Word: ann
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Ann, the Word. The Shakers were founded by Ann Lee, husky daughter of a British blacksmith. As a girl, Ann was troubled by thoughts of sin and salvation. At her father's insistence, she married Abraham Stanley, to whom she bore four children-all of whom soon died. At 23, she joined the revivalist following of two emotional Quakers, James and Jane Wardley. The Wardleys became convinced that Ann was nothing less than the second incarnation of Christ. Later, it was revealed to Ann in a vision that she was Mother Ann-Ann, the Word. She had attained spiritual...
...guided by another revelation, Mother Ann and eight disciples came to America. Their first settlement was a swampy tract of land near Albany, N.Y., which the little band of English artisans laboriously cleared and drained. There they waited for the followers whom Mother Ann prophesied would join them in the New World. In 1780, the followers began to show up. From then on, the Shakers slowly spread, settling together in communities called "families" from Maine to southwest Kentucky. Between 1840 and 1860, they attained their peak membership. Their peculiar religious practices caused the world's people to persecute them...
...Shakers were also intensely practical. Mother Ann insisted that her converts be "hand-minded." "Put your hands to work and your hearts to God," she said. The furniture they made, first for themselves and later for sale, was strong and simple. Yet it is some of the most beautiful furniture ever produced in the U.S. Their solid brick houses and great barns also have an austere beauty. Though Shakers had little use for book-learning, they were inventors. In an ecstatic vision, Shaker Sister Sarah Babbitt invented the buzz saw. Shakers are credited with inventing the one-horse shay...
...close, the Shakers made few converts. The journals kept by each "family" began to record more & more cases of individuals (and couples) who "wormed out" or "fleshed off" to taste the pleasures of the world. Sister Sadie Neale and the handful of others who are left know that Mother Ann's valiant experiment is over. But they are confident that some time, somewhere, it will rise again, as Sister Sadie says, "in some other form." Meanwhile, they are living out the rest of their lives as Mother Ann told them to do: "As though you had 1,000 years...
...statement which laid waste many students' plans, Miss Ann Brodell, Radcliffe '49, spokesman for the dormitory's social committee, announced that the first Jolly-up would, however, definitely be held next Thursday evening...