Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T01:44:05.374Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Dearly Loved Mother Eunice”: Gender, Motherhood, and Shaker Spirituality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Suzanne Thurman
Suzanne Thurman
Affiliation:
Ms. Thurman is assistant professor of history at Mesa State College, Grand Junction, Colorado.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In June 1808, at the age of fourteen, Eunice Bathrick confessed her sins and joined the Shakers (also known as the Believers), a celibate religious community founded by Ann Lee in the late eighteenth century. Although largely unknown to modern scholars, Bathrick played many roles in the Shaker village of Harvard, Massachusetts, where she lived her entire Shaker life. A prolific visionist, a creative thinker, and a dedicated writer, she became an authoritative figure at Harvard and a symbol of the empowering opportunities for women found within the religious structure, particularly the spirituality, of Shakerism. Her work—in the form of an autobiography, several biographies, visions and spirit messages, oral histories, hymn collections, and a web of correspondence with other Shakers and the outside world—provides a unique opportunity to study both this interrelationship between gender, spirituality, and female empowerment in Shaker communities and Bathrick's own individual spiritual journey as a Shaker sister.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 66 , Issue 4 , December 1997 , pp. 750 - 761
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. I have discussed both celibacy and the “androgynous ideal” and their relationship to gender concerns and female empowerment with Shakerism in Thurman, Suzanne, “The Order of Nature, the Order of Grace: Community Formation, Female Status, and Relations with the World in the Shaker Villages of Harvard and Shirley, Massachusetts, 1781–1875,” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1994).Google Scholar

2. Humez, Jean M., “‘Ye are My Epistles’: The Construction of Ann Lee Imagery in Early Shaker Sacred Literature,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 8 (Spring 1992): 94–95.Google Scholar

3. Procter-Smith, Marjorie, Women in Shaker Community and Worship: A Feminist Analysis of the Uses of Religious Symbolism (Lewiston, N.Y., 1985), pp. 99–110.Google Scholar

4. See Dyke, Annette Van, The Search For a Woman-Centered Spirituality (New York, 1992).Google Scholar

5. The Shakers did use the title “Father,” but fatherhood imagery did not predominate in Shaker thought.

6. “The Autobiography of Eunice Bathrick” (VI.A.5), pp. 3–6, 8–15, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio (hereafter WRHS).Google Scholar

7. “The Autobiography of Eunice Bathrick” (VI.A.5), Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio (hereafter WRHS)., pp. 15–23.Google Scholar

8. Sasson, Diane, The Shaker Spiritual Narrative (Knoxville, Tenn., 1983), pp. 11–20, 210–216; andGoogle ScholarEdkins, Carol, “Quest for Community: Spiritual Autobiographies of Eighteenth-Century Quaker and Puritan Women in America,” in Women's Autobiography: Essays in Criticism, ed. Jelinek, Estelle C. (Bloomington, Ind., 1980), p. 41.Google Scholar

9. “Autobiography of Eunice Bathrick” (VI.A.5), p. 4, WRHS.

10. Edkins, Carol, “Quest for Community: Spiritual Autobiographies of Eighteenth-Century Quaker and Puritan Women in America,” in Women's Autobiography: Essays in Criticism, ed. Jelinek, Estelle C. (Bloomington, Ind., 1980), pp. 8–9, 13, 32.Google Scholar

11. Friedman, Susan Stanford, “Women's Autobiographical Selves: Theory and Practice,” in The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women's Autobiographical Writings, ed. Benstock, Shari (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1988), pp. 38–39, 56.Google Scholar Friedman's description of the female “autobiographical self” is, she explains, an “echo and revers[al]” of Georges Gusdorfs ideas about autobiography (pp. 38, 56).

12. “Autobiography of Eunice Bathrick” (VI.A.5), pp. 27, 31, 33–34, WRHS.

13. Bathrick, , “A Roll from beloved Mother Hannah to the Sisters who are called to labor in the lot of Physicians” (VIII.A.10), 1 Aug. 1842, WRHS;Google ScholarBathrick, , “A Roll from Sally Myrick directed to the Ministry Elders Brethren and Sisters” (V1II.A.10), 5 Aug. 1842, WRHS;Google ScholarBathrick, , “A Little Book from Pontius Pilate to the Children of Zion” (Vffl.A. 16), 14 April 1843, WRHS;Google ScholarBathrick, , “A Roll from Ebed-melech” (VIII.A.10), 4 May 1842, WRHS;Google ScholarBathrick, , “Book of the Prophet Jeremiah. To which is added a Book in two parts from the Patriarchs Caleb and Joshua. Written by Inspiration. February 1843. Lovely Vineyard” (63 B326) Williams College Library, Williamstown, Massachusetts (hereafter WC).Google Scholar

14. “Communications from the Spirit Land transcribed by Bathrick, Eunice, 1842–1843,” Introduction (VIII.B.93), WRHS;Google Scholar“Narrative Pieces and Historical Sketches from Spirit Land, transcribed by Bathrick, Eunice,” 1842–1845 (63 B32n), WC;Google Scholar“Visions, Spirit Communications, Religious Experience, Narrative Pieces, Poems, And Sketches from different Authors Gathered and Recorded by Bathrick, Eunice. 1850” (757), Andrews Shaker Collection, Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, Delaware, (hereafter ASC).Google Scholar

15. “Testimonies And Wise Sayings, Counsel & Instruction of Mother Ann & the Elders, With Some of the Sayings of their Immediate Successors. Gathered from different Witnesses and Records” (VI.B.10–13), collected and transcribed by Bathrick, , 1869–1873, 4 vols., WRHS.Google ScholarThe first and most influential collection of testimonies was edited by Bishop, Rufus and Wells, Seth Y., Testimonies of the Life, Character, Revelations and Doctrines of Our Ever Blessed Mother Ann Lee, and the Elders with Her; Through Whom the Word of Eternal Life was Opened in this Day of Christ's Second Appearing: Collected from Living Witnesses (Hancock, Mass., 1816) (hereafter cited as Testimonies [1816]).Google Scholar

16. Bathrick, , “An Epic on Our Parents” (VTI.B.26), 1856, WRHS.Google Scholar

17. Bathrick, , “An Epic on Our Parents” (VTI.B.26), 1856, WRHS.Google Scholar

18. Thurman, , “The Order of Nature,” pp. 100, 117.Google Scholar

19. Thurman, , “The Order of Nature,”., 155–156;Google Scholar“A Biographical Sketch of Eunice Wyeth by Bathrick, Eunice” (VI.A.5), undated, WRHS; andGoogle Scholar“Hymns and Songs of Praise, Prayer and Thanksgiving By Wyeth, Eunice. Copied by Eunice Bathrick in the Seventy-Second Year of her Age, 1865” (SM286), WRHS. The preface to SM286 also contains a biography of Wyeth.Google Scholar

20. “A Biographical Sketch” (V1.A.5), WRHS; and Testimonies (1816), pp. 3, 8, 10–11.Google Scholar

21. Thurman, , “The Order of Nature,” pp. 158–159; andGoogle Scholar“Hymns and Songs of Praise” (SM286), preface, WRHS.Google Scholar

22. For an extended analysis of the Grosvenors' heresy, see Thurman, , “Shaker Women and Sexual Power: Heresy and Orthodoxy in the Shaker Village of Harvard, Massachusetts,” Journal of Women's History, forthcoming.Google Scholar

23. Bathrick, Eunice, Harvard to Eldress Betsey Bates [Mount Lebanon] (IV.A.28), 24 June 1866, WRHS.Google Scholar

24. Bathrick, to Godfrey, Eldress Lucretia, “God Parental: or The Father and Mother Spirit Manifested in Deity. Copied August 1850” (767), 24 Jan. 1872, ASC.Google Scholar

25. Bathrick, , “Vindication of Shaker Social Beauties,” The Shaker 6 (July 1876): 54.Google ScholarFor collections of Bathrick's letters, see “God Parental” (767), ASC; andGoogle Scholar“Spirit Messages for Sophia Niles and copies of letters” (799), 1870–1871, ASC.Google Scholar

26. Letter from Lizzie, Shaker Village, N.H.Google Scholar, to Bathrick, Eunice, Harvard, Mass., n.d., Shaker Manifesto 12 (May 1882): 113.Google Scholar

27. Letter from Lizzie, Shaker Village, N.H.Google Scholar, to Bathrick, Eunice, Harvard, Mass., n.d., Shaker Manifesto 12 (May 1882): 113.Google Scholar

28. Letter from Eunice Bathrick, Harvard, Mass., toGoogle ScholarLizzie, , Shaker Village, N.H., April 1882, Shaker Manifesto 12 (May 1882): 113–114.Google Scholar

29. Reel 1, Harvard Church Register, typescript, p. 5, FRU; and Bathrick, Eunice, Harvard, toGoogle ScholarAnn, Eldress [Taylor] and Polly, Eldress [Reed], Mount Lebanon, 1881, Box 3, Folder 1, no. 9749, Old Chatham Shaker Museum, Old Chatham, New York.Google Scholar