56 



€l)c jFormcr's Jttontyls Visitor. 



fections to the household of faith ; so liberal to 

 the children that they carried to the society, after 

 fitting them with the capacity, as to give them 

 the voluntary choice in the pursuit of the busi- 

 ness of life: the sons of Deae. Winkley, of 

 whom we have often heard him speak with 

 pride, went forth into business as some of the 

 most enterprising. One of them as a successful 

 manufacturer at Amesbury, Massachusetts, lias 

 been well known. 



Of John Whitcher, a child of this society, we 

 can speak as of our own knowledge. In the at- 

 tempt to array the authorities of the State against 

 the Shakers thirty years ago— in the attacks up- 

 on them< then by a " talented creature" woman, 

 who lives to this day and has not yet forgotten 

 her resentments backed by all the prejudices 

 which ignorance had engendered from suspicion, 

 and by all the hostility which the arts of men of 

 more enlightened professional practice could 

 bring into the warfare ; in this warfare upon 

 them, John Whitcher was found with the pen of 

 a ready writer to be fully equal to the conflict. 

 With the sword and spear of truth, his arm was 

 mighty in an array of facts and arguments which 

 fully exonerated them from the false charges 

 then made, and which effectually closed the 

 mouths of the slanderers who had belied them. 

 Strange it may be considered that, after a lapse 

 of more than the fourth of a century, these "ob- 

 solete" false charges, almost letter for letter and 

 word for word, should be revived to the beget- 

 ting and propagating to a new generation "that 

 knew not Joseph," a prejudice and an injustice, 

 if possible, still more aggravated, than those 

 which Whitcher had allayed and driven from 

 the field with the keen satire of talent not less 

 than by the force of truth. 



The Shakers have always been the friends of 

 toleration : no denomination of Christians in the 

 State were better pleased than the noble frater- 

 nity at Canterbury and Enfield then living, at 

 the passage by the State Legislature of the Tole- 

 ration law of 1819: by the generation which has 

 been born since, it would now be scarcely cred- 

 ited that up to that time every taxable inhabitant 

 was compelled to pay his money for the support 

 of the clergymen of the prevailing denomina- 

 tion of Christians, whether he agreed with them 

 or not. Not only Shakers, but Baptists, Metho- 

 dists, Universalists, considered themselves as 

 among the persecuted for conscience sake. It is 

 well for the credit of our jurisprudence, that the 

 cases in court of persecution for conscience sake 

 do not now exist in print in the shape of law 

 reports. 



John Whitcher, although educated under all 

 the supposed prejudices of Shaker exclusion, 

 was the man to seek for truth wherever it could 

 be found — he could not be caught up and car- 

 ried away by every impulsive enthusiasm. In a 

 beautiful grove at Allenstowu more than twenty 

 years ago, the editor of the Visitor attended a 

 Methodist camp meeting. The old preachers 

 who had caught the spirit of Whitfield and Wes- 

 ley — men of impulse, some of whom were hard- 

 ly scholars enough to write their own names and 

 who of course preached from no written notes — 

 were the men to manage a camp meeting. A 

 veteran preacher from Cape Cod in Massachu- 

 setts took the stand: he had converted perhaps 

 thousands by his persuasive eloquence, by the 

 song of the syren charming most sweetly. John 

 Whitcher with another Shaker brother was there, 

 more for argument than passion, to listen to the 



voices of the speakers — he had travelled twenty 

 miles to hear preaching from those not of his 

 denomination. The thousands of the camp 

 meeting were enchanted by the Cape Cod 

 preacher: they drew up to the stand, hundreds 

 falling upon their knees. John Whitcher and 

 his Shaker brother with the writer of this article 

 found themselves standing at some rods distance 

 from the moved up outside, listening all of us to 

 the voice raised to a pitch loud enough to be 

 heard far beyond us. After the sermon was fin- 

 ished it became a matter of no little merriment 

 that the strictly staid and consciencious Shaker 

 should have been as immovable as the man who 

 at that period had perhaps been wrought upon 

 by no artificial religious impulse. 



John Whitcher, up to this lime is a preacher 

 occasionally in the religious services of the Sha- 

 kers on Sunday ; but, free from superstition, he 

 has been of great advantage as the schoolmaster 

 at Canterbury, teaching and making of the or- 

 phans who have been there brought up some of 

 the best educated business men of the State. 

 His talent has shown itself in preparing others 

 to take up and instruct a new generation. 



Of his three nieces at Canterbury, (and the 

 other two highly qualified as leading in the busi- 

 ness of household management, — "seeking wool 

 and flax and working willingly with their hands," 

 their works " praising them in the gates,") Mary 

 Whitcher, as the polished, persevering instructor 

 of female orphans, has scarcely found her equal 

 even among the most celebrated Sisters of Char- 

 ity of the Catholic communion, whom these sis- 

 ters at Canterbury and Enfield in many respects 

 resemble. Mary has indeed exhibited evidence 

 that in her calling she had taken the " better 

 part" to which her talents were adapted. 



Neither John Whitcher nor his niece is at 

 present the immediate instructor of some fifty 

 youth, orphans and destitute, under twelve years 

 of age, who have recently been taken to the first 

 family at Canterbury to be brought up as child- 

 ren should be, in those habits of purity and in- 

 dustry which shall reach the walks of future life, 

 whether they shall go again forth to the world 

 or remain voluntarily with the people who have 

 treated them with this great goodness. None 

 but contented adults — none but such as volunta- 

 rilary choose the crown by taking up their cross 

 — can or will long remain as the inmates of the 

 Shaker association. 



We cannot better illustrate the meaning of the 

 self-denial of the Shakers than by taking the 

 case of Peter Ayer of Canterbury : he is now 

 eighty-nine years of age, and neither the firm- 

 ness of his limbs nor the fire of his eye has as 

 yet abated : he was born at Voluntown, Connec- 

 ticut, and joined this people at Canterbury sixty- 

 nine years ago. This man in that time has ex- 

 hibited an amazing personal vigor in the pursuit 

 of the business of the family. He has been in suc- 

 cessive winters a hunter of foxes with dogs and 

 gun following up on rackets many miles in the 

 deep snow : he has had work within doors, as is 

 the common practice of the Shakers in rainy or 

 foul weather — he has within the last ten years 

 laid many rods of stone wall on a distant adja- 

 cent farm lately purchased, working alone with 

 the aid only of a yoke of oxen. The farm lies 

 at the distance of a mile, going to it through en- 

 closed pasture grounds. Here the contrivance 

 of Peter was to see and take care of his oxen 

 and cows, his heifers, steers and calves, while on 

 his way to and from his work. Peter Ayer said 

 to us that he took up his cross and crucified the 



flesh before he became a Shaker ; that he had 

 waged war against the world, the flesh and the 

 devil; that all the time, while in solitary work, 

 his heart was after the gospel. " Every man 

 that has hope (said he) purifies himself as Christ 

 is pure." Deac. Winkley, who had gone to his 

 rest, was a year and a half older than himself: 

 he was a man better qualified to do common 

 business and look after concerns abroad ; but he , 

 said "the Deacon was ahead of him only in out- 

 ward things — there was never superiority in the, 

 old family or idea of superiority." 



The church at Canterbury, built fifty-seven 

 years ago, preserves the same freshness as it had 

 in 1809, when we first attended the Shaker wor- 

 ship in it. The original shingles upon the build- 

 ing, as they are upon dwelling houses built in 

 1794, are yet in a state of good preservation. 

 This church is not sufficiently capacious lo hold 

 all the worshippers at the same time. At the 

 time of our last visit the two upper families at- 

 tended the open worship of the forenoon to 

 which spectators from abroad were admitted ; and 

 the first family at the place of the church loca- 

 tion worshipped afterwards on the same day. 

 Through the day, with Mr. Southvvorth and wife, 

 then on a visit from New York, we had the priv- 

 ilege of three exercises, two of them out of the 

 church, all of which were truly gratifying. 



The second wife, much younger than himself, 

 of Mr. Soulhworth, was a Miss Blinn of Provi- 

 dence, R. I. They came to the Shakers from 

 New York city, where Mr. Southworth is pursu- 

 ing editorial labors in a weekly newspaper, to 

 visit Mrs. S's younger brother, Henry Clay Blinn, 

 now about twenty-one years old, who at the age 

 of about fourteen, his father being dead, obtain- 

 ed the consent of his widowed mother to come 

 and live with the Shakers at Canterbury, on the 

 strength of the assurance of David Parker whom 

 he met at Providence that he should be treated 

 there to his satisfaction. He had not only been 

 satisfied there, but he had in the time obtained at 

 the Shakers such an education as qualified him 

 to become the eminent schoolmaster of the flock. 

 We have no room to go a; length into the details 

 of a Sunday morning exercise of some twenty 

 boys under twelve years of age who were under 

 the charge of young Blinn. In manners and in 

 morals nothing human within our observation 

 ever exceeded these youth, some of whom had 

 been wrested from the very gutters of ignorance, 

 and all of whom, in poverty at home, found a 

 more improved, if not easier condition with the 

 Shakers. Every thing here useful in schools 

 had been taught these boys; and not the least 

 important were the moral and religious lessons 

 which on this Sabbath occasion were by them 

 repeated. Of the boys present, each of whom i 

 gave a familiar account of his parentage, birth 

 and age, recalling the events and the treatment 

 which had made them happy and contented at 

 their present home, Mr. Blinn presented the fol- 

 lowing list: 



Andrew Jackson Moore, bom at Portsmouth, aged 13yrs. 

 Benjamin Cummins Freeman, born at N. Y. city, " 13 '' 

 Charles Stephenson, born at Washington, D. C, " 12 '' 

 Albert W. S. Davis, born at Providence, R. I , "12 " 

 Daniel Merrill, born at Pictou, N. S., " 12 " 



James Volney Chase, born at Pittsfield, " 12 " 



Thomas Russell Shute, horn at Boston, Mass., '• 11 " 

 Jesse A. Davis, born at Providence, R. I , " 10 " 



Charles Jerald, born at Concord, " 10 " 



James Rodman, born at New Orleans, La., " 9 " 



James Shepard, born at Amherst, " 9 " 



John Robinson, born at ISewburyport, Mass., •' y " 

 Charles Wesley Main, born at Philadelphia, Pa., " S " 

 John Matthew, born at Portsmouth, " 8 -; 



