left South Union in 1818. Callaway occasionally traveled on business for the believers and worked in their various mill complexes. In 1827, he was listed among the 75 brothers and sisters of the “Junior Order” who were living in the East Family dwelling house. Callaway died on the morning of July 8, 1829, and was buried the following day in an unmarked grave in the Shaker cemetery at South Union.
Callaway spent his last years in the East Section dwelling house at South Union Shaker village, near Bowling Green, Kentucky. Isaac N. Young and George Kendall, “Sketches of the various Societies of Belivers in the states of Ohio & Kentucky,” 1835, Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
At the end of his transcription, Shane noted that Callaway’s “spelling, & division of sentences” were “miserable.” Judging from Caleb’s shaky signature on a South Union financial document, Shane was right!
John Dabney Shane transcribed Caleb Callaway’s July 11, 1811, letter to James French into the second volume of his “Historical Collections” notebooks, which are now among the Draper Manuscripts of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin (12 CC 209–10). For Callaway’s life at South Union, see Harvey L. Eads, transcr., Shakers—South Union, Ky., “Record Book A (including Autobiography of John Rankin, Sr.),” 1805–1836, 102, 265, 452, Shakers of South Union, Kentucky, Collection, 1800–1916, MSS 597, Manuscripts and Folklife Archives, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green; “South Union Graveyard Book,” 1750–1881, 2–3, typescript, III B:32, MS 3944, Shaker Manuscripts, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland. Information on Callaway’s notable father, Richard, is available in John E. Kleber, The Kentucky Encyclopedia (Lexington, Ky., 1992), 152. Adam Jortner briefly discusses the Halcyon Church in his recent Blood from the Sky: Miracles and Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville, Va., 2017), 164; see also C. E. Dickinson, A Century of Church Life, 1796–1896: A History of the First Congregational Church, Marietta, Ohio ([Marietta, Ohio], 1896), 31. On Shane and his “Historical Collections” notebooks, see Elizabeth A. Perkins, Border Life: Experience and Memory in the Revolutionary Ohio Valley (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998), 15–24.
Gaspar River, Logan Co.
Friend James,
I have taken the privilege of writing to you my faith and manner of life that I now live. We believe that Christ has made his 2nd and last appearance into the world; and his errand is to save his people from their sins, and to destroy that nature that is in man, that is not subject to the law of God, & to bring in everlasting righteousness. The greater part of mankind h[as] b[een] expecting Christ to come in the shape of a man. I answer nay; the Church of Xt had its foundation in the revelation of God; and that foundation is Christ. But who or what is Christ? The name of Christ signifies the anointed, and arose from that spiritual unction, or anointing of the Holy Ghost, w[ho] [with] Jesus was anointed to preach the Gospel of Salvation to the [poor]. And I, as well as many others, have read: Christ, and as many as recieve him, to them he gives power to become the sons of God.[1] And we [heed] him by honestly confessing our sins to God before God’s witnesses. This I have done, and I now live a holy life from day to day; taking up the cross of Christ, self-denial, working out my salvation, forsaking all natural relations, that is, that is, that spirit that they are of, that stands against God. I love their persons & their souls, but not that carnal nature. Neither does God love it. I do know that I live clear of sin, from day to day; And I have that peace & union that the world knows nothing of. Nor wo’d I exchange my present situation, for the whole world. I do know that I have peace with God, and I know I am not decieved. To know God, & Jesus Xt whom he has sent, is eternal life, and nothing short of this is Eternal life. We have the everlasting Gospel w[ith] us, that saves people from their sins. And the Tabernacle of God is with men, and the judgment is set. And I have sent my sins into judgment beforehand, and judgment is given to the saints. This is that work that God promised long ago to bring about, by the prophets and Apostles. A strange work, and strange it is. And I can say as Paul did, I am crucified to the world, and the world to me. And I glory in the cross.[2] And I die daily unto sin, and live to God, putting on the Lord Jesus Xt, and making no provision for the flesh to fulfil it in the lust therof.[3]
Come and see us, and know for yourself. By the fruits you are to know them.[4]
I suppose my old mother is gone out of the body, is she not?[5] Tell Keeza and all the children, that salvation is free for every souls on the earth: either in the body or out of it, all will have a chance to come in.[6] And they may choose or refuse it. All are free Agents as to that. I add no more at present, but remain your friend,
Caleb Calloway
July 11th 1811
To James French, Montgomery Co., Ky.
(Post-mark, “Frankfort, K. July 11th.”)
(The spelling, & division of sentences, miserable.)
[1] John 1:12.
[2] Cf. Gal 6:14.
[3] Cf. Rom. 13:14.
[4] Cf. Mat. 7:20.
[5] Callaway’s stepmother, Elizabeth (Jones Hoy) Calloway (1733–1813), lived with French and was still alive in 1811. She is buried in the French family cemetery near Mount Sterling, Ky.
[6] “Keeza” was Callaway’s sister, Keziah (Callaway) French (1768–1845), who married James French and lived in Montgomery County, Kentucky.
John Dabney Shane’s transcription of Caleb Callaway’s 1811 letter to John French. Kentucky Papers, 12 CC 209–10, microfilm, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison.
Death by Pancakes and Other Incidents in the History of New Light Evangelicalism
Gearing up to deliver the William and Mary Quarterly Prize Lecture twenty years to the month after I published my first journal article, “Pale Blewish Lights and a Dead Man’s Groan” (1998). I’m thrilled to be presenting this lecture honoring legendary Quarterly editor, Mike McGiffert.
The talk will bridge the argument in Darkness Falls on the Land of Light and my recent work on frontier Shakerism. I’m looking forward to sharing stories of murder, spouse swapping, genderlessness, celibacy, the jerks, and other New Light family values. Here’s the promotional blurb:
In this illustrated lecture, historian Douglas Winiarski examines the varied ways in which the “people called New Lights”—progenitors of today’s evangelical Protestants—resolved perplexing mind-body problems associated with their transformative conversion experiences. Drawing upon a wide range of examples from maritime Canada to the Carolinas and from New England to the trans-Appalachian frontier, Professor Winiarski will explore how the religious revivals of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries fueled controversies over marriage, the family, sexuality, and the body.
“Death by Pancakes” will take place on Monday, October 22, 2018, at 4:00 in Blow Hall, room 201, on the campus of the College of William & Mary. Hope to see you there!
Shakers & Jerkers (Greenville, Virginia, 1805)
The Journal of East Tennessee History recently published the first of a two-part series of articles in which I chronicle the Shakers’ epic “Long Walk” from New York to Ohio in 1805. Part travel narrative, part missionary report, Shaker letters from the Long Walk shed new light on the controversial “bodily exercises” that dominated accounts of the Great Revival (1799–1805). Centered in the Kentucky Bluegrass Country, this powerful succession of Presbyterian sacramental festivals and Methodist camp meetings played a formative role in the development of early American evangelicalism and the emergence of the southern Bible Belt. The Shakers were eyewitnesses to some of the most bizarre spectacles associated with the western revivals.
"The Jerks," Virginia Argus (October 24, 1804). Image courtesy of the Library of Virginia, Richmond.
Spurred by a newspaper report describing an outbreak of the strange somatic fits known as “the jerks” in the remote village of Abingdon, Virginia, Shaker leaders in New Lebanon, New York, dispatched three missionaries to investigate the Great Revival and gauge the prospects for evangelizing the western settlements. At the time, sectarian followers of British émigré Ann Lee, the “Elect Lady” and purported second coming of Christ in female form, had achieved widespread notoriety for their perfectionist theology, celibacy, pacifism, communal villages, and, especially, ecstatic dancing practices. Early descriptions of the Shakers “laboring” worship, as they called it, bore a striking resemblance to accounts of the bodily exercises of the western revivals.
Leading a packhorse encumbered by a large portmanteaux and bearing printed copies of a strident letter proclaiming the Shakers’ millennial new dispensation, John Meacham, Issachar Bates, and Benjamin Youngs set out on New Year’s Day, 1805. For more than two months they struggled through some of the worst winter weather of the nineteenth century. The Shaker missionaries traveled more than 1,200 miles south through New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, then up the Great Valley of Virginia, through East Tennessee, over Cumberland Gap, and into the Kentucky Bluegrass country—the heart of the Great Revival. By March 1805, the trio had reached the small settlement at Turtle Creek near Lebanon, Ohio.
Clover Mount (Robert Tate Homestead), Greenville, Virginia, ca. 1803. Image courtesy of the Virginia Department of Historical Resources, Richmond.
Along the way, the Shaker missionaries were keen to meet with Scots-Irish Presbyterian “jerkers”—men and women who had experienced unusual somatic fits during powerful revival meetings. As they passed through Greenville, Virginia, Meacham and Youngs spent an afternoon interviewing members of the family of Robert Tate, a prosperous Presbyterian elder, Revolutionary War veteran, and slaveowner, about their experiences with the jerks. The record of that conversation, carefully recorded by Youngs in a letter, is arguably the most detailed account of the bodily exercises of the Great Revival ever written. Although the Shaker missionaries moved on from Greenville, they continued to encounter “jerkers” like the Tates throughout the western settlements. Within a few years, hundreds of these radical “revivalers” and their families had converted to Shakerism and gathered together in a network of five communal villages that the missionaries organized in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana.
“Shakers & Jerkers, Part 1” presents an edited transcription of the missionaries’ January 31, 1805, letter, in which they narrated their progress from New York to Virginia and reported their encounter with the Tate family. Scheduled for publication in the 2018 volume of the Journal of East Tennessee History, the second installment in the series will cover the Shakers’ travels through Tennessee and Kentucky, as well as their early efforts to spread the gospel in southern Ohio. It also includes an unforgettable account of a Presbyterian society meeting in East Tennessee in which Meacham, Youngs, and Bates witnessed not only the jerks, but trance walking and other unusual somatic phenomena.
For colleagues seeking new readings for their courses on early American religious history, “Shakers & Jerkers” provides a vivid portrait of popular religion in the trans-Appalachian west. Graduate courses might effectively pair these edited Shaker texts with prominent studies of the Great Revival and southern evangelicalism: John Boles, The Great Revival: Beginnings of the Bible Belt (1972; Lexington, Ky., 1996); Paul K. Conkin, Cane Ridge: America’s Pentecost (Madison, WI, 1990); Christine Heyrman, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (New York, 1998); Leigh Eric Schmidt, Holy Fairs: Scotland and the Making of American Revivalism, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich., 2001); or Ann Taves, Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (Princeton, N.J., 1999). Readers interested in learning more about the Long Walk and western Shakerism should begin with Stephen J. Stein’s definitive Shaker Experience in America: A History of the United Society of Believers (New Haven, Conn., 1992); see also Carol Medlicott’s excellent biography, Issachar Bates: A Shaker’s Journey (Hanover, N.H., 2013).