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West Union (Busro) is an abandoned Shaker community in Busseron Township, northwestern Knox County, Indiana, about fifteen miles (24 km) north of Vincennes. The settlement was inhabited by the Shakers (United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing) from 1811 to 1827. Though short-lived, West Union was the westernmost Shaker settlement. == Founding and early history == By 1808, the Shaker communities in New England and New York were on a firm foundation. Seeking to take advantage of the rising tide of religious fervor on the trans-Appalachian frontier, particularly the Cane Ridge Revival in Kentucky, the Shaker lead ministry at Watervliet and Mount Lebanon in New York sent Issachar Bates, John Dunlavy, and other missionaries west to spread knowledge about the Shaker faith. These early Shaker missionaries walked on foot into the "West" to "open the Gospel" in the Ohio Valley. The new faith soon attracted enough converts to open fresh communities in Kentucky and Ohio, including Pleasant Hill in Mercer County, Kentucky, South Union in Logan County, Kentucky, and Union Village, near Dayton, Ohio.〔Stephen J. Stein, ''The Shaker Experience in America''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994〕 While the Shakers' unique ideas about communal ownership of property, sexual equality, celibacy, and economic cooperation appealed to many new settlers driven by religious fervor and the harshness of life on the frontier, their initial reception by some frontiersmen was not auspicious. Fearing that celibate utopians would break up families and compete with established churches, when Issachar Bates and fellow Shaker missionaries came to Indiana around 1809, a few settlers there resorted to violence to keep them away. Bates recalled that on his second trip to the Wabash Valley: a mob of 12 men on horseback came upon us with ropes to bind us, headed by () John Thompson. He stepped up to me and said, come prepare yourselves to move. -- Move where? said I -- Out of this country, said he, for you have ruined a fine neighborhood and now we intend to fix you -- Your hats are too big, and we shall take off part of them, and your coats are too long, we shall take off part of them, and seeing you will have nothing to do with women, we shall fix you so that you cannot perform.〔Diary of Samuel Swan McClelland, in "Shakers of Eagle and Straight Creeks," ''Shakers of Ohio: Fugitive Papers Concerning the Shakers of Ohio, with unpublished manuscripts'', J. P. MacLean, ed. Columbus, Ohio, 1907.〕 The pacifist Bates (a former Revolutionary soldier and "merry singer of ballad tales") exchanged witty banter with Thompson, but barely avoided being tied to a horse and thrown out of the area, although Thompson rode off with a death threat against the Shakers. According to some sources, Bates eventually walked in eleven years and converted 1100 people across Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana to the Shaker faith.〔Estella Weeks and Ernest Baughman, "Shakerism in Indiana: Notes on Shaker Life, Customs, and Music." ''Hoosier Folklore Bulletin'', Vol. 4, No. 4 (December 1945): 59-86〕 Bates wrote a lengthy ballad hymn about his trip to Busro in 1809 and also wrote the following in his autobiography: I have now literally run, a long crooked road - from the year 1801 till the year 1811. I traveled most of it on foot...In all this time I have had a good conscience for I know that I never have wronged any of my persecutors and that has been my comfort & peace. I have been filled with joy & comfort whenever I visited the different Societies where they had honestly taken up their crosses; to see them filled with the power & gifts of God. This made ample amends for all my persecution.〔"Come Life, Shaker Life": The Life and Music of Elder Issachar Bates," Roger L. Hall, PineTree Press, Stoughton, Massachusetts, 2004, 20〕 In 1809, a large group of recent converts from Union Village, near Dayton, Ohio, many of them free African Americans, loaded their property onto keel boats and pirogues and headed down the Ohio River, bound for a new settlement at "Big Prairy," on Busseron Creek, fifteen miles (24 km) north of Fort Knox at Vincennes, Indiana Territory. French boatmen helped them navigate the river. Their livestock was driven overland from the Falls of the Ohio at Clarksville. By the summer of 1811, around 300 Shakers were established at the settlement they called Busro (after Busseron Creek). Officially, it was identified as "West Union." Shakers had also come to Indiana from Red Banks, Kentucky, and the failed Shaker communities at Eagle Creek and Straight Creek in Ohio.〔Stephen Paterwic, ''Historical Dictionary of the Shakers'', p. 236. Scarecrow Press, 2008.〕 Shaker diarist Samuel Swan McClelland, whose account runs until 1827, notes that among the first buildings constructed was "One hewed-log house... with 4 rooms, and all things seemed to be going well for the present." A map by the Shaker cartographer Richard McNemar, drawn in the 1820s, shows that at its height, West Union contained of land, "400 well improved."〔See Martha Boice, et al., ''Maps of the Shaker West: A Journey of Discovery'', Knot Garden Press, 1997.〕 A two-story brick house "50 by 45," with "14 rooms and cellar" served as the Center Family House. Surrounding the house sat a "kitchen, doctor shop, skin shop, weave shop, wash house () smoke house." A "great frame meetinghouse two story 50 by 40" sat across from it. The North Family House stood nearby, "30 by 21 two story and a cellar." Several barns and two apple orchards were on the property (one orchard had 400 trees, the other had 700.) A sawmill, grist mill, and fulling mill stood along Busseron Creek, with another mill seven miles (11 km) distant, across the Wabash River in Illinois. In the barnyard could be found "threshing and flax machines."〔Diary of Samuel Swan McClelland〕 McClelland's diary entries show the surprising ethnic diversity of Busro, where many of the Shakers were free blacks. In the summer of 1811, he wrote: "About the first week in June some few were taken sick with fevers, and on the 19th, Anthony Fann a colored man departed this life, having Peggy his wife a white woman and 6 children among the believers. This was the first death that occurred after the Eagle Creek people were settled on Prairy." A number of the Shakers who settled here had also been Revolutionary War veterans.〔See McClelland's annual obituary notices in his diary.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「West Union (Busro), Indiana」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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