Fragment of dress believed to have been worn by Mother Ann Lee on her voyage to America in 1774.
Mother Ann’s name in spirit writing, undated.
Yea; do all your work as though you had a thousand years to live, and as you would if you knew you must die tomorrow.
“So great and God-like was the power of her spirit, that with a few words, and often with a single word, or touch of her hand, she would instantly raise individuals, and sometimes a whole assembly, from a state of the deepest tribulation and distress of soul, to a state of the most heavenly joy and comfort.” This charismatic, illiterate woman traveled throughout New England converting people to the Shaker faith and occasionally arousing the suspicions and sometimes violence of non-sympathetic locals who found her beliefs radical and dangerous, and who also suspected her of being a British spy. When Lee died in 1784, many attributed her death to the physical strain of her travels and the bodily abuse she encountered from angry New Englanders.
Collections Manager
Sharon Duane Koomler is a Shaker scholar and traditional letterpress printer living in upstate New York. She has academic degrees in American Folklore from Indiana University and Western Kentucky University. Sharon has worked at Shaker Museums from Kentucky to New Hampshire as an educator, curator, consultant, and director. She has written and published on Shaker material culture and spirituality, and lectured widely on Shaker art, life, and belief. Sharon has a particular interest in the under-researched social aspects of Shaker life and ways in which Shakers practiced inclusion and intentionality.