{"id":2092,"date":"2017-06-19T15:20:08","date_gmt":"2017-06-19T19:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jerkshistory\/?p=2092"},"modified":"2019-02-17T15:02:06","modified_gmt":"2019-02-17T20:02:06","slug":"southunion1805-01","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jerkshistory\/2017\/06\/19\/southunion1805-01\/","title":{"rendered":"Excerpt from the Journal of Benjamin Seth Youngs (January 5, 1806)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Although most of Benjamin Seth Youngs\u2019s journal for 1806 has been lost, elder and historian Harvey L. Eads copied extracts from the original manuscript into the official records of South Union Shaker village. In this excerpt, Youngs reports on a powerful religious meeting among Shaker converts at Eagle Creek, Ohio.<\/h3>\n

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January 1806<\/div>\n

Sabbath [January] 5. In the morning at D. Edie\u2019s. At noon we met with the Believers at John Knox\u2019s, about 30 in number & as many Spectators, to whom John Dunlavy, Richard McNemar. Elders Issachar & Benjamin spoke with a measure of freedom for about 3 hours.<\/p>\n

In the evening most of the believers met again & after speaking a long time & singing hymns we went into the worship of God, the first time publicly in this place. It was a profitable time to the people, numbers who went forth were very happy. It was a time of power. Some fell, others danced, even among those who had not opened their minds. A. Dunlavy who had never before been exercised, was taken with shaking & Jerking from that to dancing, which continued for 4 hours with scarce any intermission. D. Redmond & Sally Moore fell.<\/div>\n

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Source<\/h3>\n

Harvey L. Eads, transcr., Shakers\u2014South Union, Ky., \u201cRecord Book A (including Autobiography of John Rankin, Sr.),\u201d 1805\u20131836, 47, Shakers of South Union, Kentucky, Collection, 1800\u20131916, MSS 597, Manuscripts and Folklife Archives, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green.<\/p>\n

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About Benjamin Seth Youngs (1774\u20131855)<\/h3>\n

Born in Schenectady, New York,\u00a0Benjamin Seth Youngs\u00a0converted to Shakerism with a large contingent of his family in 1794. During the next decade, Youngs worked alongside\u00a0Issachar Bates<\/a>\u00a0as a missionary in western Massachusetts, upstate New York, and Vermont. In December 1804, Shaker leaders appointed John Meacham, Bates, and Youngs to open the Shaker gospel in the west. Youngs\u2019s extensive travel journal of the missionaries\u2019 \u201cLong Walk\u201d to Kentucky and Ohio includes vivid descriptions of the jerks and other bodily exercises that dominated the Great Revival. He emerged as a prominent leader in the development of western Shakerism, evangelizing, organizing communities, and drafting the sect’s first comprehensive theological treatise,\u00a0The Testimony of Christ’s Second Appearing<\/em>\u00a0(1808). Youngs served as elder of the Shaker village at South Union, Kentucky, for more than two decades before being recalled to Watervliet, New York, where he died in 1855.<\/p>\n

References<\/h3>\n

Stephen J. Paterwic,\u00a0Historical Dictionary of the Shakers<\/em>, Historical Dictionaries of Religions, Philosophies, and Movements, no. 87 (Lanham, Md., 2008), 251\u2013253.<\/p>\n

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