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 worship. 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-grass 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.