Richard McNemar, Music, and the Western Shaker Communities

Branches of One Living Tree

Christian Goodwillie, Carol Medlicott

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781612776569
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

A pioneering study of the Shaker west's opening generation and an analytical reconstruction of the first Ohio Shaker hymnal

The arrival of the Shakers in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana in the decades after 1805 saw a substantial escalation in the movement. In Richard McNemar, Music, and the Western Shaker Communities, Carol Medlicott and Christian Goodwillie reconstruct a vast repository of early Shaker hymns, using them to uncover the dramatic history of Shakerism's bold expansion to the frontier. With newly discovered tunes for more than one hundred Shaker hymns, this volume illuminates a little-known dimension of American folk hymnody.

Richard McNemar's blended passions of printing, theology, and hymn writing were well suited to the needs of the new western Shaker enterprise. The abundance of rich spiritual and doctrinal hymns circulated by McNemar throughout the Shaker world literally gave voice to a generation of Shakers. In the early 1830s, he established a printing press at the Shaker settlement of Watervliet on the outskirts of Dayton, Ohio. There, in collaboration with other Shaker musicians and leaders, McNemar produced the first printed hymnal of the Shaker west.

McNemar's hymnal appeared at a crucial juncture in Shaker history. The Shaker west was a full generation old, and in several communities the transition to younger leaders was a struggle. Shaker spirituality and worship patterns were changing fast during the decade. Shaker music itself was quickly evolving in the 1830s, with the onset of new song styles and the formalization of a distinctive music notation method.

Medlicott and Goodwillie paint a rich picture of the Shaker west during its most dynamic years. They probe the hymn texts and use them to illuminate the dramatic events of the Shaker west from its founding through the 1830s. They analyze the collection of hymns and hymn tunes in light of the development of Shaker hymnody by the 1830s and of American folk hymnody in general. A series of carefully researched commentaries is presented alongside the score for each hymn, serving to contextualize them individually. One learns of the hymn's history, its authorship, and its use among the Shakers, making this exploration an invaluable reference for music historians, students of Shaker history, and students of Ohio cultural history.

Song Scores, Lyrics, and Commentaries

CAROL MEDLICOTT AND CHRISTIAN GOODWILLIE

This section of the book presents Richard McNemar’s Selection of Hymns and Poems in its most complete form, combining the original printed work with supplementary printed materials added as late as the year 1836. Tunes have been located for as many texts as possible. The first verse of each hymn has been set in score with strict attention paid to reproducing it accurately as it was printed by McNemar. Following the first verse set in score, all remaining verses are presented as they appear in the original publication. Occasionally we have had to correct the numbering of verses, because McNemar skipped numbers. Other than these minor corrections, we have left the texts as originally printed, misspellings, odd punctuation, and all. When the meaning of a word was obscured by a missing letter we have added that letter in square brackets to indicate our editorial hand. McNemar’s printed asides between hymn and poem texts have been highlighted in gray to differentiate them from our editorial comments.

The following individuals and book are regularly referred to in the commentaries presented below:

Issachar Bates: One of the three Shaker missionaries sent to the West in 1805 to “open the gospel.” Bates was born in 1758 in Massachusetts. After his service in the American Revolution, he married and raised a family of nine children. He became a Shaker in 1801 and settled in Watervliet, New York, along with his wife and several children. He was selected for the western mission because of his charisma as a preacher. In the West, he lived at Union Village, West Union, and Watervliet. He was widely known throughout the Shaker world for his prolific poetry and his talents as a singer. He returned to the East in 1835 and lived the last two years of his life at New Lebanon, where he died in March 1837.

Paulina Bryant: A member of the Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, Shaker community. She entered Shaker life in 1810 at the age of two when her parents converted at Pleasant Hill, where she lived virtually her entire life. By the 1830s she was a deaconess. She was second eldress in the Center Family when she began to compile her hymnal of “ancient” songs in the 1850s. She died in 1886 at the age of seventy-eight.

Russel Haskell: A member of the Enfield, Connecticut, Shaker community. Beginning in 1845 he compiled an extremely important manuscript of Shaker music (now in the collection of the Music Division of the Library of Congress). Many of the tunes presented in this critical edition were transcribed from Haskell’s manuscript.

Andrew Houston: A member of the Union Village, Ohio, Shaker community. Andrew was one among many Houston family members in the Shaker West. He was popular in the West and beyond. During an 1827 tour of several eastern villages, he shared many western songs and befriended some of the prominent young adults of New Lebanon, such as Isaac Newton Youngs. He died tragically in 1844 at the age of forty-six of injuries suffered in a fall from the roof of a building under construction at Union Village, and his death was widely mourned.

Susan Liddell: A member of the Union Village, Ohio, Shaker community. Her written recollections of Richard McNemar, compiled mostly in the 1890s and early 1900s, include many anecdotes relating to his personality and musical interests.

John Patterson MacLean: An early collector of Shaker manuscripts and imprints and an important early historian of the Ohio Shakers. His collection forms the bulk of the Shaker materials held at the Library of Congress. MacLean relied heavily on the recollections of Susan Liddell for anecdotal information about Richard McNemar.

Richard McNemar (a.k.a. Eleazar Wright): McNemar is often referred to by his pseudonym Eleazar. He compiled and printed the Selection.

Seth Youngs Wells: A member of the Watervliet, New York, Shaker community, who was also at times resident at New Lebanon, New York. Wells was a regular correspondent of McNemar’s.

Millennial Praises: The first Shaker hymnal, printed at Hancock, Massachusetts, in 1812/1813. Richard McNemar contributed more than half of the 140 hymn texts contained in this book. Issachar Bates also contributed a significant number of texts.

PREFACE

Among all the abundant treasures of the gospel, with which the people of God are blessed, in this day of Christ’s second appearing, the gift of songs claims a distinguished place. It is a gift in which Believers can best unite their feelings of joy and thanksgiving for the gospel—in which they can lift up their voices together in praise to God, while they express their faith & feelings in all the manifestations of Christ to his people, and their sense of the inestimable privileges which they enjoy. Agreeably ...