The Shaker's Daughter

By Cora Morgan

Jane Anne Wilkes is the youngest member of a strict splinter-sect of Shakers who have settled in the Baptist held village of Church Point in the Schoharie Valley on the New York Frontier. Deep down she has always carried a flame for the dashing and enigmatic Johnathan Rook - the son of the Baptist Reverend and chief rival to her own people's claim for the hearts and minds of the surrounding population. When one evening's passion between them rages out of control, she finds herself abandoned, broken and excommunicated by her own sect who abhor all outward expression of passion - including marriage - as the work of the devil. To spare their family the shame of the connection, the Rooks fabricate a marriage between Anne and their son who has been killed while fighting His Majesty's Loyalist Militia and quickly shuttle off this unlikely widow to their son's remote cabin. The war between England and her American colonies boils over into the wild and Anne finds herself faced with a wounded enemy in the form of James Brandon - son and heir to the munition's company which is in large part supplying the men who have killed her lover and invaded her home. Despite her determination to maintain her chaste exterior, Anne finds herself drawn to this gentleman's son. Can he be the one to heal her broken heart, or will their passion and the war raging around them destroy everything she is holding onto?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cora Morgan
• Release date: Mar 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311436207

Cora Morgan

Cora Morgan has been writing fiction from the age of five by creating and illustrating her own picture books and building stories with her family and friends. As an adult she has finally found a way to combine her three greatest genre passions - Mystery, Romance, and Adventure. She lives in the American Southwest with her husband, her dog, and a few chickens. She often writes the content of her own daydreams and thoughts of the history which has touched her own family.

Book preview

The Shaker's Daughter

By: Cora Morgan

Copyright 2015 Cora Morgan

Smashwords Edition

Cover Art:

© Willard - Dreamstime.com

© Krivenkol - Dreamstime.com

Thank you for downloading this eBook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book please encourage your friends to download their own copy from either Smashwords.com or from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

Dedicated to Mike and Joelle - Thank you for your love and support.

Part One – The Outcast

Chapter 1

Church Point, New York – June 13th, 1779

From outside the meeting house, the sound of Sunday service dampened through oak and sod seemed more akin to the inner droning of a massive bee hive then the hum of twenty some odd voices joined in chanting the seventy third psalm. Periodically their recitations were interrupted by a mysterious filling of tongues which shook the body to the bone. The speaker’s voice, caught up in this ecclesiastical possession of the Holy Spirit, rose out across the village to echo through the surrounding woods. The shrill voice chanting in the unknowable language broke the otherwise calm of early morning, silencing bird song and momentarily startling the Calvinistic choir housed in the large whitewashed church across the village square from their hymnals.

No fully-fledged member of either congregation doubted the timing of the message. The two congregations were locked in a bitter feud for the salvation of souls in this small corner of the colonial frontier. Those inside the steepled church believed these cries to come from the devil himself rather than from heaven. Those gathered inside the meeting house believed the divine words to be the Holy Spirit’s battle cry repealing Baptist song with force from the land. Inside the meeting house the faithful filled open rafters with their prayers, each collective stanza meticulously marked by the fall of their feet as they symbolically marched around the hall to Jerusalem. Leather boots, hand stitched buckskin, and bare skin calloused tougher than moccasin hide snickered across roughhewn timber. Each footstep marked another mile closer to spiritual oneness, their collective march streaking late season mud across floor.

These were the Church Point Shakers, a splinter sect which had broken off from the main body under the direction of Mother Ann Lee’s in Niskayuna. They had left and hidden far from her reach among the wild jungles of New York where they could pray and work without doctrinal interruption from the main movement of Shakers currently spreading through the colonies like wildfire. Here they could follow their own matron, a Dutch born widowed fishwife named Bertha Von Hoff, without prying questions to their personal and spiritual practice, and most importantly without paying a portion of their tithes to the main body as well.

That Christ had not returned as Mother Lee had predicted meant little to those gathered here. He had tarried too long in Paradise, and many in their hearts had already rejected much of Mother Lee’s pacifist message. They had found a new Moses, a new sibyl in the elderly woman who gimped along on a twisted maple cane and railed daily of hell and brimstone against nonbelievers. Those who did not keep Mother Von Hoff’s commandments found her judgment came swiftly without the inconvenience of waiting on the afterlife. Like Israelites of Old clinging to a gilded calf at the foot of Mt Sinai, they abandoned their riches to their new leader, and leaving weeping friends behind to follow her crooked staff into the wilds.

Six months into their journey, with disease and dissention threatening to break their ranks, Mother Von Hoff jubilantly announced their arrival to their Promised Land. Striding to the top of an outcropping looking over a tiny farming vale beside the Mohawk River she proclaimed that their personal land of milk and honey laid bellow. Also like the Promised Land of Exodus this vale was populated by its own brand of infidel Canaanites, a small but affluent band of Baptist farmers lead by the black coated Reverend Thomas Rook. The Shakers took to the land like a plague, hand picking the tenants of faith from Mother Ann’s unwritten primer which best suiting their immediate needs and casting by the wayside those which did not.

There was to be no common home, these particular Shakers would not abandon personal wealth for the sake of monastic unity. From the old ways kept only a large meeting house, appending it the end of the village row like a territorial claim. The influx of families built their own homes following already established roads and routs taking real possession of the main routes. Hearthside shops and craft sheds followed closely behind, and with them a large share of the village economy. They traded amongst each other for goods and gold, and begrudgingly among the Baptists as well though here they attached large profits and incredible sums. And dutifully, faithfully, all tithes were paid to the coffers of Mother Von Hoff.

No earthly queen on satin pillow ensconced within a gilded throne commanded so much power. Neither coronet nor scepter could have born more majesty or sway over the daily lives of subjects than the simple nod of the maple cane did for those gathered here. This woman draped in simple wool, her long braids of black and grey tucked tightly beneath a crisp white cap was the Shakers personal ear horn to the voice of God. She was their connection to his promises of wealth and heaven, and to be out of her favor was to fall from salvation. Regents ruled the realms outside this frontier, but Mother Von Hoff ruled the mind and soul. She sat, chin resting on folded hands, her parchment skinned palms gripping the hilt of her walking stick, her ears fearfully pricking at the slightest disturbance to the flock’s cadence.

This Sabbath, however, was different, distressing. Already the sun had marked mid-morning, its rays climbing spiderlike across the milky lead glass of the eastern facing windows. Bodies convulsed and twisted. Hands waved wildly above heads. Hymns crooned through cracked dry throats, legs danced and jerked. But still Mother Von Hoff sat, her mouth firmly shut up and her eyelids pressed serenely together like the palms of praying children. Inwardly, each member of the congregation worried over their sins. She had never waited so long to be filled by prophecy. Rook’s sermon would begin soon and it was known to all that God spoke to his favored first. And yet Mother Von Hoff was silent. They wondered collectively who among them was holding back her blessing, who was the Jonah in their midst?

That which was speculated collectively was known individually in the heart of Jane Anne Wilkes. Alone in her regard of the mud streaked planks, the willowy girl with the bright golden braids and the bright blue eyes walking smoothly, keeping pace with the circle though she was disconnected from the chaos swirling around her. She was the only daughter of the village seamstress, the living testament to her mother’s carnal sins as even in the bonds of marriage sexual connections between Shaker men and women were taboo. Her discomfort in the meeting caused her such stillness compared to those around her she seemed more a black draped stalk of a cattail bending in the wind rather than a rushing brook of spiritual power. Jane Anne’s gaze stayed pressed firmly to the floor, her entire being wrapped in the fear. In her mind looking up to the room around her was open confession to her lack of spiritual focus. She could already feel Mother Von Hoff’s vulture like eyes snapping open in silent accusation each time she passed.

Jane Anne was often the target of Mother Hoff’s sermons on wanton pride and decadence, and often times afterward shuttered out of the community like a leper. She was, according to their cannon, the physical embodiment of original sin, the living testament to Rachel and Enoch Wilkes’ spiritual weakness. Rachel had hoped the girl would remain behind in New Lebanon when their pilgrimage began. She had deployed many terrifying tactics to keep the girl put. Jane had persevered her mother’s terror however in the hopes that by joining Mother Von Hoff’s flock on the frontier she would escape the silent pity of the mainstream Shaker community and perhaps by becoming faithful and devout produce the penance required to save her parent’s souls. But rather than being taken in as yet one more found soul, instead she found herself the target of the renegade sect’s despite. She was their Judas goat.

Desperate to join in Jane Anne squeezed the words of the psalm through her trembling lips. Inwardly she prayed for concentration, to be lost in the will of the Almighty. She prayed for her mother’s forgiveness, that the Almighty would this once overlook the sin that forced Adam and Eve from the garden. But each time her lips moved around the sacred words, the scrap of paper hidden within her apron pocket flared like devil’s fire, whispering its message at the back of her mind. Desperately need your help. It would murmur seductively, the hasty scrawl of her friend Beatrice’s hand tangling around her thoughts like an inky briar. Please come immediately!

Sixty of the toughest New York colonists boasted citizenship of Church Point. Of this sixty every last goodie wife and goodly woman summarily rejected even the idea of amenity toward Jane Anne. All but the Reverend Rook’s own daughter, Beatrice. Rachel Wilkes had become popular in the village for her talent with fabric and needle, despite her exorbitant Baptist Fees. Enoch Wilkes, too, had gained a modicum of respect among the neighbors for his skills. Even the Baptists’ described him as a man of odd spiritually, and yet a talented cooper. Few of these graces, however, fell from the tree as even the Baptists seemed to avoid their daughter. Compounding Jane Anne’s isolation, her parents seemed content in her lot; so long as she, the embodiment of their carnality, carried the burden of society’s scourge they could continue to live and work among the faithful.

Which is what made Bea Rook’s friendship that much more precious.

Jane Ann sobbed inwardly at the strain she felt between her duty to Mother Von Hoff and the tug of Bea Rook’s letter. The knot twisting around her gut tightened as her mental reading of From their calloused hearts flows iniquity… became Desperately need your help. Please come immediately! Also, Johnny home again. Sends amiable greeting to my little friend. Her distraction must have disrupted her recitation as Mother Von Hoff cleared her throat and winked one eye open to glare suspiciously in Jane Ann’s direction. The old woman’s warning growl melted seamlessly away into a series of rapturous moans, as though they would cover the censure in a cloak of privacy. Jane Ann felt as though she had been stripped naked and caned in the public square – one of Mother Von Hoff’s favorite punishments for wayward young women.

Making up her mind, Jane Anne waited for the circle to take her behind Mother Von Hoff’s chair. Then, as if she were about to receive a filling of tongues she stepped from the circle and sank into the shadows beside the open meeting house door. Wool skirts and crisp caps swirled past her. Not an eye lifted to acknowledge her absence. She waited just a few heartbeats, then silently crept outside the meeting house and made a long dash for the edge of the woods behind her.

Table of Contents

Chapter 2

Jane Anne plunged into the ominous darkness strung like cobwebs between the thickly growing trees, pausing only to catch her breath and let her eyes adjust to the low light. Resting her back against the warty bark of a dogwood she listened for signs of pursuit, but all she could hear was the distant chik-burr, chik-burr, chik-burr of a scarlet tanager filtering through the dense limbs.

Finding the faint lines of a game trail Jane began to run again, heading deeper into the forest. She ducked under