ELDRESS ANNA WHITE - ELDER DANIEL OFFORD

ELDRESS ANNA WHITE - ELDER DANIEL OFFORD

Taylor, Leila. A MEMORIAL TO ELDRESS ANNA WHITE AND ELDER DANIEL OFFORD. Mount Lebanon. North Family Shakers. 1St, 1912. 182 pgs. Frontis, ports. Vg cond.

Anna White (Jan. 21, 1831 – Dec. 16, 1910) was raised until the age of 18 educated within the Quaker orthodoxy. However, after her father joined Hancock Shaker Village she became a member of the Mount Lebanon Shaker Society’s North Family in 1849.

The music of the Shakers were one of the things that had initially attracted her to the religion, and she would go on to write hundreds of spiritual songs, and compile two books of Shaker music which included some of her own hymns.

In 1865, White became second eldress to Antoinette Doolittle, and upon Doolittle's death in 1887, became first eldress. She became a vegetarian following the example of Elder Frederick Evans of the Mount Lebanon Society, and the rest of the North Family followed her example.

White was an active advocate for social reform and pacifism. She wrote in support of Alfred Dreyfus during the Dreyfus affair. She gave a number of speeches, most notably those at the Universal Peace Union, the Equal Rights Club, and at a peace conference at Mount Lebanon. The resolutions written at the Mount Lebanon meeting in 1905 were forwarded to The Hague, and subsequently adopted, and were brought to President Theodore Roosevelt by White personally. She also wrote a number of articles, was a leader in Alliance of Women for Peace and National Council of Women, and a member of the National American Women Suffrage Association.

In 1904, White co-wrote Shakerism: Its Meaning and Message with Eldress Leila S. Tayor, which at the time, was the only published history of the Shaker movement written by one of its members. The book joined Shaker principles and socially progressive values such as women's equality. (Wikepedia)

Daniel Offord joined the North Family, Mount Lebanon, NY Shakers in 1856; along with his father and six of his siblings. He had some mechanical aptitude and worked with machines and on plumbing, and oversaw brethren who ran teams. In 1883, he was made second elder to Frederick W. Evans, and became first elder in 1892. In December of 1895, the Shakers were shocked to discover that he'd eloped with a much-younger sister named Mabel Franklin, and had taken $3,000 that he had, over time, put into an account under his own name. He may have lost or been robbed of the money, or he may have regretted the decision to leave the Shaker life. In October of 1898, he pleaded to be readmitted, and his request was granted by Eldress Anna White. From that time on, it seems he was determined to do as much work as he could, perhaps to make up for the lack of able-bodied brothers and perhaps to assuage his quilt over his flight from the Shakers. (Shaker Museum)