Young Believers and Old Believers in the Wilderness: Narratives of Place and the Construction of Family among Western Shakers

Over the past three decades, scholars of nineteenth-century com munitarian religious movements have examined the ways in which groups such as the Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Commu nity redefined and challenged definitions of family.1 There are still, however, discoveries to be made among the journals, diaries, and let ters of these people. One little-studied aspect of the Society of Believ ers in Christ's Second Appearing, or the Shakers, is the establishment of new communities on the western frontier of Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana during the first three decades of the nineteenth century. How difficult was it for Shaker missionaries from the East to move to the relatively primitive frontier, try to make converts amidst competition from Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians, and, simultaneously, build large-scale communal settlements? Did western converts think of themselves and their place within the Society in the same ways in which their eastern-bred leaders did, given the considerable differ ences in experience? Did Shakers, old and new, build spiritual and emotional families as quickly and successfully as they built their phys ical settlements? One useful case study for these questions is the first Shaker community in the West, Turtle Creek, Ohio. It offers a con trast between Old Believers (missionaries from the East) and Young Believers (converts from the West) because the majority of the easterners spent many or all of their early years in the West at Turtle Creek, and several lived there permanently. Others were assigned to the com munities of Shawnee Run and Gasper, Kentucky, and Busro, Indiana, but most had begun their western missionary work at Turtle Creek, and they returned often for fellowship and for counsel.2