Publications
The Last Shaker Apostate: Augustus Wager and Union Village, Ohio
By Thomas Sakmyster
January 1, 2018
Tags Shaker Studies
Shaker Studies, no. 13. 153 pages, 2018.
ISBN: 978-1-937370-25-1 ($20)
For some time there has been a consensus among scholars that the last substantial Shaker apostate account was that of Hervey Elkins, which appeared in 1853. In this book Professor Tom Sakmyster provides an analysis of a previously unknown apostate account written by Augustus Wager in 1872, shortly after he left Union Village, the Shaker society located near Lebanon, Ohio. Wager, who had lived for fourteen years at Union Village, was embittered by his experiences as a Shaker and determined to destroy the increasingly favorable public image of the Shakers, which he believed was based on ignorance and misconceptions. He wanted to alert Americans to the darker aspects of Shaker life and the fact that Shakerism was in its death throes. Wager’s apostate account, which appeared as a series of articles in a Cincinnati newspaper, is reprinted in this book. The account throws important new light on everyday life and economic activity in a Western Shaker village during the period of decline in the post-Civil War era.
