revelation," says the Shaker Compendium, she was "instructed to come
to America." Obedient to the vision, she sailed from Liverpool in the
summer of 1774, accompanied by six men and two women, among whom were
her husband, a brother, and a niece. This little flock settled in the
forests near Albany, New York. Abandoned by her husband, the
prophetess went from place to place, proclaiming her peculiar
doctrines. Soon she became known as "Mother Ann" and was reputed to
have supernatural powers. At the time of her death in 1784 she had
numerous followers in western New England and eastern New York.

In 1787 they founded their first Shaker community at Mount Lebanon.
Within a few years other societies were organized in New York,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Connecticut. On the wave of
the great religious revival at the beginning of the nineteenth
century their doctrines were carried west. The cult achieved its
highest prosperity in the decade following 1830, when it numbered
eighteen societies and about six thousand members.

In shrewd and capable hands, the sect soon had both an elaborate
system of theology based upon the teachings of Mother Ann and also an
effective organization. The communal life, ordaining celibacy, based
on industry, and constructed in the strictest economy, achieved
material prosperity and evidently brought spiritual consolation to
those who committed themselves to its isolation. Although originating
in England, the sect is confined wholly to America and has from the
first recruited its membership almost wholly from native Americans.

Another of these social experiments was the Oneida Community and its
several ephemeral branches. Though it was of American origin and the
members were almost wholly American, it deserves passing mention. The
founder, John Humphrey Noyes, a graduate of Dartmouth and a Yale
divinity student, conceived a system of communal life which should
make it possible for the individual to live without sin. This
perfectionism, he believed, necessitated the abolition of private
property through communism, the abolition of sickness through complete
cooeperation of the individual with God, and the abolition of the
family through a "scientific" cooeperation of the sexes. The Oneida
Community was financially very prosperous. Its "stirpiculture,"
Noyes's high-sounding synonym for free love, brought it, however, into
violent conflict with public opinion, and in 1879 "complex ma