Shaking the Faith : Women, Family, and Mary Marshall Dyer's Anti-Shaker Campaign, 1815-1867

In the first half of the 19th century, Mary Marshall Dyer (1780-1867) was at the center of an aggressive anti-Shaker movement - an informal yet effective group joined by their despisal of Shakerism and their determination to thwart the new faith. With her husband and their five children, Dyer had been a Shaker for two years, but as her husband grew increasingly attracted to Shakerism, Dyer's own commitment waned, and when she announced she was leaving the sect and requested the return of her children , neither her husband nor the Shaker authorities would relinquish them. Distraught, angry, and alone, Dyer turned her anguish into action and embarked on a fifty year campaign against the Shakers. A linchpin of anti-Shaker activity, Dyer wrote numerous articles against the sect, as well as five books - and was the centerpiece of the Shakers' counterattack. The American public - especially in New England, where the Shaker movement was based - followed the debate with great interest, not least because it offered titillating details into the mysterious sect, but also because Dyer's experiences reflected profound changes in the family, religion, and gender that Americans faced in the years prior to the Civil War. In this compelling book, De Wolfe suggests that while neither the Shakers nor Dyer would agree, the latter, a mother without children and a wife without a husband, and the former, a celibate communal sect that disavowed the marriage bond, shared similar positions on the margins of society. In 1815, Mary Marshall Dyer renounced her Shaker beliefs and departed from the religious community in Enfield, New Hampshire, that she had called her home, leaving behind her husband and five children. Angry and alone, Dyer embarked on a fifty year public campaign against the Shakers in an effort to obtain custody of her children and to discredit the sect. The American public followed the debate with great interest. De Wolfe tells this now little-known story in brilliant detail, and shows why Dyer's life captured America's imagination. Titillating details about the mysterious sect no doubt contributed to Dyer's popularity, but her story also resonated because it reflected profound changes in family, religion, and gender that Americans faced in the world before the Civil War Front Matter....Pages i-xiv Introduction: Shakers and Anti-Shakers....Pages 1-18 Conversion, Deconversion, and Apostasy....Pages 19-53 The Sympathy and Malice of Mankind....Pages 55-83 The World Worked Up to Some Purpose....Pages 85-105 A Spectacle for Remark....Pages 107-135 In Deep Affliction....Pages 137-167 Notorious Against Them....Pages 169-185 Back Matter....Pages 187-233 Mary Dyer's mind had been under "serious contemplation" some time before smallpox made its way to Stratford, New Hampshire, in April 1803.