I read recently that there are only four Shakers left. Two men and two women. There may well be less by now. The report was some years old and one of the sisters was well into her seventies at that time. The other in her sixties. That the once-thriving religious community, never main-line but one that leaves an amazing legacy, should be so reduced. I know myself the aftermath of glory days: the beyond emptiness of it. In a way, we five who remain here, four of us anyway, are Shakers at several removes. You are probably aware that, although the Shakers had communal houses where the sexes were strictly segregated and that celebacy was considered the way of greater holiness, they had no strict rule against marriage. There were others in association who lived outside these communities and who married and raised families. Not big enough families it seems and not enough converts were made. The adoption of outside children by the communal houses also failed to maintain the numbers in a world that was changing. A group of Shaker associates living outside the community in Mercer County was captured, I can think of no other word for it, captured by a William Barker. The group remained very much Shaker in style, shaking, dancing, glossilalia, and the healings that had been introduced in Kentucky but Barker weaned them from Mother Ann Lee and made himself their prophet. Gone now was the idea of a mother/father God and Christ having come the second time as a woman. I have no idea how people like Barker gain this ascendancy although I have been in a position to make a close study of one out of the same mold. And they do it still today! Establish mega-churches solely on their own personality. My great great grandparents, Henry and Alice Myers, came to be under the thrall of this fellow Barker.
As to this town, One Hand, I can give no certain derivation for its name. There are a number of stories. Probably all apocryphal. The least unlikely is that Carlyle, who founded the town, bought
the land for its adjacent springs and bought it with the winnings of just one poker hand. A railroad for the region was being touted at that time and there is a shortage of potable water in these featureless plains. Steam locomotives had to have clean water. People too. The railroad had to come this way. From early in the twentieth century, the weight of the town began to move east toward the new highway. The grain silos with their ancilliary buildings and sidings still dominate the west but the whole essence of the town has changed. There are still the many thousand of acres under crop but the once-hand-labour farming community has become emaciated. It is the age of expensive mechanical behemoths that must be utilized through every hour God gives. Contractors’ teams come in to do the planting and for a short while night and day become one. In weeks these nomads have moved to other forgettable towns. At fall harvest we again become the floor for their frenetic dance. In between, we get on with being a service town. Servicing the agricultural sector. Servicing the inter-state traffic. Mom and Pop are long out of business. On Main Street it’s the Wal-Mart, the J.C.Penney, the Radio-Shack, et al, that make up today’s Clone Town U.S.A. But our real commercial weight flanks the inter-state. If you’re passing through, you’ll run the gauntlet of Taco- Bell, the Colonel, MacDonalds, Burger-King, Dunkin’ Donuts, and all the others. And every national brand of gasoline is pumped. Our sole reason for being seems to be to feed you and speed you on your way. But if you do decide to stop over, be sure that our Holiday Inn and Best Western are exact copies of everybody else’s Holiday Inn and Best Western with the same human replicas in reception. Like most smaller towns we have a museum featuring the history of our area. All the bric-a brac that was once part of a life where families to preserved their own produce: raised, butchered, and cured their own hogs against the winter: skimmed the milk from their own milk cow and made not only the butter but the churn and the very paddles that shaped that butter. These things now made
valuable by their survival. A separate hall holds the puny machines, once thought landmarks, in what we now see as a primitive agricultural past. Primitive? We owe a lot to these people. America owes a lot. We have a particularly large photographic collection. Pictures of Arapaho and Cheyenne life which may or may not have been taken in this exact area but which are typical, the once-extensive buffalo herds, the semi-dugout turf huts of the first settlers, the mushroom early town, the fleeting presence of the railroad gangs, the arrival of the first train in service, the unloading of the cavalry horses during the troubles. Other towns in this region have a similar history and, I imagine, very much the same display. What they lack are the Wise-Virgins. They are the town’s one claim to fame and it now makes much of them and of Josiah Myers who has become an important historical figure. You will guess that the Virgins were a religious group who saw Christ’s words in Matthew chapter 25 as referring prophetically to themselves. They were the wise virgins who had extra oil in their vessels thus keeping their lamps alight until the bridegroom’s return and being taken into the marriage feast by him. In the early eighteen hundreds, there were many who saw the second return of Jesus Christ as imminent and who gave a variety of definite dates. The Wise Virgins differed in that they looked to no exact day although also believing that it was very close. Where they were widely divergent from the others was in their belief that Christ’s appearance would be in One Hand. There are four who remain in expectation of this. They believe it because one man, ‘shaken by the spirit’, said that it would be so. That man was Josiah Myers, son of Henry and Alice Myers and my great-grandfather. Josiah came to One Hand as an apostle of William Barker’s teachings to become, in turn, his own prophet. Before his coming, the town and the surrounding area had been mostly Methodist. Before the town itself existed, Methodist Circuit Riders, committed laymen, had ridden through at intervals,
stayed briefly with a family, to gather the scattered settlers for a rare meeting. That family would send one of its members to tour the neighbours to inform them of the time and place. They were yard meetings. Few homes at that time could accommodate even one addition to the immediate family. In that isolation, even the most ungodly would be there. It was an event and events were rare. The ungodly were few at that time anyway. Its just that they are the ones whom we tend remember. It seems that, at the start, Josiah took stock of and stuck closely to existing belief concealing his more radical teachings and putting a great deal of effort into ingratiating himself. I don’t know whether the word ‘charisma’ had common use then but Josiah seems to have had it in measure almost uncanny. I do know that he made enemies though. The new town already had several other preachers who resented having their sheep stolen. Christian brotherhood is in abeyance in such cases. The campaign of lies that was waged against him was to become legend among the Wise Virgins. Their man of true faith against the massed hordes of Philistines. His sister who came with him as housekeeper was claimed not to be his sister but his mistress and, when their sibling relationship was proven beyond doubt, those charging him, entirely unabashed, upgraded the charge to incest. But he gradually won his way and began to gather what was at first quite a small group who themselves became the object of calumny. Josiah’s connection with the remote Mercer county group became known, as these things will, and of that group’s Shaker origin. It was then deemed necessary to show the Shakers as an institution of Satan. ‘They worship a woman…They don’t believe in having children…They buy children, steal them even…Their meetings are orgies…They do pagan dances.’ Since this mantle must also clothe the local group, associating with Josiah was the sure road to hell. I think that men like him must have an overweening belief in themselves to be able to keep pushing forward. Perhaps be a little mad too and I suspect that Josiah was that way. Despite the
opposition, or because of the curiosity it aroused, the group grew and then became a dry-stubble fire. Jason’s words when ‘moved by the Spirit’ took on the authority of scripture. His assertion that Christ would initially present himself to ‘his one true people, in One Hand, while greeted with derision by enemies, came to be firmly believed by his followers. Some moved their households to One Hand. Others came in on the Saturday trains and stayed over until Monday when traffic resumed. Since most were farming families, it meant that one of their number must stay back at home to care for the chores. Never a chosen role since it was assumed that the Savior would appear in their midst one Sunday-Meeting and this might well be the one. As numbers grew, accomodation for the weekly influx became an increasing problem. While the Wise Virgins continued to be seen as a threat, there was always an organised opposition to putting them up. It is only when they have long faded that the town has decided to be proud of them. The number that could be accommodated with fellow believers was limited. The ecclesia built what amounted to male and female barracks and a meeting house on land just beyond the town. The barracks were primitive and it meant temporary family separation but this had been seen as a small price to pay. The meals, however, were communal. But a barracks was not good enough for The Christ. A house was built for Josiah and his sister. A house rather larger and grander than their needs might have seemed to demand. This house in which I write! The barracks and meeting house are long gone and this house remains the only tangible relic for the town’s visitors to gawp at. There have been requests to take tours through but that can never be. The house has a suite that must never be used, certainly not have people traipsing through. It is set apart for The Christ. He who had no place to lie his head. Over the years, it has been constantly refurbished. My mother and my three aunts clean it every day, vacuum it thoroughly, dust every surface, change the linen which must always be freshly laundered. It is their
religious duty. The room must be ready at all times. Stubble fires burn out. The once several thousand has faded to five faithful and those Josiah’s descendants. The true number is actuality four but, as the apparently sole male believer, I am priest for the family. I take the morning and evening prayers and the bible readings. Our Sunday meeting is held here in the house. No dancing now, no tongues, although we do clap as we sing the old familiar songs. The sermon is a reading from the growing written record of Josiah’s sermons. Appropriate since he is the prophet and I am no preacher. Josiah’s sermons could last up to two hours. I do not have that stamina. I read the passages where I feel he actually said something of value. A number of the Wise Virgin women studied shorthand just to have the blessed privilege of recording the words of this ‘man of God.’ They worked in relays that nothing be missed. Preachers would buy space in a newspaper in the same way that they buy time on radio and television today. And people did read the sermons. Josiah’s appeared in a number of papers. But he was no writer. His forte was the spoken word and those few newspaper sermons that survive appear to have been worked up by someone else from notes. Possibly from the shorthand notes which still exist in abundance. My mother and aunts believe that this troubled world needs Josiah’s words more than ever so I was leaned on to learn shorthand and bring the world that blessing. It is hard now just to find a book on the subject. I don’t think for a moment that I could take down dictation but I can turn it back into something recognizable or at least make a reasonable guess. In this case, I cannot see the point of even bothering. The seeming lightning flashes when everyone was high with shaking, song and dance and babbling ’tongues’, become prosaic when put on paper. It seems that you need to hear his thundering, see his dramatic shaking, surrender yourself to the group consensus. He certainly
looked like everybody’s idea of a prophet. ‘The Wise Virgins’ own considerable property. My mother and aunts have not the least inkling of how much. They leave it to me to deal with the lawyers. They have little interest in money beyond having enough come in to meet our immediate needs and the upkeep of this house. There were numerous bequests in earlier times. Investments were made. Much of the commercial land that borders the interstate is leased land. Leased from the Wise Virgins though not in our name. It is held through a property company operated by our close-mouthed lawyers. It would not do to have a gold rush of converts at this time. I hate the man. He made slaves of the four women that I love most and myself through them. He anchored us to this wretched town. I have never had the heart to tell these dear ones that I do not believe as they do. That I think them foolish. That I go through the motions just to please them. They, and several generations before them, have given their whole lives to cleaning a suite of rooms. Given their lives to futility! In a year or two there will be just the one legal Wise Virgin. One Hand will see him disappearing into the distant haze and he will be saying, “To hell with the money.”