June 22, 2022 • 37 mins
Mother Rebecca Cox Jackson was an outlier among Shakers for a number of reasons, including that she established a community in the city of Philadelphia, which was the only known urban Shaker community.
Research:
- PBS. “Rebecca Cox Jackson.” Brotherly Love Part 3: 1791-1831. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p247.html
- Weiss, Lorraine. “A Determined Voice: Mother Rebecca Cox Jackson.” Shaker Heritage Society of Albany New York. 1/1/2021. https://home.shakerheritage.org/mother_rebecca/
- Williams, Richard E. “Called and chosen : the story of Mother Rebecca Jackson and the Philadelphia Shakers.” Cheryl Dorschner, editor. American Theological Library Association. 1981.
- New York Times. “Charges Jealousy in Shaker Colony.” March 21, 1909.
- Hull, Gloria T. “Review: Rebecca Cox Jackson and the Uses of Power.” Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature , Autumn, 1982, Vol. 1, No. 2. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/464081
- Humez, Jean McMahon. “Gifts of Power: The Writings of Rebecca Jackson, Black Visionary, Shaker Eldress.” University of Massachusetts Press. 1981.
- Foster, Lawrence. "Shakers." World Religions, Macmillan Library Reference USA, 1987. Macmillan Compendium. Gale In Context: World History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/BT2350085365/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=fb8342ab. Accessed 9 June 2022.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. I don't
think we've talked very much on the show about the Shakers.
They're more formally called the United Society of Believers in
(00:24):
Christ's Second Appearance, and there were as many as six
thousand Shakers in the middle of the nineteenth century, but
their numbers started declining after that point. Today there is
only one active Shaker community remaining. It's in Maine, and
over the last few years that has had between two
and three members. Today's subject was a Shaker, but was
(00:46):
also something of an outlier among the Shakers. Shakers were
known for their rural, utopian communities, but Mother Rebecca Cox
Jackson established a community in the city of Philadelphia. This
was the only known urban Shaker community. Nineteenth century Shaker
teachings also included racial equality, and Shaker communities were open
(01:07):
to believers regardless of their race. But at the same time,
most of these communities were very predominantly white. Like if
you see photographs or illustrations, often there are one or
two people of color. At most Jackson, on the other hand,
was a black woman who focused a lot of her
religious work on the black community, and most believers in
the community that she established were black women. So that's
(01:30):
who we're going to talk about today. And just a
heads up, there is some violence in this episode, including
a little bit of discussion of intimate partner violence. Mother
Rebecca Cox Jackson's autobiography begins with a conversion experience that
she had in July of eighteen thirty. She was thirty
five years old at the time. She makes scattered references
(01:52):
to her life before that, but they're mostly in the
context of dreams or visions connected to those earlier moments.
Her journals also end abruptly years before her death, and
her autobiography is almost exclusively focused on her spiritual and
religious life, so there are gaps in what we know
about her adult life, and we don't know much about
(02:13):
her life before the age of thirty five at all.
We do know that she was born on February sevente
in Horntown, Pennsylvania, and at the time this was a
small village outside of Philadelphia, but as the city got bigger,
Horntown was pretty much absorbed into it. Rebecca's mother was
a free black woman named Jane, and we don't really
(02:35):
know much about her father, except that his last name
was Cox. He probably died not long after Rebecca was born.
She went to live with her grandmother until she was
a toddler, possibly because her mother just couldn't afford to
support the whole family by herself. At that point, Jane
had at least two other children, Joseph and John. Jane
(02:56):
remarried at least once to a man whose last name
is Wilson or Whisson. He died in eighteen o one,
when Rebecca was about six. Rebecca had her first vision
just before this one, in which she foresaw her stepfather's death.
During her lifetime, she had visions that predicted the deaths
of other family members as well, including her young nephew John.
(03:21):
After that vision, he converted and was baptized on his deathbed.
Rebecca's grandmother died when she was seven, and then when
Rebecca was about ten, she became responsible for looking after
two younger half brothers and her adult writing, Rebecca described
herself as the only one of her mother's children who
quote had not learning. That's probably because she was the
(03:44):
only one who couldn't go to school because she had
all these other duties to her siblings. Rebecca's mother died
when Rebecca was thirteen, and she went to live with
her thirty one year old brother, Joseph Cox. He worked
at a tanning yard and was also a preacher and
an older at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.
(04:04):
He was probably a widower. Rebecca's writings never mentioned a wife.
Rebecca started working as a seamstress while also keeping her
brother's house and looking after his six children, and at
some point she got married to a man named Samuel S. Jackson,
and her writings suggests that two of them after they
were married, lived together in her brother's house. As we
(04:26):
said just a moment ago. Joseph Cox was an elder
at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church or a m e
now known as Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.
This is one of the oldest African Methodist Episcopal congregations
in the United States and one of the first black
churches of any denomination in the country. The church was
(04:48):
at the heart of Philadelphia's free black community, with ties
to the abolitionist movement and to the underground railroad. The
African Methodist Episcopal Church was founded in the face of
racism and discrimination among other Methodist congregations, but the Methodist
Church had been at least somewhat more welcoming toward black
(05:09):
members than a lot of other denominations were, and they
had actively ministered to black communities. This is something we
talked a little bit about not long ago in our
episodes on William APIs. So by the time Rebecca Cox
Jackson got to adulthood, there was already a tradition of
black Methodist communities, including black clergy and lay ministers, and
(05:31):
black lead prayer groups. While the clergy and other church
leadership were typically men, a lot of prayer groups were
formed among women and focused specifically on women's spirituality. Although
Rebecca Cox Jackson eventually became a Shaker, her early religious
experiences were largely within more mainstream churches like the African
(05:53):
Methodist Episcopal Church. As we said earlier, Jackson's autobiography starts
with a religious experience in that she had in eighteen thirty,
when she was thirty five. She saw that as the
true beginning of her life. She had always been so
afraid of thunderstorms that she would hide from them in
her bed. During a particularly bad storm, she started to
(06:15):
feel like the storm itself was announcing the end of
her life. She prayed either for death or for redemption,
and suddenly everything shifted. Instead of being a messenger of death,
the lightning became quote the messenger of joy, peace, and consolation.
Her fear of thunderstorms immediately fell away, and she saw
(06:38):
them instead as messages from God. About six months after
this experience, Jackson made a public confession and was baptized
by Mary Peterson, who was the wife of a Presbyterian
minister from Philadelphia. Peterson was part of a women's prayer
circle or covenant circle that Jackson was involved with, and
Jackson eventually became its co leader. Jackson didn't offer much
(07:01):
specific detail about her relationship with her husband, but she
does mention that he liked to gamble and that he
used obscene language. But after Rebecca's conversion, Samuel seems to
have been pretty supportive of her religious pursuits, at least
at first. Rebecca started a smaller prayer group with her
husband and a couple of other people so they could
(07:23):
talk about their experiences in a more private setting some
of the prayer groups that formed within Methodist communities during
this time. We're focused on sanctification, so when a person
converted to Methodism, they felt that their sins had been
forgiven through divine love and grace. But then sanctification went
beyond that to fully free a person from sin. Sometimes
(07:47):
people of color who wrote about their own religious experiences
in the nineteenth century also framed sanctification as freeing them
from any racism or oppression that they had internalized while
living in a racist and oppressive society. So those factors
obviously still existed, but they didn't feel as emotionally and
spiritually burdened or bound by them. Rebecca Cox Jackson had
(08:12):
a sanctification experience in eight thirty one, and that experience,
in her words, quote, destroyed the lust of my flesh
and made me hate it. She came to believe that
her body was God's and God's alone, and that sex
was sinful, even in the context of a marriage. She
talked to her husband about this newfound conviction, and her
(08:34):
description of what happened during this conversation sounds almost otherworldly.
He had gone into the cellar to get some firewood
and he'd left the door open, and there was also
a pot of coffee boiling on the stove in the kitchen.
Jackson kept placing her hands on the stove and then
walking toward the open cellar door with her eyes closed,
but the stove never burned her and she never fell
(08:57):
down the stairs into the cellar. She upened her eyes
after doing this several times, and Samuel was looking at
her as though he was afraid of her. Rebecca explained
to Samuel that her newfound conviction wasn't about her personal
desires or about her feelings about him. It was that
her body no longer belonged to her. It belonged entirely
(09:19):
to God. Jackson describes her husband as understanding this as
a divine experience and attending prayer meetings with her for
several weeks with the hope of having some kind of
revelation of his own, but eventually Samuel stopped being supportive.
Years later, when the two of them separated, Jackson said
(09:40):
that she had become afraid of him, including being afraid
for her life, and that she had only survived the
last years of her marriage because her gift of foresight
had made it possible to avoid the worst of his violence.
We'll talk about how Jackson's life changed after this sanctification
experience after we take a quick sponsor break. Rebecca Cox.
(10:09):
Jackson started having more religious visions after her sanctification, but
at first she didn't always act on them. In one case,
there was a woman she knew who was sick, and
Jackson felt that she should pray for this woman, But
then she thought, quote her husband as a Presbyterian, and
don't know you, and if he comes in and sees
an old black woman in his chamber praying for his wife,
(10:32):
he will push you into the street. So she didn't.
Was woman later died, and her family said that she
had thought Jackson was coming to pray for her and
did not understand why she had not. In another incident,
Jackson had a premonition that another woman was going to
die in about two weeks and that Jackson needed to
tell her so that she could put her affairs in order,
(10:54):
But Jackson was again afraid she thought that she might
be branded as a false prophet. This woman also died,
and Jackson felt deeply remorseful. After all of this, Jackson
committed herself to trusting her visions and to always obeying
God's commands to her, and in her mind, this was
a binding covenant. At around the time that all of
(11:16):
this was happening, Jackson also learned to read. Her brother,
Joseph Cox, had agreed to teach her. They had agreed
that he would give her an hour or so of
lessons after supper or before he went to bed, but
in her words quote, his time was taken up as
well as mine. This became a big source of frustration.
But a bigger frustration was when Jackson realized that Cox
(11:40):
was not just taking dictation when he wrote out letters
for her. He was editing her words as she spoke.
And she realized this she told him quote, I don't
want THEE to word my letter. I only want THEE
to write it. Jackson was really hurt by her brother's actions,
but then, in her words quote, these words were spoken
(12:01):
in my heart, be faithful, and the time shall come
when you can write. Later, when she was sewing, another
message arrived in her mind, quote, who taught the first
man on earth to read? Answer? God? Well, God is unchangeable,
and if he taught the first man to read, he
can you. After this, she opened a Bible and realized
(12:24):
that she could read it. She told her husband that
she could read, and he said she had probably just
memorized those verses, so she turned to some verses that
she did not know she read them as well. After this,
she read from the Bible every day and eventually realized
that she could read whatever she wanted. She also learned
to write, and afterwards she regularly kept a journal, something
(12:48):
that she kept up for about three decades. She also
felt called to write about religion and spirituality as it
was told to her through things like visions and dreams
and divine revelations, saying quote, I am only a pen
in his hand. Just as her sanctification experience had shifted
her relationship with her husband, her experience with literacy really
(13:10):
shifted a relationship with her brother. She had always really
looked up to Joseph, almost as a father figure. She
had even idolized him, so his failure to teach her
to read was a huge disappointment. But then beyond that,
she began to think that it had been wrong of
her to idolize her brother in this way in the
first place, and she realized that she could not simultaneously
(13:33):
defer to her brother as a father figure and the
head of their household, and also adhere to her conviction
that she be unconditionally obedient to God. As Jackson became
more able to study the Bible on her own, she
also became more active in her covenant meetings. This caused
controversy as men other than her own husband started to
(13:55):
attend them. Although Jackson had been baptized, she wasn't formally
a member of any specific church, and she had no
plans to join a church at that point since God
had not commanded her to do so. But her brother's
role in the A. M. E. Church also meant that
her activities reflected on him, and people started putting pressure
on him to try to make her stop. She was
(14:18):
accused of dividing up church congregations and of quote a
leading the men. Ministers and leaders from various denominations started
investigating what she was doing. Although many of them denounced her,
some actually wound up on her side. For example, Bishop
Morris Brown of the African Methodist Episcopal Church attended one
(14:38):
of her meetings. His intent was that he was going
to make her stop preaching, but then afterward he said,
quote if ever the Holy Ghost was in any place.
It was in that meeting let her alone now. Jackson
also found that ascetic practices like fasting and seclusion heightened
her spiritual gifts. These gifts included visions and dreams, tames
(15:00):
that were sometimes violent and disturbing. She saw herself and
various members of her family coming to harm. She didn't
do any kind of introspection about whether these images had
some kind of root cause she saw them as direct
messages from God. But some of the people who have
written about her have speculated that some of this imagery
(15:21):
was a response to the place and time where she
was living. In the early nineteenth century, there was a
violent racist backlash against the free black community and the
abolition movement in Philadelphia and in Pennsylvania more broadly. We
have talked about this in a couple of previous episodes
of the show, including our episode on Lucretia Mott and
(15:41):
our interview with historian Callie Nicole Gross, in which we
talked about ongoing racism and racist violence in Philadelphia after
the Civil War. This violence included things like a white
mob burning down the abolitionist meeting venue Pennsylvania Hall, four
days after it opened. Bethel A. M. E. Which was
damaged in this same act of arson. Yeah, we're gonna
(16:04):
have that episode on Lucretia Mott as a Saturday classic
coming up for folks who want more of that context up.
So in addition to that, racist violence was also escalating
in other parts of the Northeastern US in the decades
before the Civil War. That means that when Jackson started
traveling as an itinerant minister, she was taking a big risk,
(16:25):
especially since Samuel did not go with her. She traveled
all over the Northeastern United States preaching and healing. She
found both black and white converts in response to her preaching,
but there were also a lot of people who denounced her,
or disrupted her meetings or threatened her life over what
she was doing. In addition to the fact that she
(16:47):
was a black woman preaching to racially integrated congregations, some
of what she was preaching was deeply controversial, especially the
idea of celibacy even within the context of marriage. She
was also doing all this while experiencing some kind of
chronic or recurrent illness. She wrote about three different times
(17:08):
that she thought she was going to die, but lived
because she was needed to do God's work. Some of
her descriptions from her journals suggests that she may have
been experiencing seizures. There's a gap in what we know
about Jackson's life that stretches from about eighteen thirty six
to eighteen forty, but at some point during those years,
(17:28):
she became part of a group in Albany, New York
that became known as the Little Band. This was a
perfectionist group that was predominantly white. So perfectionism isn't one
specific theology, but it's rooted in the idea of it
being possible to spiritually perfect oneself to become fully free
from sin, So it has some common elements to that
(17:51):
sanctification that we talked about earlier. During these years, Jackson
also met Rebecca Parrott sometimes spelled with two T s
pe r O t T. Parad was born in eighteen
sixteen or eighteen eighteen and was about eighteen when she
and Jackson first met. In eighteen thirty six. Parad became
Jackson's closest companion, and the two women were together for
(18:14):
the rest of Jackson's life, so for more than thirty
five years. We mentioned Jackson's sometimes frightening and violent visions
and dreams earlier. Her journals just detail so many of them,
but not all of her visions were violent or frightening.
Some of the ones that involved Rebecca Parrot are actually
the opposite. Here's the one that she wrote about from
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eighteen fifty one quote. I dreamt that Rebecca and me
lived together. The door opened west, and there was a
river that came from the west, and it ran eastward,
passing our house on the south side, and one part
came front on the west, a beautiful white river. I
stood in the west door, looking westward at the beautiful river.
I saw Rebecca Parat coming in the river, her face
(18:59):
to the east, and she a plunging in the water
every few steps, head foremost a bathing herself. She only
had on her undergarment. She was pure and clean, even
as the water in which she was a bathing. She
came facing me out of the water. I wondered she
was not afraid. Sometimes she would be hid for a moment,
then she would rise again. She looked like an angel. Oh,
(19:21):
how bright. Gene McMahon, whom is who edited a collection
of Jackson's writings, describes this relationship as one that combined
elements of motherhood, marriage, and sisterhood. Other people's writings from
the time sometimes described Jackson and Parrot as mother and daughter,
or as a spiritual mother and daughter. Jackson also kept
(19:43):
Parrott's journals within the pages of her own. Paratt could
not read, so she would dictate her journal entries to Jackson,
who wrote them down with her own journal entries. We'll
talk about how Jackson and Parratt joined the Shakers. After
a quick sponsor break at the end of eighteen forty two,
(20:09):
several members of the Little Band, including its founder Alan Pierce,
visited a community of Shakers. So, like we said at
the top of the show, the Shakers are more formally
known as the United Society of Believers in Christ Second Appearing.
They started out in the seventeen forties near Manchester, England,
as an offshoot of the Quakers, also called the Religious
(20:30):
Society of Friends. The name Shakers actually started out as
a nickname, kind of insulting nickname that outsiders gave them
because their mode of worship included a state of ecstatic
dancing that could involve shaking or trembling. Shaker leader Mother
Ann Lee, immigrated to New York with a group of
followers in seventeen seventy four, seeking freedom from religious persecution.
(20:55):
The United Society of Believers in Christ Second Appearing then
established another member of communities in the US. These communities
were focused on simplicity, communal living, and celibacy, including strictly
dividing the community by gender for everything from living spaces
to work duties. When people joined the Shakers, they settled
(21:16):
their debts with the outside world and then turned any
money or property they had over to the collective. Shaker
communities became known for simple, practical clothing and for simple
but also finally made handicrafts like furniture and brooms. Because
the people living in these communities were celibate, they could
only grow through recruiting new adult members or through adopting, fostering,
(21:40):
or indenturing children. That was something that led to accusations
that Shakers were really kidnappers. Leaving the UK did not
ultimately protect the Shakers from religious persecution. There was a
whole anti Shaker movement in the United States and the
nineteenth century. Shaker beliefs were also connected to millinaire as um,
or the belief that before the Last Judgment, Christ would
(22:04):
establish a Kingdom of God on Earth, which would continue
for a thousand years. Mother Ann Lee died in seventour
and some of her followers came to believe that she
had been the second manifestation of the Divine Spirit to
take a human form on earth, the first one being
Jesus Christ. This aligned with Shaker beliefs that God had
(22:26):
both male and female manifestations, and about the eighteen thirties
a new belief arose within the Shakers, which was described
as Mother Ann's work. This was rooted in the idea
that Mother Anne was continuing her religious work in the
spirit world and that was leading spirits to manifest themselves
to Shakers who were still living. Has had some parallels
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to the spiritualist movement that was developing at about the
same time, including mediums who acted as conduits for spirits
and seance like rituals. The number of Shaker believers peaked
in the eighteen forties at about six thousand, living primarily
among eighteen rural communities in the northeastern US and what
(23:10):
was at the time thought of as the Western Frontier.
The largest of these communities was in Mount Lebanon, New York,
and it was right around this time that Alan Pierce
and the Little Band visited a Shaker community. Pierce felt
that it was God's will for the Little Band to
become Shakers as well. Over time, sixteen members of the
(23:30):
group did, including some children, but not all of the
Little Band converted, and some of those who did ultimately
wound up leaving. The Shaker way of life could be
really difficult and involved a lot of strict rules and
hard work, and existing families were separated into new living
and working groups after they became part of the community.
Jackson was one of the people from the Little Band
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who didn't join the Shakers right away, although she did
see a lot of overlap between her own beliefs and
Shaker teachings. This included her belief in celibacy and the
idea that a person could experience divine revelations directly from God.
Shakers described these revelations, prophecies, and spiritual manifestations as gifts,
(24:14):
and the gifts the Shakers experienced were much like the
religious and spiritual experiences that Jackson had in her own life.
Even though she didn't become a believer right away, Jackson
did find a new level of zeal and urgency in
her own religious work. She had been experiencing religious visions
for years at this point, but after learning more about
(24:36):
the Shaker belief in the dualism of God, more of
the spiritual teachers who she saw in these visions were women.
In eighteen forty seven, Rebecca Cox Jackson and Rebecca Parat
formally joined the Shaker community at water Voleet, New York,
just north of Albany. A few members of the little
Band who hadn't yet converted, became believers at the same time.
(24:59):
This was a little more then four years after Jackson's
first visit to a Shaker community. She and Parat continued
to live together, and they were often known as either
the Two Rebecca's or the Black Rebecca's. Rebecca Cox Jackson's
relationship with her husband, Samuel had really been deteriorating four years.
She had also come to the conclusion that it was
(25:21):
just not possible to maintain both her religious life and
her marriage, even if that marriage was celibate. When she
joined the Shakers. She and her husband finally separated, and
then he died At some point after that, although the
exact date of his death is not clear. Samuel continued
to appear in her dreams and visions, though including an
(25:42):
eighteen fifty five vision in which quote, his countenance was sorrowful,
such a one I think I never saw upon immortal.
Its expressions seemed to implore mercy. She describes him as
seeing and feeling that he had to put all his
things in order and right all his wrongs, and that
when he saw that she was ready to forgive him quote,
(26:03):
the tears of contrition flowed in abundance. In spite of
all that commonality and overlap between Jackson's belief that she
had come to you on her own and Shaker teachings,
she really had some trouble adjusting to the Shaker's way
of life. Shaker communities tended to be rural and self contained,
but Jackson's own spiritual calling involved working among people to
(26:26):
spread God's word. Believers were also beholden to the rules
of their communities and two directions that were handed down
by Shaker elders and eldresses, but Jackson was used to
following what she saw as directions given directly to her
from God. At the same time, she got a lot
of praise for her work. For example, Shaker Rufus Bishop
(26:48):
described her speaking at a public meeting in eighteen fifty
this way quote, I do not know as I ever
heard the spectator's lectured in a more suitable and feeling
manner in my life. Every sentence and word seemed to
come with weight and power and breathed forth love and
goodwill to the children of men. In eighteen fifty the
(27:10):
Two Rebecca's got permission to make a brief visit back
to Philadelphia. It seems like the leaders that water Volie
hoped this would ease some of the tension and disagreements
that had been going on. It didn't, though, and after
briefly returning to water Volie, the Two Rebecca's went back
to Philadelphia again. In eighteen fifty one. Jackson essentially established
(27:33):
an unsanctioned Shaker community. She really focused her work on
Philadelphia's black community, and although this is what she felt
like she was called to do, she felt really guilty
about this rift with Shaker leadership in Philadelphia. Jackson and
Parrott attended seances and spiritualist meetings. Jackson's journals described sensing
(27:54):
many spirits in the room at some of the science
as they attended. Both of them had visions and prophetic dreams,
which Jackson recorded in her journals. In one of parat dreams,
she Rebecca Jackson and a Shaker woman were all in England,
where the Queen of England crowned Rebecca Jackson King of
Africa and Rebecca Parrot Queen. Then she saw Africa quote
(28:18):
with all her treasures of gold, together with all her inhabitants,
and this was all given unto our charge. In eighteen
fifty seven, the two Rebecca's went back to water Volie,
and they stayed there for about a year. Jackson was
very ill during this time, describing pain and swelling in
her eyes along with blindness. She eventually recovered, and in
(28:40):
October of eighteen fifty eight she was given leave to
establish a small Shaker community in Philadelphia. Sometimes this is
described as an out family. Permission to do this came
from Eldress Paulina Bates, someone Jackson respected but had previously
argued with over their differences in approach. Bates said she
(29:01):
was speaking on behalf of mother and Lee. According to
Jackson's journals, Bates said, quote, now Rebecca, you may go
to your people and do all the good you can.
Now you can go in the gift of God, and
then the gift of the ministry and elders. Now you
are endowed with power and authority. Now the Lord hath
sent you. You have waited for the Lord, and you
(29:23):
go under a blessing. The two Rebecca's left for Philadelphia
again on October eight fifty eight, after being given some
money to cover travel expenses and some books on Shaker
theology that Jackson had asked for. Jackson was holding quote
solemn meetings in Philadelphia by the following April. Paulina Bates
(29:44):
visited this little community several times a year until her
death in eighteen eighty four, and she eventually became somebody
that Jackson loved and respected deeply as a religious companion
and a mentor. The Shaker community that Jackson established in
Philadelphia was primarily made up of black him in and
all of its leaders were black. Some accounts described them
(30:04):
as living in a house on Erie Street, but several
other addresses connected to the same community are shown in
Shaker records as well. It seems as though the whole
community followed Shaker teachings and practices, but only Jackson and
Parrot received divine gifts and practiced healing. Although the journals
of other Shakers mentioned visiting this Shaker community in Philadelphia,
(30:28):
or they note that it existed, we don't have a
lot of specific documentation of what day to day life
was like there or Jackson's activities while she was leading
this community. As we said earlier, her journals stopped abruptly
seven years before her death, and that happened on seventy one,
probably from a stroke. Rebecca Cox Jackson was then buried
(30:51):
near some of her blood relatives in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. After
Rebecca Cox Jackson died, Rebecca Parrot took her name, sometimes
becoming known as Rebecca Cox Jackson Jr. Or as Rebecca
Parrot Jackson. Eventually she became known as just mother Jackson.
Sometimes this is described as an effort to honor Jackson
(31:13):
and continue her work, but there are also less charitable interpretations,
like that it was more about her own self aggrandizement.
There are no known pictures of Rebecca Cox Jackson, but
there is one of Rebecca Parrot which is sometimes labeled
as Jackson and error. Most likely because of this whole
name change. Rebecca Cox Jackson left behind a lot of writing,
(31:37):
most of it remained unpublished for more than a century,
though Rebecca Parrott gave a lot of it to Shaker leaders.
Two different Shakers each made a copy of it, sometimes
also making edits. These wound up in various libraries and archives,
and two books that came out in the early nineteen
eighties compared these different versions when they're being prepared. Rebecca
(31:59):
Parrott continued to lead the Shaker community in Philadelphia for
years after Jackson's death. She and four other members retired
to Water of Leet in eighteen ninety six, and she
lived there until her death in nineteen o one. The
Black Shaker community in Philadelphia seems to have continued for
at least a few years after that. The last written
(32:20):
mention is in a New York Times article from nineteen
o nine. That article is about elder Ernest Pick, who
had been dismissed from the Shakers and had been trying
to document Shaker communities, which by that point we're really dwindling.
The Times describes him traveling quote from Pittsfield to Philadelphia,
where there is a colored community of Shakers, small in numbers,
(32:44):
as we've alluded to, There are two works about Jackson
that include a lot of our writing. Both of these
came out in nineteen eighty one. One is called Gifts
of Power, The Writings of Rebecca Jackson, Black Visionary Shaker Eldress.
That's by Gene McMahon Whomes. That includes introductory material and
analysis on Jackson with her complete writings from eighteen thirty
(33:06):
to eighteen sixty four. The other is called and Chosen
The Story of Mother Rebecca Jackson and the Philadelphia Shakers
by Richard E. Williams. That one has biographical material and analysis.
They're kind of interspersed with quotes, some of them very
lengthy from Jackson's writing. Some sometimes it's like a little
bit of analysis in a very long passage of her journals. Um.
(33:27):
The journals are very fascinating to read. A lot of
them just in very straightforward and matter of fact language,
just sort of chronicle these visions that she had or
dreams that she had, or the person that she met with,
or her own thoughts and theology. And I wish we
had ones from those gaps to fill in some more
detail about parts of this story. Do you have a
(33:50):
little bit of listener mail to fill in details of
other lives? This is from Sarah. Sarah writes Kia from
Outer ro in New Zealand. As you mentioned on the podcast,
one of the issues of The Mercator and many other
projections is that it's Eurocentric. One of the results of
this is that alter to row in New Zealand and
(34:12):
other Pacific nations are of course off the edge. This
has led to the Great Map Conspiracy, where New Zealand
has left off maps all over the world, which begs
the question does New Zealand actually exist? There was even
a joking maybe suggestion that New Zealand diplomats carry New
Zealand map stickers to add ourselves back on when we
(34:33):
find we've been left off maps. I've linked a video
made by Reese Darby of Flight of the Concords fame
and Prime Minister just Sinda Ourdarn, which includes lots of
Kiwi humor and a bunch of other famous kiwi's. There's
a link to this video. Thanks for all the podcasts
they've kept me company over many many years, sewing, sitting
up with babies, traveling for my own work. I've attached
(34:56):
photos of my mouse she Bingi and my rescue cat
ru which is the word in Rayo Maori for our
native owl which he has similar colorings too. So that's
from Sarah. Thank you so much, Sarah for sending this. Uh.
We sure did not mention how often New Zealand has
left off of maps. And what's bizarre is sometimes there's
(35:17):
a space right there that like New Zealand logically would
be end and it's not there New Zealand, which is
a pity because so much good stuff comes from New Zealand. Yeah.
Being from the United States means that we very often
see US maps that have this just weird, weird ways
(35:38):
of adding in Alaska and Hawaii since they are not
contiguous with the other forty eight states. Um. And I
remember there being COVID maps early in the pandemic that
just didn't have Hawaii on there at all, and people
were like, but where's Hawaii though, Like that also is
a state. Uh. And then of other places which are
(36:02):
territories are otherwise connected to the US, which are also
not included on these maps at all. Um. This made
me think of this with this email. But then in
this video which I watched, and it is delightful. Uh,
they kept they keep finding all of these world maps
like out you know, it's just in day to day
life and a lot of them. I'm like, but that's
the space for New Zealand right there, even to scale
(36:24):
with the rest of the map, like why is it gone?
Uh not actually something to be laughing at necessarily, but
the video is made with a humorous spin. So thank
you so much for sharing that with us, Sarah. We'll
put a link to that in our social media when
we uh tweet about this episode. Oh and also thank
(36:48):
you for these animal pictures. I love them. Um. I
did the thing where when I printed out this email
to read it, I accidentally printed out the pictures also,
and so now I have these giant eight and a
half by eleven print outs of pets. Uh. If you'd
like to write to us, we're history podcasts that I
hit radio dot com. I'm gonna say I hope I
(37:10):
did okay pronouncing the words in Mary, I did try
very hard to listen in practice before reading this email.
We are all over social media at missed in History.
That's re'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram, and
you can subscribe to our show on the I Heart
radio app and wherever else you'd like to get your
podcasts stuff. You missed in History Class is a production
(37:37):
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. I don't
think we've talked very much on the show about the Shakers.
They're more formally called the United Society of Believers in
(00:24):
Christ's Second Appearance, and there were as many as six
thousand Shakers in the middle of the nineteenth century, but
their numbers started declining after that point. Today there is
only one active Shaker community remaining. It's in Maine, and
over the last few years that has had between two
and three members. Today's subject was a Shaker, but was
(00:46):
also something of an outlier among the Shakers. Shakers were
known for their rural, utopian communities, but Mother Rebecca Cox
Jackson established a community in the city of Philadelphia. This
was the only known urban Shaker community. Nineteenth century Shaker
teachings also included racial equality, and Shaker communities were open
(01:07):
to believers regardless of their race. But at the same time,
most of these communities were very predominantly white. Like if
you see photographs or illustrations, often there are one or
two people of color. At most Jackson, on the other hand,
was a black woman who focused a lot of her
religious work on the black community, and most believers in
the community that she established were black women. So that's
(01:30):
who we're going to talk about today. And just a
heads up, there is some violence in this episode, including
a little bit of discussion of intimate partner violence. Mother
Rebecca Cox Jackson's autobiography begins with a conversion experience that
she had in July of eighteen thirty. She was thirty
five years old at the time. She makes scattered references
(01:52):
to her life before that, but they're mostly in the
context of dreams or visions connected to those earlier moments.
Her journals also end abruptly years before her death, and
her autobiography is almost exclusively focused on her spiritual and
religious life, so there are gaps in what we know
about her adult life, and we don't know much about
(02:13):
her life before the age of thirty five at all.
We do know that she was born on February sevente
in Horntown, Pennsylvania, and at the time this was a
small village outside of Philadelphia, but as the city got bigger,
Horntown was pretty much absorbed into it. Rebecca's mother was
a free black woman named Jane, and we don't really
(02:35):
know much about her father, except that his last name
was Cox. He probably died not long after Rebecca was born.
She went to live with her grandmother until she was
a toddler, possibly because her mother just couldn't afford to
support the whole family by herself. At that point, Jane
had at least two other children, Joseph and John. Jane
(02:56):
remarried at least once to a man whose last name
is Wilson or Whisson. He died in eighteen o one,
when Rebecca was about six. Rebecca had her first vision
just before this one, in which she foresaw her stepfather's death.
During her lifetime, she had visions that predicted the deaths
of other family members as well, including her young nephew John.
(03:21):
After that vision, he converted and was baptized on his deathbed.
Rebecca's grandmother died when she was seven, and then when
Rebecca was about ten, she became responsible for looking after
two younger half brothers and her adult writing, Rebecca described
herself as the only one of her mother's children who
quote had not learning. That's probably because she was the
(03:44):
only one who couldn't go to school because she had
all these other duties to her siblings. Rebecca's mother died
when Rebecca was thirteen, and she went to live with
her thirty one year old brother, Joseph Cox. He worked
at a tanning yard and was also a preacher and
an older at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.
(04:04):
He was probably a widower. Rebecca's writings never mentioned a wife.
Rebecca started working as a seamstress while also keeping her
brother's house and looking after his six children, and at
some point she got married to a man named Samuel S. Jackson,
and her writings suggests that two of them after they
were married, lived together in her brother's house. As we
(04:26):
said just a moment ago. Joseph Cox was an elder
at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church or a m e
now known as Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.
This is one of the oldest African Methodist Episcopal congregations
in the United States and one of the first black
churches of any denomination in the country. The church was
(04:48):
at the heart of Philadelphia's free black community, with ties
to the abolitionist movement and to the underground railroad. The
African Methodist Episcopal Church was founded in the face of
racism and discrimination among other Methodist congregations, but the Methodist
Church had been at least somewhat more welcoming toward black
(05:09):
members than a lot of other denominations were, and they
had actively ministered to black communities. This is something we
talked a little bit about not long ago in our
episodes on William APIs. So by the time Rebecca Cox
Jackson got to adulthood, there was already a tradition of
black Methodist communities, including black clergy and lay ministers, and
(05:31):
black lead prayer groups. While the clergy and other church
leadership were typically men, a lot of prayer groups were
formed among women and focused specifically on women's spirituality. Although
Rebecca Cox Jackson eventually became a Shaker, her early religious
experiences were largely within more mainstream churches like the African
(05:53):
Methodist Episcopal Church. As we said earlier, Jackson's autobiography starts
with a religious experience in that she had in eighteen thirty,
when she was thirty five. She saw that as the
true beginning of her life. She had always been so
afraid of thunderstorms that she would hide from them in
her bed. During a particularly bad storm, she started to
(06:15):
feel like the storm itself was announcing the end of
her life. She prayed either for death or for redemption,
and suddenly everything shifted. Instead of being a messenger of death,
the lightning became quote the messenger of joy, peace, and consolation.
Her fear of thunderstorms immediately fell away, and she saw
(06:38):
them instead as messages from God. About six months after
this experience, Jackson made a public confession and was baptized
by Mary Peterson, who was the wife of a Presbyterian
minister from Philadelphia. Peterson was part of a women's prayer
circle or covenant circle that Jackson was involved with, and
Jackson eventually became its co leader. Jackson didn't offer much
(07:01):
specific detail about her relationship with her husband, but she
does mention that he liked to gamble and that he
used obscene language. But after Rebecca's conversion, Samuel seems to
have been pretty supportive of her religious pursuits, at least
at first. Rebecca started a smaller prayer group with her
husband and a couple of other people so they could
(07:23):
talk about their experiences in a more private setting some
of the prayer groups that formed within Methodist communities during
this time. We're focused on sanctification, so when a person
converted to Methodism, they felt that their sins had been
forgiven through divine love and grace. But then sanctification went
beyond that to fully free a person from sin. Sometimes
(07:47):
people of color who wrote about their own religious experiences
in the nineteenth century also framed sanctification as freeing them
from any racism or oppression that they had internalized while
living in a racist and oppressive society. So those factors
obviously still existed, but they didn't feel as emotionally and
spiritually burdened or bound by them. Rebecca Cox Jackson had
(08:12):
a sanctification experience in eight thirty one, and that experience,
in her words, quote, destroyed the lust of my flesh
and made me hate it. She came to believe that
her body was God's and God's alone, and that sex
was sinful, even in the context of a marriage. She
talked to her husband about this newfound conviction, and her
(08:34):
description of what happened during this conversation sounds almost otherworldly.
He had gone into the cellar to get some firewood
and he'd left the door open, and there was also
a pot of coffee boiling on the stove in the kitchen.
Jackson kept placing her hands on the stove and then
walking toward the open cellar door with her eyes closed,
but the stove never burned her and she never fell
(08:57):
down the stairs into the cellar. She upened her eyes
after doing this several times, and Samuel was looking at
her as though he was afraid of her. Rebecca explained
to Samuel that her newfound conviction wasn't about her personal
desires or about her feelings about him. It was that
her body no longer belonged to her. It belonged entirely
(09:19):
to God. Jackson describes her husband as understanding this as
a divine experience and attending prayer meetings with her for
several weeks with the hope of having some kind of
revelation of his own, but eventually Samuel stopped being supportive.
Years later, when the two of them separated, Jackson said
(09:40):
that she had become afraid of him, including being afraid
for her life, and that she had only survived the
last years of her marriage because her gift of foresight
had made it possible to avoid the worst of his violence.
We'll talk about how Jackson's life changed after this sanctification
experience after we take a quick sponsor break. Rebecca Cox.
(10:09):
Jackson started having more religious visions after her sanctification, but
at first she didn't always act on them. In one case,
there was a woman she knew who was sick, and
Jackson felt that she should pray for this woman, But
then she thought, quote her husband as a Presbyterian, and
don't know you, and if he comes in and sees
an old black woman in his chamber praying for his wife,
(10:32):
he will push you into the street. So she didn't.
Was woman later died, and her family said that she
had thought Jackson was coming to pray for her and
did not understand why she had not. In another incident,
Jackson had a premonition that another woman was going to
die in about two weeks and that Jackson needed to
tell her so that she could put her affairs in order,
(10:54):
But Jackson was again afraid she thought that she might
be branded as a false prophet. This woman also died,
and Jackson felt deeply remorseful. After all of this, Jackson
committed herself to trusting her visions and to always obeying
God's commands to her, and in her mind, this was
a binding covenant. At around the time that all of
(11:16):
this was happening, Jackson also learned to read. Her brother,
Joseph Cox, had agreed to teach her. They had agreed
that he would give her an hour or so of
lessons after supper or before he went to bed, but
in her words quote, his time was taken up as
well as mine. This became a big source of frustration.
But a bigger frustration was when Jackson realized that Cox
(11:40):
was not just taking dictation when he wrote out letters
for her. He was editing her words as she spoke.
And she realized this she told him quote, I don't
want THEE to word my letter. I only want THEE
to write it. Jackson was really hurt by her brother's actions,
but then, in her words quote, these words were spoken
(12:01):
in my heart, be faithful, and the time shall come
when you can write. Later, when she was sewing, another
message arrived in her mind, quote, who taught the first
man on earth to read? Answer? God? Well, God is unchangeable,
and if he taught the first man to read, he
can you. After this, she opened a Bible and realized
(12:24):
that she could read it. She told her husband that
she could read, and he said she had probably just
memorized those verses, so she turned to some verses that
she did not know she read them as well. After this,
she read from the Bible every day and eventually realized
that she could read whatever she wanted. She also learned
to write, and afterwards she regularly kept a journal, something
(12:48):
that she kept up for about three decades. She also
felt called to write about religion and spirituality as it
was told to her through things like visions and dreams
and divine revelations, saying quote, I am only a pen
in his hand. Just as her sanctification experience had shifted
her relationship with her husband, her experience with literacy really
(13:10):
shifted a relationship with her brother. She had always really
looked up to Joseph, almost as a father figure. She
had even idolized him, so his failure to teach her
to read was a huge disappointment. But then beyond that,
she began to think that it had been wrong of
her to idolize her brother in this way in the
first place, and she realized that she could not simultaneously
(13:33):
defer to her brother as a father figure and the
head of their household, and also adhere to her conviction
that she be unconditionally obedient to God. As Jackson became
more able to study the Bible on her own, she
also became more active in her covenant meetings. This caused
controversy as men other than her own husband started to
(13:55):
attend them. Although Jackson had been baptized, she wasn't formally
a member of any specific church, and she had no
plans to join a church at that point since God
had not commanded her to do so. But her brother's
role in the A. M. E. Church also meant that
her activities reflected on him, and people started putting pressure
on him to try to make her stop. She was
(14:18):
accused of dividing up church congregations and of quote a
leading the men. Ministers and leaders from various denominations started
investigating what she was doing. Although many of them denounced her,
some actually wound up on her side. For example, Bishop
Morris Brown of the African Methodist Episcopal Church attended one
(14:38):
of her meetings. His intent was that he was going
to make her stop preaching, but then afterward he said,
quote if ever the Holy Ghost was in any place.
It was in that meeting let her alone now. Jackson
also found that ascetic practices like fasting and seclusion heightened
her spiritual gifts. These gifts included visions and dreams, tames
(15:00):
that were sometimes violent and disturbing. She saw herself and
various members of her family coming to harm. She didn't
do any kind of introspection about whether these images had
some kind of root cause she saw them as direct
messages from God. But some of the people who have
written about her have speculated that some of this imagery
(15:21):
was a response to the place and time where she
was living. In the early nineteenth century, there was a
violent racist backlash against the free black community and the
abolition movement in Philadelphia and in Pennsylvania more broadly. We
have talked about this in a couple of previous episodes
of the show, including our episode on Lucretia Mott and
(15:41):
our interview with historian Callie Nicole Gross, in which we
talked about ongoing racism and racist violence in Philadelphia after
the Civil War. This violence included things like a white
mob burning down the abolitionist meeting venue Pennsylvania Hall, four
days after it opened. Bethel A. M. E. Which was
damaged in this same act of arson. Yeah, we're gonna
(16:04):
have that episode on Lucretia Mott as a Saturday classic
coming up for folks who want more of that context up.
So in addition to that, racist violence was also escalating
in other parts of the Northeastern US in the decades
before the Civil War. That means that when Jackson started
traveling as an itinerant minister, she was taking a big risk,
(16:25):
especially since Samuel did not go with her. She traveled
all over the Northeastern United States preaching and healing. She
found both black and white converts in response to her preaching,
but there were also a lot of people who denounced her,
or disrupted her meetings or threatened her life over what
she was doing. In addition to the fact that she
(16:47):
was a black woman preaching to racially integrated congregations, some
of what she was preaching was deeply controversial, especially the
idea of celibacy even within the context of marriage. She
was also doing all this while experiencing some kind of
chronic or recurrent illness. She wrote about three different times
(17:08):
that she thought she was going to die, but lived
because she was needed to do God's work. Some of
her descriptions from her journals suggests that she may have
been experiencing seizures. There's a gap in what we know
about Jackson's life that stretches from about eighteen thirty six
to eighteen forty, but at some point during those years,
(17:28):
she became part of a group in Albany, New York
that became known as the Little Band. This was a
perfectionist group that was predominantly white. So perfectionism isn't one
specific theology, but it's rooted in the idea of it
being possible to spiritually perfect oneself to become fully free
from sin, So it has some common elements to that
(17:51):
sanctification that we talked about earlier. During these years, Jackson
also met Rebecca Parrott sometimes spelled with two T s
pe r O t T. Parad was born in eighteen
sixteen or eighteen eighteen and was about eighteen when she
and Jackson first met. In eighteen thirty six. Parad became
Jackson's closest companion, and the two women were together for
(18:14):
the rest of Jackson's life, so for more than thirty
five years. We mentioned Jackson's sometimes frightening and violent visions
and dreams earlier. Her journals just detail so many of them,
but not all of her visions were violent or frightening.
Some of the ones that involved Rebecca Parrot are actually
the opposite. Here's the one that she wrote about from
(18:36):
eighteen fifty one quote. I dreamt that Rebecca and me
lived together. The door opened west, and there was a
river that came from the west, and it ran eastward,
passing our house on the south side, and one part
came front on the west, a beautiful white river. I
stood in the west door, looking westward at the beautiful river.
I saw Rebecca Parat coming in the river, her face
(18:59):
to the east, and she a plunging in the water
every few steps, head foremost a bathing herself. She only
had on her undergarment. She was pure and clean, even
as the water in which she was a bathing. She
came facing me out of the water. I wondered she
was not afraid. Sometimes she would be hid for a moment,
then she would rise again. She looked like an angel. Oh,
(19:21):
how bright. Gene McMahon, whom is who edited a collection
of Jackson's writings, describes this relationship as one that combined
elements of motherhood, marriage, and sisterhood. Other people's writings from
the time sometimes described Jackson and Parrot as mother and daughter,
or as a spiritual mother and daughter. Jackson also kept
(19:43):
Parrott's journals within the pages of her own. Paratt could
not read, so she would dictate her journal entries to Jackson,
who wrote them down with her own journal entries. We'll
talk about how Jackson and Parratt joined the Shakers. After
a quick sponsor break at the end of eighteen forty two,
(20:09):
several members of the Little Band, including its founder Alan Pierce,
visited a community of Shakers. So, like we said at
the top of the show, the Shakers are more formally
known as the United Society of Believers in Christ Second Appearing.
They started out in the seventeen forties near Manchester, England,
as an offshoot of the Quakers, also called the Religious
(20:30):
Society of Friends. The name Shakers actually started out as
a nickname, kind of insulting nickname that outsiders gave them
because their mode of worship included a state of ecstatic
dancing that could involve shaking or trembling. Shaker leader Mother
Ann Lee, immigrated to New York with a group of
followers in seventeen seventy four, seeking freedom from religious persecution.
(20:55):
The United Society of Believers in Christ Second Appearing then
established another member of communities in the US. These communities
were focused on simplicity, communal living, and celibacy, including strictly
dividing the community by gender for everything from living spaces
to work duties. When people joined the Shakers, they settled
(21:16):
their debts with the outside world and then turned any
money or property they had over to the collective. Shaker
communities became known for simple, practical clothing and for simple
but also finally made handicrafts like furniture and brooms. Because
the people living in these communities were celibate, they could
only grow through recruiting new adult members or through adopting, fostering,
(21:40):
or indenturing children. That was something that led to accusations
that Shakers were really kidnappers. Leaving the UK did not
ultimately protect the Shakers from religious persecution. There was a
whole anti Shaker movement in the United States and the
nineteenth century. Shaker beliefs were also connected to millinaire as um,
or the belief that before the Last Judgment, Christ would
(22:04):
establish a Kingdom of God on Earth, which would continue
for a thousand years. Mother Ann Lee died in seventour
and some of her followers came to believe that she
had been the second manifestation of the Divine Spirit to
take a human form on earth, the first one being
Jesus Christ. This aligned with Shaker beliefs that God had
(22:26):
both male and female manifestations, and about the eighteen thirties
a new belief arose within the Shakers, which was described
as Mother Ann's work. This was rooted in the idea
that Mother Anne was continuing her religious work in the
spirit world and that was leading spirits to manifest themselves
to Shakers who were still living. Has had some parallels
(22:49):
to the spiritualist movement that was developing at about the
same time, including mediums who acted as conduits for spirits
and seance like rituals. The number of Shaker believers peaked
in the eighteen forties at about six thousand, living primarily
among eighteen rural communities in the northeastern US and what
(23:10):
was at the time thought of as the Western Frontier.
The largest of these communities was in Mount Lebanon, New York,
and it was right around this time that Alan Pierce
and the Little Band visited a Shaker community. Pierce felt
that it was God's will for the Little Band to
become Shakers as well. Over time, sixteen members of the
(23:30):
group did, including some children, but not all of the
Little Band converted, and some of those who did ultimately
wound up leaving. The Shaker way of life could be
really difficult and involved a lot of strict rules and
hard work, and existing families were separated into new living
and working groups after they became part of the community.
Jackson was one of the people from the Little Band
(23:52):
who didn't join the Shakers right away, although she did
see a lot of overlap between her own beliefs and
Shaker teachings. This included her belief in celibacy and the
idea that a person could experience divine revelations directly from God.
Shakers described these revelations, prophecies, and spiritual manifestations as gifts,
(24:14):
and the gifts the Shakers experienced were much like the
religious and spiritual experiences that Jackson had in her own life.
Even though she didn't become a believer right away, Jackson
did find a new level of zeal and urgency in
her own religious work. She had been experiencing religious visions
for years at this point, but after learning more about
(24:36):
the Shaker belief in the dualism of God, more of
the spiritual teachers who she saw in these visions were women.
In eighteen forty seven, Rebecca Cox Jackson and Rebecca Parat
formally joined the Shaker community at water Voleet, New York,
just north of Albany. A few members of the little
Band who hadn't yet converted, became believers at the same time.
(24:59):
This was a little more then four years after Jackson's
first visit to a Shaker community. She and Parat continued
to live together, and they were often known as either
the Two Rebecca's or the Black Rebecca's. Rebecca Cox Jackson's
relationship with her husband, Samuel had really been deteriorating four years.
She had also come to the conclusion that it was
(25:21):
just not possible to maintain both her religious life and
her marriage, even if that marriage was celibate. When she
joined the Shakers. She and her husband finally separated, and
then he died At some point after that, although the
exact date of his death is not clear. Samuel continued
to appear in her dreams and visions, though including an
(25:42):
eighteen fifty five vision in which quote, his countenance was sorrowful,
such a one I think I never saw upon immortal.
Its expressions seemed to implore mercy. She describes him as
seeing and feeling that he had to put all his
things in order and right all his wrongs, and that
when he saw that she was ready to forgive him quote,
(26:03):
the tears of contrition flowed in abundance. In spite of
all that commonality and overlap between Jackson's belief that she
had come to you on her own and Shaker teachings,
she really had some trouble adjusting to the Shaker's way
of life. Shaker communities tended to be rural and self contained,
but Jackson's own spiritual calling involved working among people to
(26:26):
spread God's word. Believers were also beholden to the rules
of their communities and two directions that were handed down
by Shaker elders and eldresses, but Jackson was used to
following what she saw as directions given directly to her
from God. At the same time, she got a lot
of praise for her work. For example, Shaker Rufus Bishop
(26:48):
described her speaking at a public meeting in eighteen fifty
this way quote, I do not know as I ever
heard the spectator's lectured in a more suitable and feeling
manner in my life. Every sentence and word seemed to
come with weight and power and breathed forth love and
goodwill to the children of men. In eighteen fifty the
(27:10):
Two Rebecca's got permission to make a brief visit back
to Philadelphia. It seems like the leaders that water Volie
hoped this would ease some of the tension and disagreements
that had been going on. It didn't, though, and after
briefly returning to water Volie, the Two Rebecca's went back
to Philadelphia again. In eighteen fifty one. Jackson essentially established
(27:33):
an unsanctioned Shaker community. She really focused her work on
Philadelphia's black community, and although this is what she felt
like she was called to do, she felt really guilty
about this rift with Shaker leadership in Philadelphia. Jackson and
Parrott attended seances and spiritualist meetings. Jackson's journals described sensing
(27:54):
many spirits in the room at some of the science
as they attended. Both of them had visions and prophetic dreams,
which Jackson recorded in her journals. In one of parat dreams,
she Rebecca Jackson and a Shaker woman were all in England,
where the Queen of England crowned Rebecca Jackson King of
Africa and Rebecca Parrot Queen. Then she saw Africa quote
(28:18):
with all her treasures of gold, together with all her inhabitants,
and this was all given unto our charge. In eighteen
fifty seven, the two Rebecca's went back to water Volie,
and they stayed there for about a year. Jackson was
very ill during this time, describing pain and swelling in
her eyes along with blindness. She eventually recovered, and in
(28:40):
October of eighteen fifty eight she was given leave to
establish a small Shaker community in Philadelphia. Sometimes this is
described as an out family. Permission to do this came
from Eldress Paulina Bates, someone Jackson respected but had previously
argued with over their differences in approach. Bates said she
(29:01):
was speaking on behalf of mother and Lee. According to
Jackson's journals, Bates said, quote, now Rebecca, you may go
to your people and do all the good you can.
Now you can go in the gift of God, and
then the gift of the ministry and elders. Now you
are endowed with power and authority. Now the Lord hath
sent you. You have waited for the Lord, and you
(29:23):
go under a blessing. The two Rebecca's left for Philadelphia
again on October eight fifty eight, after being given some
money to cover travel expenses and some books on Shaker
theology that Jackson had asked for. Jackson was holding quote
solemn meetings in Philadelphia by the following April. Paulina Bates
(29:44):
visited this little community several times a year until her
death in eighteen eighty four, and she eventually became somebody
that Jackson loved and respected deeply as a religious companion
and a mentor. The Shaker community that Jackson established in
Philadelphia was primarily made up of black him in and
all of its leaders were black. Some accounts described them
(30:04):
as living in a house on Erie Street, but several
other addresses connected to the same community are shown in
Shaker records as well. It seems as though the whole
community followed Shaker teachings and practices, but only Jackson and
Parrot received divine gifts and practiced healing. Although the journals
of other Shakers mentioned visiting this Shaker community in Philadelphia,
(30:28):
or they note that it existed, we don't have a
lot of specific documentation of what day to day life
was like there or Jackson's activities while she was leading
this community. As we said earlier, her journals stopped abruptly
seven years before her death, and that happened on seventy one,
probably from a stroke. Rebecca Cox Jackson was then buried
(30:51):
near some of her blood relatives in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. After
Rebecca Cox Jackson died, Rebecca Parrot took her name, sometimes
becoming known as Rebecca Cox Jackson Jr. Or as Rebecca
Parrot Jackson. Eventually she became known as just mother Jackson.
Sometimes this is described as an effort to honor Jackson
(31:13):
and continue her work, but there are also less charitable interpretations,
like that it was more about her own self aggrandizement.
There are no known pictures of Rebecca Cox Jackson, but
there is one of Rebecca Parrot which is sometimes labeled
as Jackson and error. Most likely because of this whole
name change. Rebecca Cox Jackson left behind a lot of writing,
(31:37):
most of it remained unpublished for more than a century,
though Rebecca Parrott gave a lot of it to Shaker leaders.
Two different Shakers each made a copy of it, sometimes
also making edits. These wound up in various libraries and archives,
and two books that came out in the early nineteen
eighties compared these different versions when they're being prepared. Rebecca
(31:59):
Parrott continued to lead the Shaker community in Philadelphia for
years after Jackson's death. She and four other members retired
to Water of Leet in eighteen ninety six, and she
lived there until her death in nineteen o one. The
Black Shaker community in Philadelphia seems to have continued for
at least a few years after that. The last written
(32:20):
mention is in a New York Times article from nineteen
o nine. That article is about elder Ernest Pick, who
had been dismissed from the Shakers and had been trying
to document Shaker communities, which by that point we're really dwindling.
The Times describes him traveling quote from Pittsfield to Philadelphia,
where there is a colored community of Shakers, small in numbers,
(32:44):
as we've alluded to, There are two works about Jackson
that include a lot of our writing. Both of these
came out in nineteen eighty one. One is called Gifts
of Power, The Writings of Rebecca Jackson, Black Visionary Shaker Eldress.
That's by Gene McMahon Whomes. That includes introductory material and
analysis on Jackson with her complete writings from eighteen thirty
(33:06):
to eighteen sixty four. The other is called and Chosen
The Story of Mother Rebecca Jackson and the Philadelphia Shakers
by Richard E. Williams. That one has biographical material and analysis.
They're kind of interspersed with quotes, some of them very
lengthy from Jackson's writing. Some sometimes it's like a little
bit of analysis in a very long passage of her journals. Um.
(33:27):
The journals are very fascinating to read. A lot of
them just in very straightforward and matter of fact language,
just sort of chronicle these visions that she had or
dreams that she had, or the person that she met with,
or her own thoughts and theology. And I wish we
had ones from those gaps to fill in some more
detail about parts of this story. Do you have a
(33:50):
little bit of listener mail to fill in details of
other lives? This is from Sarah. Sarah writes Kia from
Outer ro in New Zealand. As you mentioned on the podcast,
one of the issues of The Mercator and many other
projections is that it's Eurocentric. One of the results of
this is that alter to row in New Zealand and
(34:12):
other Pacific nations are of course off the edge. This
has led to the Great Map Conspiracy, where New Zealand
has left off maps all over the world, which begs
the question does New Zealand actually exist? There was even
a joking maybe suggestion that New Zealand diplomats carry New
Zealand map stickers to add ourselves back on when we
(34:33):
find we've been left off maps. I've linked a video
made by Reese Darby of Flight of the Concords fame
and Prime Minister just Sinda Ourdarn, which includes lots of
Kiwi humor and a bunch of other famous kiwi's. There's
a link to this video. Thanks for all the podcasts
they've kept me company over many many years, sewing, sitting
up with babies, traveling for my own work. I've attached
(34:56):
photos of my mouse she Bingi and my rescue cat
ru which is the word in Rayo Maori for our
native owl which he has similar colorings too. So that's
from Sarah. Thank you so much, Sarah for sending this. Uh.
We sure did not mention how often New Zealand has
left off of maps. And what's bizarre is sometimes there's
(35:17):
a space right there that like New Zealand logically would
be end and it's not there New Zealand, which is
a pity because so much good stuff comes from New Zealand. Yeah.
Being from the United States means that we very often
see US maps that have this just weird, weird ways
(35:38):
of adding in Alaska and Hawaii since they are not
contiguous with the other forty eight states. Um. And I
remember there being COVID maps early in the pandemic that
just didn't have Hawaii on there at all, and people
were like, but where's Hawaii though, Like that also is
a state. Uh. And then of other places which are
(36:02):
territories are otherwise connected to the US, which are also
not included on these maps at all. Um. This made
me think of this with this email. But then in
this video which I watched, and it is delightful. Uh,
they kept they keep finding all of these world maps
like out you know, it's just in day to day
life and a lot of them. I'm like, but that's
the space for New Zealand right there, even to scale
(36:24):
with the rest of the map, like why is it gone?
Uh not actually something to be laughing at necessarily, but
the video is made with a humorous spin. So thank
you so much for sharing that with us, Sarah. We'll
put a link to that in our social media when
we uh tweet about this episode. Oh and also thank
(36:48):
you for these animal pictures. I love them. Um. I
did the thing where when I printed out this email
to read it, I accidentally printed out the pictures also,
and so now I have these giant eight and a
half by eleven print outs of pets. Uh. If you'd
like to write to us, we're history podcasts that I
hit radio dot com. I'm gonna say I hope I
(37:10):
did okay pronouncing the words in Mary, I did try
very hard to listen in practice before reading this email.
We are all over social media at missed in History.
That's re'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram, and
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