Source of Information:
Necropolis of the Shakers, South Union, 1906.
Western Kentucky University
Kentucky Museum, Manuscript Division.
From a letter from the Shakertown librarian to CFA dated 10/1980
Caleb Callaway b. Jan. 9, 1761 d. Jul 8, 1829 came from VA or NC and was one of the founders of the South Union Shaker Community, near Bowling Green, KY. He had 6 children, 3 sons and 3 daughters. One, John Constant and one daughter, Matilda became Shakers, Signed Cov. 1830.
His date of death is from records of the South Union Shaker Community which give his date of birth as
Jan 1761. 1762 is from the Richard Callaway Bible.
From the August, 2015 Callaway Family Association Newsletter:
I would like to thank Nancie Callaway Rineer for sharing this information about our Callaway Shakers.
Shaker Journal Book A: 1804-1836
June 2, 1809
Caleb Calloway, a member of the Haleyon Church has faith in the testimony-thence to Hartford in Ohio County. Thence to Green River.
April 5, 1812
Journey: Caleb Calloway, Franky Davis, and Ruth Steele sat out for Shawnee Run
June 21, 1813
Return: Caleb Calloway returned
August 20, 1814
Sickness from the cold plague: Matilda Calloway
June 23, 1817
Journey: Phillip Hooper and Constant Calloway set off for Pleasant Hill in the first new carriage made here
August 3, 1817
Backsliding: Henry Calloway went off – came back with his father Caleb on the 23 Sept. prox.
December 16, 1817
All the youth at the North family removed today – those who went to the brick family included Constant Calloway
May 13, 1818
Caleb Calloway, Robert Houston – Solomon Rankin and George Waddell to Drake's Creek to help awhile
June 21, 1818
Backsliding: Elisha Calloway went off today – all the Calloway boys gone – Henry, Elijah, and Elisha – Except John Constant Calloway, who lived and died a faithful Believer
August 27, 1818
Journey: Eli McLean and Constant Calloway to P.H. for Thankful Gray
November 23, 1818
Repairing Fulling Mill: Robert Jones, Constant Calloway, and John Davis no engage to repair the Fulling Mill
June 21, 1820
Trading Trip: Eli McLean and Constant Calloway start to Nashville with Straw hats – returned the 26th
August 18, 1822
Constant Calloway, Caleb Calloway, and Matilda Calloway are among those sick at this time
August 26, 1822
Caleb Calloway moved from frame house to brick North House
December 4, 1822
Constant Calloway has got the Gin in motion picking cotton – picks 200lbs. per hour
December 25, 1824
Elder Benjamin and Constant Calloway went to Mill Point in the carriage and returned by Bowling Green, leaving Lovina Meigs and bringing Peggy Smith home
April 29, 1827
Constant Calloway listed in census of Centre Family House; Matilda Calloway listed in census of North Family House; Caleb Calloway listed in census of East Family House
March 31, 1829
Doctor: John Constant Calloway, our handy, kind and affectionate Doctor and Nurses Penina Harrison and Rachel Goodhope, went over to Water Vliet to visit good Eldress Sarah Lowry – of blessed memory.
July 8, 1829
Demise: Good Br. Caleb Calloway departed this life today 10 minutes after 11 A.M. buried the following day at 2 P.M.
September 2, 1830
John Constant Calloway out hunting medical roots today
February 13, 1831
Demise: John Constant Calloway, our well beloved Brother and trusty Physician departed this life at 5 P.M. Oh! How much regretted He was one of the most exemplary and pious youths of his day – so says Elder Benj's Journal
February 14, 1831
No one has yet left us more regretted than this young Br. Filled with the Holy Ghost to his last breath – giving good advice to all – I well remember yet his burning, truthful, far seeing and encouraging words with and in his last moments
Shaker Journal Book B: 1836-1864
January 29, 1846
Matilda Calloway moves from the North Family House to the West Family House to act as nurse for that part of the first family
February 5, 1850
Peggy Price and Rhoda Hilton move to the West Family House and Matilda Calloway to the second order and three young Sisters from the west to the Centre
May 1854
Matilda Calloway listed in census of North Family House
August 1862
Matilda Calloway listed as age 65 in census of North Family House
Shaker Journal Book A: 1865-1885
January 1, 1867
Matilda Calloway listed as age 70 in census of North Family House
January 1, 1868
Matilda Calloway listed as age 71 in census of North Family House
September 13, 1868
Matilda Calloway among those moved to the East Family House
January 1, 1872
Matilda Calloway listed as age 76, born December 18, 1795 in Virginia, in census of East Family House
January 1, 1877
Matilda Calloway listed as age 81 in census of East Family House
September 14, 1885
Matilda Calloway died age 90
Caleb's line of descent is as follows:
Joseph Callaway
Richard Callaway and 1st wife Frances Walton
Caleb Callaway who married Betsy Callaway, (Joseph Callaway, William Callaway, John Callaway, Betsy Callaway)
South Union Shaker Village
P.O. Box 177
Auburn, KY 42206
(270) 542-4167
FAX: (270) 542-7558
www.southunionshakervillage.com
email: [email protected]
facebook: South Union Shaker Village
*************************************************
https://www.douglaswiniarski.com/blog/tag/Matilda+Callaway
THE PEOPLE CALLED NEW LIGHTS BLOG
From maritime Canada to the Carolina backcountry, New England to the Illinois prairies, Protestants in British North America and the new United States influenced by the evangelical awakenings of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were known as the "people called New Lights." This occasional blog features news, reviews, and research notes, along with dispatches from the archives and edited transcriptions of notable, obscure, and downright quirky manuscripts chronicling the religious beliefs, practices, and experiences of the people called New Lights from 1730 to 1850.
THE "STRANGE WORK" OF CALEB CALLAWAY (LOGAN COUNTY, KENTUCKY, 1811)
June 5, 2019
In my current research, I've been searching for sources that reveal how and why western settlers converted to Shakerism during the years following the Great Revival (1799–1805). The Shakers kept detailed records of all sorts, but most were written by the leaders of the sect. Few rank-and-file believers described their experiences, especially during the critical early years of the Shakers' expansion into Kentucky and Ohio. Even fewer shared those experiences with the "world's people"—the friends, neighbors, and family members they left behind.
View fullsize
Shaker convert Caleb Callaway scrawled his signature on this 1829 financial agreement. Caleb Callaway, deed of gift to John C. Callaway, June 30, 1829, box 1, Shakers—South Union, Ky., Business and Legal Papers, 1769–1893, MSS 154, Manuscripts and Folklife Archives, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Ky.
That's what makes the following letter by Caleb Callaway (1761–1829) so valuable. Tucked away in one of the sprawling notebooks of John Dabney Shane, a nineteenth-century Presbyterian minister and amateur historian, is a brief note that Callaway penned to his brother-in-law, James French, during the summer of 1811. At the time, Callaway had been living for two years at the Gasper River (later South Union) Shaker village near Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Callaway provided a detailed exposition of the "faith and manner of life that I now live." Like many western revivalers and recent Shaker converts, he believed he was living in an extraordinary new dispensation in which "Christ has made his 2nd and last appearance into the world." Interestingly, Callaway did not associate Christ's return with the figure of Shaker founder Ann Lee. But he did presume, as did all Shakers, that Christ was not a man but rather an inward principle, an "anointing of the Holy Ghost," available to all of the "sons of God." For those who crucified the flesh, gloried in the celibate "cross of Christ," forsook all "natural relations," and devoted themselves to the communal life of the Shakers, it was possible to "live a holy life" on earth "clear from sin, from day to day," with a "peace & union the world knows nothing of." And that choice was voluntary, as Callaway explained in the final lines of the letter. "Salvation is free for every soul," he encouraged his brother-in-law, "they may choose or refuse it. All are free Agents as to that." Utterly confident in the rightness of his new Shaker faith, Callaway proclaimed he would not "exchange my present situation, for the whole world." He concluded the letter with an exhortation: "Come and see us, and know for yourself."
Callaway's crooked road to Shakerism began in what is now Bedford County, Virginia. He was born in 1761, the son of Richard and his first wife, Frances Walton. The elder Callaway had fought in the Seven Years War, and he later joined Daniel Boone in blazing the Wilderness Road to Kentucky. Caleb spent his early years at Fort Boonesborough, where he witnessed the capture of his sister and the death and mutilation of his father at the hands of the Shawnee. Early in the 1780s, Caleb sold his share in his father's lands and lucrative ferry operation, returned to southwestern Virginia, and married Elizabeth Callaway, his first cousin once removed. He appeared regularly on the Virginia property tax rolls for Campbell County during the next two decades, slowly rising through the ranks of society as he accumulated material goods and enslaved servants. The Callaways had at least seven children between 1784 and 1802. Then, in 1804, Elizabeth died unexpectedly—"passed away to the Summerland," according to later Shaker records—and Caleb vanished.
Some evidence suggests that Callaway moved his family to North Carolina. Or he may have fallen on hard times and sought refuge with relatives. But when he resurfaced in Ohio County, Kentucky, five years later, Callaway was a changed man. Like so many of his contemporaries, he had passed through the fires of the Great Revival and been transformed. According to Shaker missionary Benjamin Seth Youngs, who encountered him for the first time on June 1, 1809, Callaway had joined the Halcyon Church, one of the most peculiar religious sects of the early American republic. Founded around 1806 in Marietta, Ohio, by a quixotic prophet named Abel Morgan Sargeant, the Halcyons renounced the traditional Christian doctrine of the trinity, rejected Calvinism, and advocated universal salvation. Denounced as an imposter by his opponents, Sargeant claimed to communicate with angels; he traveled throughout the Ohio Valley with a group of twelve female apostles; and he exhorted his small group of followers to live "without sin" and "become so holy as to work miracles, heal the sick and live without eating."
Following his encounter with Youngs and the Shakers, Callaway abandoned the Halcyons and moved with family to the newly organized Shaker settlement at Gaspar River in Logan County, Kentucky. The following year he wrote to James French explaining his new faith.
Callaway's two-decade life among a Shakers was uneventful, although not without challenges. In 1815, he indentured his three teenage sons, John Constant, Henry, and William, to the believers at South Union, who agreed to provide food, lodging, education, and trade skills until the boys turned twenty-one. John Constant remained with the Shakers until his death in 1830, as did a daughter, Matilda, who lived into the 1880s. Caleb's other two sons, along with their two older brothers, Elijah and Elisha, left South Union in 1818. Callaway occasionally traveled on business for the believers and worked in their various mill complexes. In 1827, he was listed among the 75 brothers and sisters of the "Junior Order" who were living in the East Family dwelling house. Callaway died on the morning of July 8, 1829, and was buried the following day in an unmarked grave in the Shaker cemetery at South Union.
Callaway spent his last years in the East Section dwelling house at South Union Shaker village, near Bowling Green, Kentucky. Isaac N. Young and George Kendall, "Sketches of the various Societies of Belivers in the states of Ohio & Kentucky," 1835, Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
At the end of his transcription, Shane noted that Callaway's "spelling, & division of sentences" were "miserable." Judging from Caleb's shaky signature on a South Union financial document, Shane was right!
John Dabney Shane transcribed Caleb Callaway's July 11, 1811, letter to James French into the second volume of his "Historical Collections" notebooks, which are now among the Draper Manuscripts of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin (12 CC 209–10). For Callaway's life at South Union, see Harvey L. Eads, transcr., Shakers—South Union, Ky., "Record Book A (including Autobiography of John Rankin, Sr.)," 1805–1836, 102, 265, 452, Shakers of South Union, Kentucky, Collection, 1800–1916, MSS 597, Manuscripts and Folklife Archives, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green; "South Union Graveyard Book," 1750–1881, 2–3, typescript, III B:32, MS 3944, Shaker Manuscripts, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland. Information on Callaway's notable father, Richard, is available in John E. Kleber, The Kentucky Encyclopedia (Lexington, Ky., 1992), 152. Adam Jortner briefly discusses the Halcyon Church in his recent Blood from the Sky: Miracles and Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville, Va., 2017), 164; see also C. E. Dickinson, A Century of Church Life, 1796–1896: A History of the First Congregational Church, Marietta, Ohio ([Marietta, Ohio], 1896), 31. On Shane and his "Historical Collections" notebooks, see Elizabeth A. Perkins, Border Life: Experience and Memory in the Revolutionary Ohio Valley (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998), 15–24.
Gaspar River, Logan Co.
Friend James,
I have taken the privilege of writing to you my faith and manner of life that I now live. We believe that Christ has made his 2nd and last appearance into the world; and his errand is to save his people from their sins, and to destroy that nature that is in man, that is not subject to the law of God, & to bring in everlasting righteousness. The greater part of mankind h[as] b[een] expecting Christ to come in the shape of a man. I answer nay; the Church of Xt had its foundation in the revelation of God; and that foundation is Christ. But who or what is Christ? The name of Christ signifies the anointed, and arose from that spiritual unction, or anointing of the Holy Ghost, w[ho] [with] Jesus was anointed to preach the Gospel of Salvation to the [poor]. And I, as well as many others, have read: Christ, and as many as recieve him, to them he gives power to become the sons of God.[1] And we [heed] him by honestly confessing our sins to God before God's witnesses. This I have done, and I now live a holy life from day to day; taking up the cross of Christ, self-denial, working out my salvation, forsaking all natural relations, that is, that is, that spirit that they are of, that stands against God. I love their persons & their souls, but not that carnal nature. Neither does God love it. I do know that I live clear of sin, from day to day; And I have that peace & union that the world knows nothing of. Nor wo'd I exchange my present situation, for the whole world. I do know that I have peace with God, and I know I am not decieved. To know God, & Jesus Xt whom he has sent, is eternal life, and nothing short of this is Eternal life. We have the everlasting Gospel w[ith] us, that saves people from their sins. And the Tabernacle of God is with men, and the judgment is set. And I have sent my sins into judgment beforehand, and judgment is given to the saints. This is that work that God promised long ago to bring about, by the prophets and Apostles. A strange work, and strange it is. And I can say as Paul did, I am crucified to the world, and the world to me. And I glory in the cross.[2] And I die daily unto sin, and live to God, putting on the Lord Jesus Xt, and making no provision for the flesh to fulfil it in the lust therof.[3]
Come and see us, and know for yourself. By the fruits you are to know them.[4]
I suppose my old mother is gone out of the body, is she not?[5] Tell Keeza and all the children, that salvation is free for every souls on the earth: either in the body or out of it, all will have a chance to come in.[6] And they may choose or refuse it. All are free Agents as to that. I add no more at present, but remain your friend,
Caleb Calloway
July 11th 1811
To James French, Montgomery Co., Ky.
(Post-mark, "Frankfort, K. July 11th.")
(The spelling, & division of sentences, miserable.)
[1] John 1:12.
[2] Cf. Gal 6:14.
[3] Cf. Rom. 13:14.
[4] Cf. Mat. 7:20.
[5] Callaway's stepmother, Elizabeth (Jones Hoy) Calloway (1733–1813), lived with French and was still alive in 1811. She is buried in the French family cemetery near Mount Sterling, Ky.
[6] "Keeza" was Callaway's sister, Keziah (Callaway) French (1768–1845), who married James French and lived in Montgomery County, Kentucky.
John Dabney Shane's transcription of Caleb Callaway's 1811 letter to John French. Kentucky Papers, 12 CC 209–10, microfilm, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison.
John Dabney Shane's transcription of Caleb Callaway's 1811 letter to John French. Kentucky Papers, 12 CC 209–10, microfilm, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison.
Necropolis of the Shakers, South Union, 1906.
Western Kentucky University
Kentucky Museum, Manuscript Division.
From a letter from the Shakertown librarian to CFA dated 10/1980
Caleb Callaway b. Jan. 9, 1761 d. Jul 8, 1829 came from VA or NC and was one of the founders of the South Union Shaker Community, near Bowling Green, KY. He had 6 children, 3 sons and 3 daughters. One, John Constant and one daughter, Matilda became Shakers, Signed Cov. 1830.
His date of death is from records of the South Union Shaker Community which give his date of birth as
Jan 1761. 1762 is from the Richard Callaway Bible.
From the August, 2015 Callaway Family Association Newsletter:
I would like to thank Nancie Callaway Rineer for sharing this information about our Callaway Shakers.
Shaker Journal Book A: 1804-1836
June 2, 1809
Caleb Calloway, a member of the Haleyon Church has faith in the testimony-thence to Hartford in Ohio County. Thence to Green River.
April 5, 1812
Journey: Caleb Calloway, Franky Davis, and Ruth Steele sat out for Shawnee Run
June 21, 1813
Return: Caleb Calloway returned
August 20, 1814
Sickness from the cold plague: Matilda Calloway
June 23, 1817
Journey: Phillip Hooper and Constant Calloway set off for Pleasant Hill in the first new carriage made here
August 3, 1817
Backsliding: Henry Calloway went off – came back with his father Caleb on the 23 Sept. prox.
December 16, 1817
All the youth at the North family removed today – those who went to the brick family included Constant Calloway
May 13, 1818
Caleb Calloway, Robert Houston – Solomon Rankin and George Waddell to Drake's Creek to help awhile
June 21, 1818
Backsliding: Elisha Calloway went off today – all the Calloway boys gone – Henry, Elijah, and Elisha – Except John Constant Calloway, who lived and died a faithful Believer
August 27, 1818
Journey: Eli McLean and Constant Calloway to P.H. for Thankful Gray
November 23, 1818
Repairing Fulling Mill: Robert Jones, Constant Calloway, and John Davis no engage to repair the Fulling Mill
June 21, 1820
Trading Trip: Eli McLean and Constant Calloway start to Nashville with Straw hats – returned the 26th
August 18, 1822
Constant Calloway, Caleb Calloway, and Matilda Calloway are among those sick at this time
August 26, 1822
Caleb Calloway moved from frame house to brick North House
December 4, 1822
Constant Calloway has got the Gin in motion picking cotton – picks 200lbs. per hour
December 25, 1824
Elder Benjamin and Constant Calloway went to Mill Point in the carriage and returned by Bowling Green, leaving Lovina Meigs and bringing Peggy Smith home
April 29, 1827
Constant Calloway listed in census of Centre Family House; Matilda Calloway listed in census of North Family House; Caleb Calloway listed in census of East Family House
March 31, 1829
Doctor: John Constant Calloway, our handy, kind and affectionate Doctor and Nurses Penina Harrison and Rachel Goodhope, went over to Water Vliet to visit good Eldress Sarah Lowry – of blessed memory.
July 8, 1829
Demise: Good Br. Caleb Calloway departed this life today 10 minutes after 11 A.M. buried the following day at 2 P.M.
September 2, 1830
John Constant Calloway out hunting medical roots today
February 13, 1831
Demise: John Constant Calloway, our well beloved Brother and trusty Physician departed this life at 5 P.M. Oh! How much regretted He was one of the most exemplary and pious youths of his day – so says Elder Benj's Journal
February 14, 1831
No one has yet left us more regretted than this young Br. Filled with the Holy Ghost to his last breath – giving good advice to all – I well remember yet his burning, truthful, far seeing and encouraging words with and in his last moments
Shaker Journal Book B: 1836-1864
January 29, 1846
Matilda Calloway moves from the North Family House to the West Family House to act as nurse for that part of the first family
February 5, 1850
Peggy Price and Rhoda Hilton move to the West Family House and Matilda Calloway to the second order and three young Sisters from the west to the Centre
May 1854
Matilda Calloway listed in census of North Family House
August 1862
Matilda Calloway listed as age 65 in census of North Family House
Shaker Journal Book A: 1865-1885
January 1, 1867
Matilda Calloway listed as age 70 in census of North Family House
January 1, 1868
Matilda Calloway listed as age 71 in census of North Family House
September 13, 1868
Matilda Calloway among those moved to the East Family House
January 1, 1872
Matilda Calloway listed as age 76, born December 18, 1795 in Virginia, in census of East Family House
January 1, 1877
Matilda Calloway listed as age 81 in census of East Family House
September 14, 1885
Matilda Calloway died age 90
Caleb's line of descent is as follows:
Joseph Callaway
Richard Callaway and 1st wife Frances Walton
Caleb Callaway who married Betsy Callaway, (Joseph Callaway, William Callaway, John Callaway, Betsy Callaway)
South Union Shaker Village
P.O. Box 177
Auburn, KY 42206
(270) 542-4167
FAX: (270) 542-7558
www.southunionshakervillage.com
email: [email protected]
facebook: South Union Shaker Village
*************************************************
https://www.douglaswiniarski.com/blog/tag/Matilda+Callaway
THE PEOPLE CALLED NEW LIGHTS BLOG
From maritime Canada to the Carolina backcountry, New England to the Illinois prairies, Protestants in British North America and the new United States influenced by the evangelical awakenings of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were known as the "people called New Lights." This occasional blog features news, reviews, and research notes, along with dispatches from the archives and edited transcriptions of notable, obscure, and downright quirky manuscripts chronicling the religious beliefs, practices, and experiences of the people called New Lights from 1730 to 1850.
THE "STRANGE WORK" OF CALEB CALLAWAY (LOGAN COUNTY, KENTUCKY, 1811)
June 5, 2019
In my current research, I've been searching for sources that reveal how and why western settlers converted to Shakerism during the years following the Great Revival (1799–1805). The Shakers kept detailed records of all sorts, but most were written by the leaders of the sect. Few rank-and-file believers described their experiences, especially during the critical early years of the Shakers' expansion into Kentucky and Ohio. Even fewer shared those experiences with the "world's people"—the friends, neighbors, and family members they left behind.
View fullsize
Shaker convert Caleb Callaway scrawled his signature on this 1829 financial agreement. Caleb Callaway, deed of gift to John C. Callaway, June 30, 1829, box 1, Shakers—South Union, Ky., Business and Legal Papers, 1769–1893, MSS 154, Manuscripts and Folklife Archives, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Ky.
That's what makes the following letter by Caleb Callaway (1761–1829) so valuable. Tucked away in one of the sprawling notebooks of John Dabney Shane, a nineteenth-century Presbyterian minister and amateur historian, is a brief note that Callaway penned to his brother-in-law, James French, during the summer of 1811. At the time, Callaway had been living for two years at the Gasper River (later South Union) Shaker village near Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Callaway provided a detailed exposition of the "faith and manner of life that I now live." Like many western revivalers and recent Shaker converts, he believed he was living in an extraordinary new dispensation in which "Christ has made his 2nd and last appearance into the world." Interestingly, Callaway did not associate Christ's return with the figure of Shaker founder Ann Lee. But he did presume, as did all Shakers, that Christ was not a man but rather an inward principle, an "anointing of the Holy Ghost," available to all of the "sons of God." For those who crucified the flesh, gloried in the celibate "cross of Christ," forsook all "natural relations," and devoted themselves to the communal life of the Shakers, it was possible to "live a holy life" on earth "clear from sin, from day to day," with a "peace & union the world knows nothing of." And that choice was voluntary, as Callaway explained in the final lines of the letter. "Salvation is free for every soul," he encouraged his brother-in-law, "they may choose or refuse it. All are free Agents as to that." Utterly confident in the rightness of his new Shaker faith, Callaway proclaimed he would not "exchange my present situation, for the whole world." He concluded the letter with an exhortation: "Come and see us, and know for yourself."
Callaway's crooked road to Shakerism began in what is now Bedford County, Virginia. He was born in 1761, the son of Richard and his first wife, Frances Walton. The elder Callaway had fought in the Seven Years War, and he later joined Daniel Boone in blazing the Wilderness Road to Kentucky. Caleb spent his early years at Fort Boonesborough, where he witnessed the capture of his sister and the death and mutilation of his father at the hands of the Shawnee. Early in the 1780s, Caleb sold his share in his father's lands and lucrative ferry operation, returned to southwestern Virginia, and married Elizabeth Callaway, his first cousin once removed. He appeared regularly on the Virginia property tax rolls for Campbell County during the next two decades, slowly rising through the ranks of society as he accumulated material goods and enslaved servants. The Callaways had at least seven children between 1784 and 1802. Then, in 1804, Elizabeth died unexpectedly—"passed away to the Summerland," according to later Shaker records—and Caleb vanished.
Some evidence suggests that Callaway moved his family to North Carolina. Or he may have fallen on hard times and sought refuge with relatives. But when he resurfaced in Ohio County, Kentucky, five years later, Callaway was a changed man. Like so many of his contemporaries, he had passed through the fires of the Great Revival and been transformed. According to Shaker missionary Benjamin Seth Youngs, who encountered him for the first time on June 1, 1809, Callaway had joined the Halcyon Church, one of the most peculiar religious sects of the early American republic. Founded around 1806 in Marietta, Ohio, by a quixotic prophet named Abel Morgan Sargeant, the Halcyons renounced the traditional Christian doctrine of the trinity, rejected Calvinism, and advocated universal salvation. Denounced as an imposter by his opponents, Sargeant claimed to communicate with angels; he traveled throughout the Ohio Valley with a group of twelve female apostles; and he exhorted his small group of followers to live "without sin" and "become so holy as to work miracles, heal the sick and live without eating."
Following his encounter with Youngs and the Shakers, Callaway abandoned the Halcyons and moved with family to the newly organized Shaker settlement at Gaspar River in Logan County, Kentucky. The following year he wrote to James French explaining his new faith.
Callaway's two-decade life among a Shakers was uneventful, although not without challenges. In 1815, he indentured his three teenage sons, John Constant, Henry, and William, to the believers at South Union, who agreed to provide food, lodging, education, and trade skills until the boys turned twenty-one. John Constant remained with the Shakers until his death in 1830, as did a daughter, Matilda, who lived into the 1880s. Caleb's other two sons, along with their two older brothers, Elijah and Elisha, left South Union in 1818. Callaway occasionally traveled on business for the believers and worked in their various mill complexes. In 1827, he was listed among the 75 brothers and sisters of the "Junior Order" who were living in the East Family dwelling house. Callaway died on the morning of July 8, 1829, and was buried the following day in an unmarked grave in the Shaker cemetery at South Union.
Callaway spent his last years in the East Section dwelling house at South Union Shaker village, near Bowling Green, Kentucky. Isaac N. Young and George Kendall, "Sketches of the various Societies of Belivers in the states of Ohio & Kentucky," 1835, Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
At the end of his transcription, Shane noted that Callaway's "spelling, & division of sentences" were "miserable." Judging from Caleb's shaky signature on a South Union financial document, Shane was right!
John Dabney Shane transcribed Caleb Callaway's July 11, 1811, letter to James French into the second volume of his "Historical Collections" notebooks, which are now among the Draper Manuscripts of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin (12 CC 209–10). For Callaway's life at South Union, see Harvey L. Eads, transcr., Shakers—South Union, Ky., "Record Book A (including Autobiography of John Rankin, Sr.)," 1805–1836, 102, 265, 452, Shakers of South Union, Kentucky, Collection, 1800–1916, MSS 597, Manuscripts and Folklife Archives, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green; "South Union Graveyard Book," 1750–1881, 2–3, typescript, III B:32, MS 3944, Shaker Manuscripts, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland. Information on Callaway's notable father, Richard, is available in John E. Kleber, The Kentucky Encyclopedia (Lexington, Ky., 1992), 152. Adam Jortner briefly discusses the Halcyon Church in his recent Blood from the Sky: Miracles and Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville, Va., 2017), 164; see also C. E. Dickinson, A Century of Church Life, 1796–1896: A History of the First Congregational Church, Marietta, Ohio ([Marietta, Ohio], 1896), 31. On Shane and his "Historical Collections" notebooks, see Elizabeth A. Perkins, Border Life: Experience and Memory in the Revolutionary Ohio Valley (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998), 15–24.
Gaspar River, Logan Co.
Friend James,
I have taken the privilege of writing to you my faith and manner of life that I now live. We believe that Christ has made his 2nd and last appearance into the world; and his errand is to save his people from their sins, and to destroy that nature that is in man, that is not subject to the law of God, & to bring in everlasting righteousness. The greater part of mankind h[as] b[een] expecting Christ to come in the shape of a man. I answer nay; the Church of Xt had its foundation in the revelation of God; and that foundation is Christ. But who or what is Christ? The name of Christ signifies the anointed, and arose from that spiritual unction, or anointing of the Holy Ghost, w[ho] [with] Jesus was anointed to preach the Gospel of Salvation to the [poor]. And I, as well as many others, have read: Christ, and as many as recieve him, to them he gives power to become the sons of God.[1] And we [heed] him by honestly confessing our sins to God before God's witnesses. This I have done, and I now live a holy life from day to day; taking up the cross of Christ, self-denial, working out my salvation, forsaking all natural relations, that is, that is, that spirit that they are of, that stands against God. I love their persons & their souls, but not that carnal nature. Neither does God love it. I do know that I live clear of sin, from day to day; And I have that peace & union that the world knows nothing of. Nor wo'd I exchange my present situation, for the whole world. I do know that I have peace with God, and I know I am not decieved. To know God, & Jesus Xt whom he has sent, is eternal life, and nothing short of this is Eternal life. We have the everlasting Gospel w[ith] us, that saves people from their sins. And the Tabernacle of God is with men, and the judgment is set. And I have sent my sins into judgment beforehand, and judgment is given to the saints. This is that work that God promised long ago to bring about, by the prophets and Apostles. A strange work, and strange it is. And I can say as Paul did, I am crucified to the world, and the world to me. And I glory in the cross.[2] And I die daily unto sin, and live to God, putting on the Lord Jesus Xt, and making no provision for the flesh to fulfil it in the lust therof.[3]
Come and see us, and know for yourself. By the fruits you are to know them.[4]
I suppose my old mother is gone out of the body, is she not?[5] Tell Keeza and all the children, that salvation is free for every souls on the earth: either in the body or out of it, all will have a chance to come in.[6] And they may choose or refuse it. All are free Agents as to that. I add no more at present, but remain your friend,
Caleb Calloway
July 11th 1811
To James French, Montgomery Co., Ky.
(Post-mark, "Frankfort, K. July 11th.")
(The spelling, & division of sentences, miserable.)
[1] John 1:12.
[2] Cf. Gal 6:14.
[3] Cf. Rom. 13:14.
[4] Cf. Mat. 7:20.
[5] Callaway's stepmother, Elizabeth (Jones Hoy) Calloway (1733–1813), lived with French and was still alive in 1811. She is buried in the French family cemetery near Mount Sterling, Ky.
[6] "Keeza" was Callaway's sister, Keziah (Callaway) French (1768–1845), who married James French and lived in Montgomery County, Kentucky.
John Dabney Shane's transcription of Caleb Callaway's 1811 letter to John French. Kentucky Papers, 12 CC 209–10, microfilm, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison.
John Dabney Shane's transcription of Caleb Callaway's 1811 letter to John French. Kentucky Papers, 12 CC 209–10, microfilm, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison.
Source of Information:
Necropolis of the Shakers, South Union, 1906.
Western Kentucky University
Kentucky Museum, Manuscript Division.
From a letter from the Shakertown librarian to CFA dated 10/1980
Caleb Callaway b. Jan. 9, 1761 d. Jul 8, 1829 came from VA or NC and was one of the founders of the South Union Shaker Community, near Bowling Green, KY. He had 6 children, 3 sons and 3 daughters. One, John Constant and one daughter, Matilda became Shakers, Signed Cov. 1830.
His date of death is from records of the South Union Shaker Community which give his date of birth as
Jan 1761. 1762 is from the Richard Callaway Bible.
From the August, 2015 Callaway Family Association Newsletter:
I would like to thank Nancie Callaway Rineer for sharing this information about our Callaway Shakers.
Shaker Journal Book A: 1804-1836
June 2, 1809
Caleb Calloway, a member of the Haleyon Church has faith in the testimony-thence to Hartford in Ohio County. Thence to Green River.
April 5, 1812
Journey: Caleb Calloway, Franky Davis, and Ruth Steele sat out for Shawnee Run
June 21, 1813
Return: Caleb Calloway returned
August 20, 1814
Sickness from the cold plague: Matilda Calloway
June 23, 1817
Journey: Phillip Hooper and Constant Calloway set off for Pleasant Hill in the first new carriage made here
August 3, 1817
Backsliding: Henry Calloway went off – came back with his father Caleb on the 23 Sept. prox.
December 16, 1817
All the youth at the North family removed today – those who went to the brick family included Constant Calloway
May 13, 1818
Caleb Calloway, Robert Houston – Solomon Rankin and George Waddell to Drake's Creek to help awhile
June 21, 1818
Backsliding: Elisha Calloway went off today – all the Calloway boys gone – Henry, Elijah, and Elisha – Except John Constant Calloway, who lived and died a faithful Believer
August 27, 1818
Journey: Eli McLean and Constant Calloway to P.H. for Thankful Gray
November 23, 1818
Repairing Fulling Mill: Robert Jones, Constant Calloway, and John Davis no engage to repair the Fulling Mill
June 21, 1820
Trading Trip: Eli McLean and Constant Calloway start to Nashville with Straw hats – returned the 26th
August 18, 1822
Constant Calloway, Caleb Calloway, and Matilda Calloway are among those sick at this time
August 26, 1822
Caleb Calloway moved from frame house to brick North House
December 4, 1822
Constant Calloway has got the Gin in motion picking cotton – picks 200lbs. per hour
December 25, 1824
Elder Benjamin and Constant Calloway went to Mill Point in the carriage and returned by Bowling Green, leaving Lovina Meigs and bringing Peggy Smith home
April 29, 1827
Constant Calloway listed in census of Centre Family House; Matilda Calloway listed in census of North Family House; Caleb Calloway listed in census of East Family House
March 31, 1829
Doctor: John Constant Calloway, our handy, kind and affectionate Doctor and Nurses Penina Harrison and Rachel Goodhope, went over to Water Vliet to visit good Eldress Sarah Lowry – of blessed memory.
July 8, 1829
Demise: Good Br. Caleb Calloway departed this life today 10 minutes after 11 A.M. buried the following day at 2 P.M.
September 2, 1830
John Constant Calloway out hunting medical roots today
February 13, 1831
Demise: John Constant Calloway, our well beloved Brother and trusty Physician departed this life at 5 P.M. Oh! How much regretted He was one of the most exemplary and pious youths of his day – so says Elder Benj's Journal
February 14, 1831
No one has yet left us more regretted than this young Br. Filled with the Holy Ghost to his last breath – giving good advice to all – I well remember yet his burning, truthful, far seeing and encouraging words with and in his last moments
Shaker Journal Book B: 1836-1864
January 29, 1846
Matilda Calloway moves from the North Family House to the West Family House to act as nurse for that part of the first family
February 5, 1850
Peggy Price and Rhoda Hilton move to the West Family House and Matilda Calloway to the second order and three young Sisters from the west to the Centre
May 1854
Matilda Calloway listed in census of North Family House
August 1862
Matilda Calloway listed as age 65 in census of North Family House
Shaker Journal Book A: 1865-1885
January 1, 1867
Matilda Calloway listed as age 70 in census of North Family House
January 1, 1868
Matilda Calloway listed as age 71 in census of North Family House
September 13, 1868
Matilda Calloway among those moved to the East Family House
January 1, 1872
Matilda Calloway listed as age 76, born December 18, 1795 in Virginia, in census of East Family House
January 1, 1877
Matilda Calloway listed as age 81 in census of East Family House
September 14, 1885
Matilda Calloway died age 90
Caleb's line of descent is as follows:
Joseph Callaway
Richard Callaway and 1st wife Frances Walton
Caleb Callaway who married Betsy Callaway, (Joseph Callaway, William Callaway, John Callaway, Betsy Callaway)
South Union Shaker Village
P.O. Box 177
Auburn, KY 42206
(270) 542-4167
FAX: (270) 542-7558
www.southunionshakervillage.com
email: [email protected]
facebook: South Union Shaker Village
*************************************************
https://www.douglaswiniarski.com/blog/tag/Matilda+Callaway
THE PEOPLE CALLED NEW LIGHTS BLOG
From maritime Canada to the Carolina backcountry, New England to the Illinois prairies, Protestants in British North America and the new United States influenced by the evangelical awakenings of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were known as the "people called New Lights." This occasional blog features news, reviews, and research notes, along with dispatches from the archives and edited transcriptions of notable, obscure, and downright quirky manuscripts chronicling the religious beliefs, practices, and experiences of the people called New Lights from 1730 to 1850.
THE "STRANGE WORK" OF CALEB CALLAWAY (LOGAN COUNTY, KENTUCKY, 1811)
June 5, 2019
In my current research, I've been searching for sources that reveal how and why western settlers converted to Shakerism during the years following the Great Revival (1799–1805). The Shakers kept detailed records of all sorts, but most were written by the leaders of the sect. Few rank-and-file believers described their experiences, especially during the critical early years of the Shakers' expansion into Kentucky and Ohio. Even fewer shared those experiences with the "world's people"—the friends, neighbors, and family members they left behind.
View fullsize
Shaker convert Caleb Callaway scrawled his signature on this 1829 financial agreement. Caleb Callaway, deed of gift to John C. Callaway, June 30, 1829, box 1, Shakers—South Union, Ky., Business and Legal Papers, 1769–1893, MSS 154, Manuscripts and Folklife Archives, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Ky.
That's what makes the following letter by Caleb Callaway (1761–1829) so valuable. Tucked away in one of the sprawling notebooks of John Dabney Shane, a nineteenth-century Presbyterian minister and amateur historian, is a brief note that Callaway penned to his brother-in-law, James French, during the summer of 1811. At the time, Callaway had been living for two years at the Gasper River (later South Union) Shaker village near Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Callaway provided a detailed exposition of the "faith and manner of life that I now live." Like many western revivalers and recent Shaker converts, he believed he was living in an extraordinary new dispensation in which "Christ has made his 2nd and last appearance into the world." Interestingly, Callaway did not associate Christ's return with the figure of Shaker founder Ann Lee. But he did presume, as did all Shakers, that Christ was not a man but rather an inward principle, an "anointing of the Holy Ghost," available to all of the "sons of God." For those who crucified the flesh, gloried in the celibate "cross of Christ," forsook all "natural relations," and devoted themselves to the communal life of the Shakers, it was possible to "live a holy life" on earth "clear from sin, from day to day," with a "peace & union the world knows nothing of." And that choice was voluntary, as Callaway explained in the final lines of the letter. "Salvation is free for every soul," he encouraged his brother-in-law, "they may choose or refuse it. All are free Agents as to that." Utterly confident in the rightness of his new Shaker faith, Callaway proclaimed he would not "exchange my present situation, for the whole world." He concluded the letter with an exhortation: "Come and see us, and know for yourself."
Callaway's crooked road to Shakerism began in what is now Bedford County, Virginia. He was born in 1761, the son of Richard and his first wife, Frances Walton. The elder Callaway had fought in the Seven Years War, and he later joined Daniel Boone in blazing the Wilderness Road to Kentucky. Caleb spent his early years at Fort Boonesborough, where he witnessed the capture of his sister and the death and mutilation of his father at the hands of the Shawnee. Early in the 1780s, Caleb sold his share in his father's lands and lucrative ferry operation, returned to southwestern Virginia, and married Elizabeth Callaway, his first cousin once removed. He appeared regularly on the Virginia property tax rolls for Campbell County during the next two decades, slowly rising through the ranks of society as he accumulated material goods and enslaved servants. The Callaways had at least seven children between 1784 and 1802. Then, in 1804, Elizabeth died unexpectedly—"passed away to the Summerland," according to later Shaker records—and Caleb vanished.
Some evidence suggests that Callaway moved his family to North Carolina. Or he may have fallen on hard times and sought refuge with relatives. But when he resurfaced in Ohio County, Kentucky, five years later, Callaway was a changed man. Like so many of his contemporaries, he had passed through the fires of the Great Revival and been transformed. According to Shaker missionary Benjamin Seth Youngs, who encountered him for the first time on June 1, 1809, Callaway had joined the Halcyon Church, one of the most peculiar religious sects of the early American republic. Founded around 1806 in Marietta, Ohio, by a quixotic prophet named Abel Morgan Sargeant, the Halcyons renounced the traditional Christian doctrine of the trinity, rejected Calvinism, and advocated universal salvation. Denounced as an imposter by his opponents, Sargeant claimed to communicate with angels; he traveled throughout the Ohio Valley with a group of twelve female apostles; and he exhorted his small group of followers to live "without sin" and "become so holy as to work miracles, heal the sick and live without eating."
Following his encounter with Youngs and the Shakers, Callaway abandoned the Halcyons and moved with family to the newly organized Shaker settlement at Gaspar River in Logan County, Kentucky. The following year he wrote to James French explaining his new faith.
Callaway's two-decade life among a Shakers was uneventful, although not without challenges. In 1815, he indentured his three teenage sons, John Constant, Henry, and William, to the believers at South Union, who agreed to provide food, lodging, education, and trade skills until the boys turned twenty-one. John Constant remained with the Shakers until his death in 1830, as did a daughter, Matilda, who lived into the 1880s. Caleb's other two sons, along with their two older brothers, Elijah and Elisha, left South Union in 1818. Callaway occasionally traveled on business for the believers and worked in their various mill complexes. In 1827, he was listed among the 75 brothers and sisters of the "Junior Order" who were living in the East Family dwelling house. Callaway died on the morning of July 8, 1829, and was buried the following day in an unmarked grave in the Shaker cemetery at South Union.
Callaway spent his last years in the East Section dwelling house at South Union Shaker village, near Bowling Green, Kentucky. Isaac N. Young and George Kendall, "Sketches of the various Societies of Belivers in the states of Ohio & Kentucky," 1835, Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
At the end of his transcription, Shane noted that Callaway's "spelling, & division of sentences" were "miserable." Judging from Caleb's shaky signature on a South Union financial document, Shane was right!
John Dabney Shane transcribed Caleb Callaway's July 11, 1811, letter to James French into the second volume of his "Historical Collections" notebooks, which are now among the Draper Manuscripts of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin (12 CC 209–10). For Callaway's life at South Union, see Harvey L. Eads, transcr., Shakers—South Union, Ky., "Record Book A (including Autobiography of John Rankin, Sr.)," 1805–1836, 102, 265, 452, Shakers of South Union, Kentucky, Collection, 1800–1916, MSS 597, Manuscripts and Folklife Archives, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green; "South Union Graveyard Book," 1750–1881, 2–3, typescript, III B:32, MS 3944, Shaker Manuscripts, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland. Information on Callaway's notable father, Richard, is available in John E. Kleber, The Kentucky Encyclopedia (Lexington, Ky., 1992), 152. Adam Jortner briefly discusses the Halcyon Church in his recent Blood from the Sky: Miracles and Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville, Va., 2017), 164; see also C. E. Dickinson, A Century of Church Life, 1796–1896: A History of the First Congregational Church, Marietta, Ohio ([Marietta, Ohio], 1896), 31. On Shane and his "Historical Collections" notebooks, see Elizabeth A. Perkins, Border Life: Experience and Memory in the Revolutionary Ohio Valley (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998), 15–24.
Gaspar River, Logan Co.
Friend James,
I have taken the privilege of writing to you my faith and manner of life that I now live. We believe that Christ has made his 2nd and last appearance into the world; and his errand is to save his people from their sins, and to destroy that nature that is in man, that is not subject to the law of God, & to bring in everlasting righteousness. The greater part of mankind h[as] b[een] expecting Christ to come in the shape of a man. I answer nay; the Church of Xt had its foundation in the revelation of God; and that foundation is Christ. But who or what is Christ? The name of Christ signifies the anointed, and arose from that spiritual unction, or anointing of the Holy Ghost, w[ho] [with] Jesus was anointed to preach the Gospel of Salvation to the [poor]. And I, as well as many others, have read: Christ, and as many as recieve him, to them he gives power to become the sons of God.[1] And we [heed] him by honestly confessing our sins to God before God's witnesses. This I have done, and I now live a holy life from day to day; taking up the cross of Christ, self-denial, working out my salvation, forsaking all natural relations, that is, that is, that spirit that they are of, that stands against God. I love their persons & their souls, but not that carnal nature. Neither does God love it. I do know that I live clear of sin, from day to day; And I have that peace & union that the world knows nothing of. Nor wo'd I exchange my present situation, for the whole world. I do know that I have peace with God, and I know I am not decieved. To know God, & Jesus Xt whom he has sent, is eternal life, and nothing short of this is Eternal life. We have the everlasting Gospel w[ith] us, that saves people from their sins. And the Tabernacle of God is with men, and the judgment is set. And I have sent my sins into judgment beforehand, and judgment is given to the saints. This is that work that God promised long ago to bring about, by the prophets and Apostles. A strange work, and strange it is. And I can say as Paul did, I am crucified to the world, and the world to me. And I glory in the cross.[2] And I die daily unto sin, and live to God, putting on the Lord Jesus Xt, and making no provision for the flesh to fulfil it in the lust therof.[3]
Come and see us, and know for yourself. By the fruits you are to know them.[4]
I suppose my old mother is gone out of the body, is she not?[5] Tell Keeza and all the children, that salvation is free for every souls on the earth: either in the body or out of it, all will have a chance to come in.[6] And they may choose or refuse it. All are free Agents as to that. I add no more at present, but remain your friend,
Caleb Calloway
July 11th 1811
To James French, Montgomery Co., Ky.
(Post-mark, "Frankfort, K. July 11th.")
(The spelling, & division of sentences, miserable.)
[1] John 1:12.
[2] Cf. Gal 6:14.
[3] Cf. Rom. 13:14.
[4] Cf. Mat. 7:20.
[5] Callaway's stepmother, Elizabeth (Jones Hoy) Calloway (1733–1813), lived with French and was still alive in 1811. She is buried in the French family cemetery near Mount Sterling, Ky.
[6] "Keeza" was Callaway's sister, Keziah (Callaway) French (1768–1845), who married James French and lived in Montgomery County, Kentucky.
John Dabney Shane's transcription of Caleb Callaway's 1811 letter to John French. Kentucky Papers, 12 CC 209–10, microfilm, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison.
John Dabney Shane's transcription of Caleb Callaway's 1811 letter to John French. Kentucky Papers, 12 CC 209–10, microfilm, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison.
Necropolis of the Shakers, South Union, 1906.
Western Kentucky University
Kentucky Museum, Manuscript Division.
From a letter from the Shakertown librarian to CFA dated 10/1980
Caleb Callaway b. Jan. 9, 1761 d. Jul 8, 1829 came from VA or NC and was one of the founders of the South Union Shaker Community, near Bowling Green, KY. He had 6 children, 3 sons and 3 daughters. One, John Constant and one daughter, Matilda became Shakers, Signed Cov. 1830.
His date of death is from records of the South Union Shaker Community which give his date of birth as
Jan 1761. 1762 is from the Richard Callaway Bible.
From the August, 2015 Callaway Family Association Newsletter:
I would like to thank Nancie Callaway Rineer for sharing this information about our Callaway Shakers.
Shaker Journal Book A: 1804-1836
June 2, 1809
Caleb Calloway, a member of the Haleyon Church has faith in the testimony-thence to Hartford in Ohio County. Thence to Green River.
April 5, 1812
Journey: Caleb Calloway, Franky Davis, and Ruth Steele sat out for Shawnee Run
June 21, 1813
Return: Caleb Calloway returned
August 20, 1814
Sickness from the cold plague: Matilda Calloway
June 23, 1817
Journey: Phillip Hooper and Constant Calloway set off for Pleasant Hill in the first new carriage made here
August 3, 1817
Backsliding: Henry Calloway went off – came back with his father Caleb on the 23 Sept. prox.
December 16, 1817
All the youth at the North family removed today – those who went to the brick family included Constant Calloway
May 13, 1818
Caleb Calloway, Robert Houston – Solomon Rankin and George Waddell to Drake's Creek to help awhile
June 21, 1818
Backsliding: Elisha Calloway went off today – all the Calloway boys gone – Henry, Elijah, and Elisha – Except John Constant Calloway, who lived and died a faithful Believer
August 27, 1818
Journey: Eli McLean and Constant Calloway to P.H. for Thankful Gray
November 23, 1818
Repairing Fulling Mill: Robert Jones, Constant Calloway, and John Davis no engage to repair the Fulling Mill
June 21, 1820
Trading Trip: Eli McLean and Constant Calloway start to Nashville with Straw hats – returned the 26th
August 18, 1822
Constant Calloway, Caleb Calloway, and Matilda Calloway are among those sick at this time
August 26, 1822
Caleb Calloway moved from frame house to brick North House
December 4, 1822
Constant Calloway has got the Gin in motion picking cotton – picks 200lbs. per hour
December 25, 1824
Elder Benjamin and Constant Calloway went to Mill Point in the carriage and returned by Bowling Green, leaving Lovina Meigs and bringing Peggy Smith home
April 29, 1827
Constant Calloway listed in census of Centre Family House; Matilda Calloway listed in census of North Family House; Caleb Calloway listed in census of East Family House
March 31, 1829
Doctor: John Constant Calloway, our handy, kind and affectionate Doctor and Nurses Penina Harrison and Rachel Goodhope, went over to Water Vliet to visit good Eldress Sarah Lowry – of blessed memory.
July 8, 1829
Demise: Good Br. Caleb Calloway departed this life today 10 minutes after 11 A.M. buried the following day at 2 P.M.
September 2, 1830
John Constant Calloway out hunting medical roots today
February 13, 1831
Demise: John Constant Calloway, our well beloved Brother and trusty Physician departed this life at 5 P.M. Oh! How much regretted He was one of the most exemplary and pious youths of his day – so says Elder Benj's Journal
February 14, 1831
No one has yet left us more regretted than this young Br. Filled with the Holy Ghost to his last breath – giving good advice to all – I well remember yet his burning, truthful, far seeing and encouraging words with and in his last moments
Shaker Journal Book B: 1836-1864
January 29, 1846
Matilda Calloway moves from the North Family House to the West Family House to act as nurse for that part of the first family
February 5, 1850
Peggy Price and Rhoda Hilton move to the West Family House and Matilda Calloway to the second order and three young Sisters from the west to the Centre
May 1854
Matilda Calloway listed in census of North Family House
August 1862
Matilda Calloway listed as age 65 in census of North Family House
Shaker Journal Book A: 1865-1885
January 1, 1867
Matilda Calloway listed as age 70 in census of North Family House
January 1, 1868
Matilda Calloway listed as age 71 in census of North Family House
September 13, 1868
Matilda Calloway among those moved to the East Family House
January 1, 1872
Matilda Calloway listed as age 76, born December 18, 1795 in Virginia, in census of East Family House
January 1, 1877
Matilda Calloway listed as age 81 in census of East Family House
September 14, 1885
Matilda Calloway died age 90
Caleb's line of descent is as follows:
Joseph Callaway
Richard Callaway and 1st wife Frances Walton
Caleb Callaway who married Betsy Callaway, (Joseph Callaway, William Callaway, John Callaway, Betsy Callaway)
South Union Shaker Village
P.O. Box 177
Auburn, KY 42206
(270) 542-4167
FAX: (270) 542-7558
www.southunionshakervillage.com
email: [email protected]
facebook: South Union Shaker Village
*************************************************
https://www.douglaswiniarski.com/blog/tag/Matilda+Callaway
THE PEOPLE CALLED NEW LIGHTS BLOG
From maritime Canada to the Carolina backcountry, New England to the Illinois prairies, Protestants in British North America and the new United States influenced by the evangelical awakenings of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were known as the "people called New Lights." This occasional blog features news, reviews, and research notes, along with dispatches from the archives and edited transcriptions of notable, obscure, and downright quirky manuscripts chronicling the religious beliefs, practices, and experiences of the people called New Lights from 1730 to 1850.
THE "STRANGE WORK" OF CALEB CALLAWAY (LOGAN COUNTY, KENTUCKY, 1811)
June 5, 2019
In my current research, I've been searching for sources that reveal how and why western settlers converted to Shakerism during the years following the Great Revival (1799–1805). The Shakers kept detailed records of all sorts, but most were written by the leaders of the sect. Few rank-and-file believers described their experiences, especially during the critical early years of the Shakers' expansion into Kentucky and Ohio. Even fewer shared those experiences with the "world's people"—the friends, neighbors, and family members they left behind.
View fullsize
Shaker convert Caleb Callaway scrawled his signature on this 1829 financial agreement. Caleb Callaway, deed of gift to John C. Callaway, June 30, 1829, box 1, Shakers—South Union, Ky., Business and Legal Papers, 1769–1893, MSS 154, Manuscripts and Folklife Archives, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Ky.
That's what makes the following letter by Caleb Callaway (1761–1829) so valuable. Tucked away in one of the sprawling notebooks of John Dabney Shane, a nineteenth-century Presbyterian minister and amateur historian, is a brief note that Callaway penned to his brother-in-law, James French, during the summer of 1811. At the time, Callaway had been living for two years at the Gasper River (later South Union) Shaker village near Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Callaway provided a detailed exposition of the "faith and manner of life that I now live." Like many western revivalers and recent Shaker converts, he believed he was living in an extraordinary new dispensation in which "Christ has made his 2nd and last appearance into the world." Interestingly, Callaway did not associate Christ's return with the figure of Shaker founder Ann Lee. But he did presume, as did all Shakers, that Christ was not a man but rather an inward principle, an "anointing of the Holy Ghost," available to all of the "sons of God." For those who crucified the flesh, gloried in the celibate "cross of Christ," forsook all "natural relations," and devoted themselves to the communal life of the Shakers, it was possible to "live a holy life" on earth "clear from sin, from day to day," with a "peace & union the world knows nothing of." And that choice was voluntary, as Callaway explained in the final lines of the letter. "Salvation is free for every soul," he encouraged his brother-in-law, "they may choose or refuse it. All are free Agents as to that." Utterly confident in the rightness of his new Shaker faith, Callaway proclaimed he would not "exchange my present situation, for the whole world." He concluded the letter with an exhortation: "Come and see us, and know for yourself."
Callaway's crooked road to Shakerism began in what is now Bedford County, Virginia. He was born in 1761, the son of Richard and his first wife, Frances Walton. The elder Callaway had fought in the Seven Years War, and he later joined Daniel Boone in blazing the Wilderness Road to Kentucky. Caleb spent his early years at Fort Boonesborough, where he witnessed the capture of his sister and the death and mutilation of his father at the hands of the Shawnee. Early in the 1780s, Caleb sold his share in his father's lands and lucrative ferry operation, returned to southwestern Virginia, and married Elizabeth Callaway, his first cousin once removed. He appeared regularly on the Virginia property tax rolls for Campbell County during the next two decades, slowly rising through the ranks of society as he accumulated material goods and enslaved servants. The Callaways had at least seven children between 1784 and 1802. Then, in 1804, Elizabeth died unexpectedly—"passed away to the Summerland," according to later Shaker records—and Caleb vanished.
Some evidence suggests that Callaway moved his family to North Carolina. Or he may have fallen on hard times and sought refuge with relatives. But when he resurfaced in Ohio County, Kentucky, five years later, Callaway was a changed man. Like so many of his contemporaries, he had passed through the fires of the Great Revival and been transformed. According to Shaker missionary Benjamin Seth Youngs, who encountered him for the first time on June 1, 1809, Callaway had joined the Halcyon Church, one of the most peculiar religious sects of the early American republic. Founded around 1806 in Marietta, Ohio, by a quixotic prophet named Abel Morgan Sargeant, the Halcyons renounced the traditional Christian doctrine of the trinity, rejected Calvinism, and advocated universal salvation. Denounced as an imposter by his opponents, Sargeant claimed to communicate with angels; he traveled throughout the Ohio Valley with a group of twelve female apostles; and he exhorted his small group of followers to live "without sin" and "become so holy as to work miracles, heal the sick and live without eating."
Following his encounter with Youngs and the Shakers, Callaway abandoned the Halcyons and moved with family to the newly organized Shaker settlement at Gaspar River in Logan County, Kentucky. The following year he wrote to James French explaining his new faith.
Callaway's two-decade life among a Shakers was uneventful, although not without challenges. In 1815, he indentured his three teenage sons, John Constant, Henry, and William, to the believers at South Union, who agreed to provide food, lodging, education, and trade skills until the boys turned twenty-one. John Constant remained with the Shakers until his death in 1830, as did a daughter, Matilda, who lived into the 1880s. Caleb's other two sons, along with their two older brothers, Elijah and Elisha, left South Union in 1818. Callaway occasionally traveled on business for the believers and worked in their various mill complexes. In 1827, he was listed among the 75 brothers and sisters of the "Junior Order" who were living in the East Family dwelling house. Callaway died on the morning of July 8, 1829, and was buried the following day in an unmarked grave in the Shaker cemetery at South Union.
Callaway spent his last years in the East Section dwelling house at South Union Shaker village, near Bowling Green, Kentucky. Isaac N. Young and George Kendall, "Sketches of the various Societies of Belivers in the states of Ohio & Kentucky," 1835, Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
At the end of his transcription, Shane noted that Callaway's "spelling, & division of sentences" were "miserable." Judging from Caleb's shaky signature on a South Union financial document, Shane was right!
John Dabney Shane transcribed Caleb Callaway's July 11, 1811, letter to James French into the second volume of his "Historical Collections" notebooks, which are now among the Draper Manuscripts of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin (12 CC 209–10). For Callaway's life at South Union, see Harvey L. Eads, transcr., Shakers—South Union, Ky., "Record Book A (including Autobiography of John Rankin, Sr.)," 1805–1836, 102, 265, 452, Shakers of South Union, Kentucky, Collection, 1800–1916, MSS 597, Manuscripts and Folklife Archives, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green; "South Union Graveyard Book," 1750–1881, 2–3, typescript, III B:32, MS 3944, Shaker Manuscripts, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland. Information on Callaway's notable father, Richard, is available in John E. Kleber, The Kentucky Encyclopedia (Lexington, Ky., 1992), 152. Adam Jortner briefly discusses the Halcyon Church in his recent Blood from the Sky: Miracles and Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville, Va., 2017), 164; see also C. E. Dickinson, A Century of Church Life, 1796–1896: A History of the First Congregational Church, Marietta, Ohio ([Marietta, Ohio], 1896), 31. On Shane and his "Historical Collections" notebooks, see Elizabeth A. Perkins, Border Life: Experience and Memory in the Revolutionary Ohio Valley (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998), 15–24.
Gaspar River, Logan Co.
Friend James,
I have taken the privilege of writing to you my faith and manner of life that I now live. We believe that Christ has made his 2nd and last appearance into the world; and his errand is to save his people from their sins, and to destroy that nature that is in man, that is not subject to the law of God, & to bring in everlasting righteousness. The greater part of mankind h[as] b[een] expecting Christ to come in the shape of a man. I answer nay; the Church of Xt had its foundation in the revelation of God; and that foundation is Christ. But who or what is Christ? The name of Christ signifies the anointed, and arose from that spiritual unction, or anointing of the Holy Ghost, w[ho] [with] Jesus was anointed to preach the Gospel of Salvation to the [poor]. And I, as well as many others, have read: Christ, and as many as recieve him, to them he gives power to become the sons of God.[1] And we [heed] him by honestly confessing our sins to God before God's witnesses. This I have done, and I now live a holy life from day to day; taking up the cross of Christ, self-denial, working out my salvation, forsaking all natural relations, that is, that is, that spirit that they are of, that stands against God. I love their persons & their souls, but not that carnal nature. Neither does God love it. I do know that I live clear of sin, from day to day; And I have that peace & union that the world knows nothing of. Nor wo'd I exchange my present situation, for the whole world. I do know that I have peace with God, and I know I am not decieved. To know God, & Jesus Xt whom he has sent, is eternal life, and nothing short of this is Eternal life. We have the everlasting Gospel w[ith] us, that saves people from their sins. And the Tabernacle of God is with men, and the judgment is set. And I have sent my sins into judgment beforehand, and judgment is given to the saints. This is that work that God promised long ago to bring about, by the prophets and Apostles. A strange work, and strange it is. And I can say as Paul did, I am crucified to the world, and the world to me. And I glory in the cross.[2] And I die daily unto sin, and live to God, putting on the Lord Jesus Xt, and making no provision for the flesh to fulfil it in the lust therof.[3]
Come and see us, and know for yourself. By the fruits you are to know them.[4]
I suppose my old mother is gone out of the body, is she not?[5] Tell Keeza and all the children, that salvation is free for every souls on the earth: either in the body or out of it, all will have a chance to come in.[6] And they may choose or refuse it. All are free Agents as to that. I add no more at present, but remain your friend,
Caleb Calloway
July 11th 1811
To James French, Montgomery Co., Ky.
(Post-mark, "Frankfort, K. July 11th.")
(The spelling, & division of sentences, miserable.)
[1] John 1:12.
[2] Cf. Gal 6:14.
[3] Cf. Rom. 13:14.
[4] Cf. Mat. 7:20.
[5] Callaway's stepmother, Elizabeth (Jones Hoy) Calloway (1733–1813), lived with French and was still alive in 1811. She is buried in the French family cemetery near Mount Sterling, Ky.
[6] "Keeza" was Callaway's sister, Keziah (Callaway) French (1768–1845), who married James French and lived in Montgomery County, Kentucky.
John Dabney Shane's transcription of Caleb Callaway's 1811 letter to John French. Kentucky Papers, 12 CC 209–10, microfilm, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison.
John Dabney Shane's transcription of Caleb Callaway's 1811 letter to John French. Kentucky Papers, 12 CC 209–10, microfilm, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison.
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