Brown County, Ohio - Chapter 6: The Great Kentucky Revival and Shakerism in Brown, 1883

UjPHE great revival at the beginning of the present century, which spread I . from Kentucky into the territory now forming Brown and Adams Counties, was a remarkable event in the religious history of the region. This memorable religious excitment began in Kentucky about 1800, and soon spread into Tennessee, North Carolina, West Virginia and the territory north of the Ohio. It originated in the Cumberland country under the preaching of Rev. James McGready, a Presbyterian clergyman, who is described as a homely man, with sandy hair and rugged features, so terrific in holding forth the terrors of hell that he was called a son of thunder. He pictured out " the furnace of hell with its red-hot coals of God's wrath as large as mountains*, " he endeavored to open to the sinner's view " the burning lake of hell, to see its fiery billows rolling, and to hear the yells and groans of the damned ghosts roaring under the burning wrath of an angry God." Under his preaching, several persons fell down with a loud cry, and lay powerless, groaning, praying and crying to God for mercy. The excitement spread. Great camp-meetings were held - the first in the United States. Large numbers fell down and swooned, with every appearance of life suspended. Families came to these meetings a distance of fifty or a hundred miles. The camp-meetings continued three or four days and nights. Those from a distance slept in their wagons, in tents or temporary structures. At Cane Ridge, Bourbon Co., Ey., in August, 1801, it was estimated that 20,000 persons were present, many of whom were from the north side of the Ohio. It was estimated at this meeting that 3,000 persons fell to the ground under the unnatural excitement. There were at these meetings other strange physical manifestations, which increased the excitement and deeply moved the multitude. There were nervous affections, which produced horrible convulsions of the body and contortions of the countenance. The more shocking bodily exercises caused a division among the clergy as to the work. But opposition was compelled too often to succumb to the cry, " It is God's work," At Concord, in May, 1801, seven Presbyterian ministers were present, four of whom opposed the work until the fourth day, when they, too, succumbed, and all professed to be convinced that it was the work of God.

The effects of the great awakening began to be felt in what is now Brown County during the year 1801. The movement, both in Kentucky and Ohio, prevailed chiefly among the Presbyterian and Methodist Churches; the Baptists were little affected by it. The first camp-meeting in Northern Kentucky near the Ohio was held at Cabin Creek, beginning May 22, 1801, and continuing four days and three nights. Rev. Richard McNemar, then pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Cabin Creek, was the leading spirit of the meeting. He says there were persons at the meeting from Cane Ridge, Concord, Eagle Creek and other congregations, who partook of the spirit of the work and caused it to be spread abroad. "The scene," he continues, " was awful beyond description; the falling, crying out, praying, exhorting, singing, shouting, etc., exhibited such new and striking evidences of a supernatural power, that few, if any, could escape without being* affected." it began June 5, 1801, and continued four days and three nights. Rev. John Dunlavv was pastor of the Eagle Creek Presbyterian Church, and Rev. Mr. McNemar and probably other ministers were present at the camp meeting. McNemar says of the Eagle Creek meeting: ''The number of people there was not so great, as the country was new; but the work was equally powerful according to the number. At this meeting, the principal and leading characters at that place fully embraced the spirit of the work, which laid a foundation for its continuance and spread in that quarter."

Rev. John Dunlavy, who was a conspicuous figure in forwarding the great revival, was the son of a Presbyterian emigrant from Ireland, and a brother of the first President Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of the First District of Ohio. He came from Western Pennsylvania to Kentucky, where he taught school for some time. Becoming a Presbyterian minister, he was in 1797 ordained over the congregations at Lee's Creek, Big Bracken and North Bracken. Not long after, he removed to Ohio, and was settled as pastor of Eagle Creek congregation, between the sites of Ripley and West Union. Dr. Davidson, in his History of the Presbyterian Church in Kentucky, thus describes him with an unfriendly hand: "He was one 'of the most gloomy, reserved and saturnine men that ever lived; his soul seemed to be in harmony with no one lively or social feeling, and the groans he continually uttered drove away ail pleasure in his company. He was above the middle stature and well proportioned, but of a swarthy complexion and dark, forbidding countenance. His manners were coarse, rough and repulsive. His talents were not above mediocrity; his knowledge was superficial; he vwas never regarded as a leading or influential man, nor was he a popular preacher. His favorite topics were those of terror, not consolation."

The singular bodily exercises and convulsions which accompanied this revival on both sides of the Ohio, wherever there was undue excitement, have often been described by eye-witnesses of unimpeachable veracity, and their accounts agree so substantially that all suspicion of exaggeration is dispelled. There are still living a few old persons, who, in early life, saw some of this remarkable work. Mr. McNemar published a brief history of the revival. Peter Cartwright, the pioneer Methodist preacher, in his autobiography gives an account of what he himself saw of the work in Kentucky; and A. H. Dunlavy has published a brief sketch of the revival work at Turtle Creek. With such authorities before us, we feel confidence in the substantial accuracy of the description of the physical manifestations we shall now give.

It was not uncommon in large meetings for large numbers to fall in a short time, and to lie unconscious, with hardly any signs of breathing or beating of the pulse. Some would lie for a short time only, others for hours. Almost all the adult persons in a large congregation sometimes fell in this manner.

The jerks was the popular name for convulsions, which caused a rapid and spasmodic motion of the head, and sometimes affected the limbs and the whole body. The head would fly backward and forward, or from side to side, with such rapidity that the features could not be recognized. The looker-on would fear a dislocation of the neck, but no such injury is known to have ensued. " I have seen," says Rev. Peter Cartwright, " more than five hundred persons jerking at onetime in my large congregations. To see those proud, welldressed gentlemen and ladies take the jerks would often excite my risibilities. The first jerk or so, you would see their fine bonnets, caps and combs fly; and so sudden would be the jerking that their long, loose hair would crack almost as loud as a wagoner's whip." The disease was sometimes communicated to those who had no serious impressions, and mocked at the revival. There were recurring fits of the strange disorder seven or eight years after the revival, and, indeed, sporadic cases at a much later period. The most graphic description of the jerks is that given by Bichard McNemar. He says:

"Nothing in nature could better represent this strange and unaccountable operation than for one to goad another alternately on every side with a piece of red-hot iron. The exercise commonly began in the head, which would fly backward and forward, and from side to side, with a quick jolt, which the person would naturally labor to suppress, but in vain, and the more anyone labored to stay himself and be sober, the more he staggered, and the more his twitches increased. He must necessarily go as he was inclined, whether with a violent dash on the ground and bounce from place to place like a foot-ball, or hbp round, with head, limbs and trunk twitching and jolting in every direction, as if they must inevitably fly asunder. And how such could escape without injury was no small wonder among spectators. By this strange operation, the human frame was commonly so transformed and disfigured as to lose every trace of its natural appearance. Sometimes the head would be twitched right and left to a half round, with such velocity that not a feature could be discovered, but the face appeared as much behind as before; and in the quick, progressive jerk, it would seem as if the persons were transmuted into some other species of creature. Head-dresses were of little account among the female jerkers. Even handkerchiefs bound tight round the head would be flirted off almost with the first twitch, and the hair put into the utmost confusion; this was a very great inconvenience, to redress which the generality were shorn, although directly contrary to their confession of faith. Such as were seized with jerks were wrested at once, not only from under their own government, but that of every one else, so that it was dangerous to attempt confining them or touching them in any manner, to whatever danger they were exposed, yet few were hurt, except it were such as rebelled against the operation, through wilful and deliberate enmity, and refused to comply with the injunctions which it came to enforce."

There were other exercises which were not so common, and are sufficiently described by their names, viz., rolling, running, dancing and the holy laugh. There were instances of spinning around on the foot after the manner of the whirling dervishes of the East. The most disgusting of all the exercises was called the "barks" in which the subject not only imitated the bark of the dog, but sometimes ran upon all fours, growling, snarling and foaming at the mouth. That there were cases of this kind of brutish action cannot be doubted, but to the credit of human nature it is to be recorded that they were rare. It is noteworthy here that among the Convulsionists of France, seventy years before, there were persons similarly affected, some being called barkers and some mewers.

The subjects of these strange disorders were sincere men and women, who could give no rational account of their movements, and would only say they could not help it. In persons of peculiar nervous organization, over- excitement may result in actions which seem to be wholly involuntary, when there is really a hidden volition of their own, and they are influenced by sympathy with and imitation of what they have seen or heard of others doing under like circumstances. Psychological diseases always have been more or less epidemic and contagious. Emotions which do not seriously affect us when alone may become overpowering when many are affected. Thus, sympathy, "that wonderful instinct that links man to man in a social whole," in the wild excesses of popular feeling becomes a dangerous power that seizes upon all it can reach, and sweeps them round and round until they are drawn into the devouring vortex. Hysterical symptoms in times of great religious excitement should be promptly repressed, or they may become epidemic. There is evidence that where ilie excesses we have described were most encouraged by the clergy and others in authority, they wore most common; where they were discouraged, they were kept in check. It is narrated that a Baptist clergyman, who did nut believe that convulsions were the work of the Holy Spirit, seeing symptoms of the jerks appearing under his own preaching, exclaimed in a loud voice, "I command all unclean spirits to depart hence," and thus completely stayed the disorder.

Soon there were visions, prophecies and revelations among the revivalists. Their sons and daughters prophesied, their young men saw visions and their old men dreamed dreams. The new light which dawned upon them, or the internal manifestations of a Divine wisdom, was such a favorite phrase with them, that for several years the revival party were called New Lights. In 1803, at the meeting of the Presbyterian Synod of Kentucky, it was proposed to enter upon a trial of some of the revivalists for unsoundness in doctrine; five ministers of the revival party, including Dunlavy, seceded from the Synod and formed a separate Presbytery. On the 28th of June, 1804, the ministers of the revival party, three north and three south of the Ohio, members of the Independent Presbytery, becoming convinced that all Presbyteries were unauthorized human devices, dissolved that body by writing its will and subscribing their names as witnesses. The witnesses of the last will and testament of the Springfield Presbytery, as it was called, saj^ that from its first existence the body was knit together in love, lived in peace and concord and died a voluntary and happy death. Before the close of the year 1804, the New Lights, or revivalists, reported seven societies in Southwest Ohio, viz. , Trutle Creek, Eagle Creek, Springdale, Orangedale, Clear Creek, Beaver Creek and Salem. They repudiated all creeds and confessions of faith except the Bible. They soon gave up the doctrine of the Trinity, and became immersionists. They declined to be called New Lights, and adopted the name of Christians, and are to-day a distinct and respectable body. The New Light revival swept all the Presbyterian churches in Southwestern Ohio, except those at Duck Creek and Bound Bottom. The church at Cincinnati was largely tainted with the new doctrines and methods.

The public meetings of the revivalists were often scenes of tumult and confusion. There would be singing, praying and exhorting at the same time. They invented what was termed the " praying match," which is stated to have had for its object the determination of " the brightest, boldest and loudest gift of prayer." According to McNemar, it was a custom, when one would begin to preaoh or exhort and was deemed uninteresting, that he would presently be confronted with a prayer by some one else, and whichever manifested the greatest warmth and awakened the liveliest sensations, gained the victory and secured the general shout on his side. The Turtle Creek pastor approvingly represents his flock as " praying, shouting, jerking, barking or rolling, dreaming, prophesying, and 1 joking as through a glass at the infinite glories of Zion." The whole congregation, also, sometimes prayed together with such power and volume of sound that, if the pastor does not exaggerate, "the doubtful footsteps of those in search of the meeting might be directed sometimes to the distance of miles around." Some time in the year 1804, they began to encourage one another to praise God in the dance.

Twenty years before, there had died in the wilds of New York an illiterate woman, who had been the wife of a blacksmith until her religion had taught her to abandon the marriage relation. During her whole life, she endured great tribulations, saw visions, had frequent communications with the world of spirits, and was believed to be mad. A native of England, she had been imprisoned at Manchester for raising a tumult by street preaching. She believed that the Savior appeared to her in her prison cell and, in some mysterious manner, became united to her, and through her Heaven set up a church which i3 never to be destroyed. She gathered around her a little knot of followers, who called her "Mother Ann," and styled themselves "Believers in Christ's Second Appearing," but they were usually known as Shakers, an appellation at which they took no offense. Coming to America in 1774, a band of eight persons, they made a settlement near Albany, and continued few in numbers until a great revival in 1779 occurred at New Lebanon, N. Y., which was attended with physical manifestations, not altogether unlike those just described. A number of the subjects of this revival visited Mother Ann, and found the key to their religious experience. Thus did the Shakers receive their first considerable accession to their numbers.

The Shakers at New Lebanon, N. Y. , heard of the remarkable religious work in the forests of Kentucky and Ohio, and resolved to send missionaries to proclaim to the subjects of the revival the mystical creed in which they had found peace. On the 1st day of January, 1805, John Meacham, Benjamin S. Youngs and Issacher Bates set out from New York, and made the journey to Kentucky and Ohio for the most part on foot. They wore broad-brimmed hats and a fashion of dress much like that of the followers of George Fox. They passed through Kentucky and arrived in Southwestern Ohio about the 20th of March. They visited the different societies of the revivalists, and taught the doctrines of Ann Lee. Their first converts in the West were at Turtle Creek, in Warren County, where the largest Shaker society in the West still exists.

The Shakers obtained their first converts among the revivalists of Brown County at Eagle Creek in June, 1805. In the following month, Eev. John Dunlavy espoused the new faith, and was thenceforward a leading light in the Society of United Believers. He wrote " The Manifesto," which has been regarded by the Shakers as one of the strongest arguments ever published in favor of their doctrines. Within two years, twenty-five or thirty families at Eagle Creek embraced Shakerism. Husbands and wives abandoned the family relation, and consecrated all their property, personal and real, to the sacred use of the church. Some of the best men in the new settlements, honest, conscientious and benevolent, joined the community under the conviction that they were seeking salvation by renouncing the world and all its temptations. Their sincerity no one can question. The society established several communities in Kentucky and Ohio, all among the subjects of the great revival. Four of the ministers who had been foremost in the revival work became converts, and died in the Shaker faith, having passed in four years from the creed of Calvin to that of Ann Lee. The Shakers never established a village at Eagle Creek, but lived in scattered houses, meeting on Sunday in the open air for worship by singing, dancing and preaching. They were all removed from Brown County about 1809 or 1810. A large proportion of them established themselves at the society called West Union or Buseron, on the Wabash, in Indiana. When that community was abandoned on account of the unhealthiness of the location, most of them then moved to Union Village, near Lebanon, Warren Co., Ohio. Among the converts at Eagle Creek was Belteshazzer Dragoo, believed by many to have been the first permanent settler in Brown County; he died in the faith at Union Village.