I always love a lit­tle sleuthing and all the bet­ter if it argues against some poor­ly researched report that made its way to Wikipedia.

The claim is that Shak­er leader Ann Lee was born a Quak­er. The Wikipedia entry says: “Her par­ents were mem­bers of a dis­tinct branch of the Soci­ety of Friends (a sect of Quak­ers) and too poor to afford their chil­dren even the rudi­ments of edu­ca­tion.” The source of this is giv­en in the cita­tion: a 1879 ency­clo­pe­dia arti­cle, a copy of which is host­ed on Wik­isource: “Her par­ents were mem­bers of a dis­tinct branch of the soci­ety of Friends, and too poor to afford their chil­dren even the rudi­ments of edu­ca­tion.” A source for this claim was nev­er giv­en in the ency­clo­pe­dia, though lat­er on it does ref­er­ence Fred­er­ick William Evans, a much lat­er Shak­er figure.

That is the Tim Gee com­piles five pieces of evi­dence that togeth­er feel very con­vinc­ing.

There are of course influ­ences but that’s to be expect­ed. Every reli­gious move­ment of the Sec­ond Great Awak­en­ing had some rela­tion­ship to Quak­ers. The Methodists, Mor­mons, Holi­ness, Adven­tists all have some con­nec­tions. When you tour the “1652 Coun­try” area of Eng­land, where George Fox first brought Quak­ers togeth­er, you’ll keep run­ning into signs about John Wes­ley doing the same for Methodists a cen­tu­ry lat­er, and here in South Jer­sey where I live a whole slew of Quak­ers became Methodists in the ear­ly 1800s. At least one ear­ly Mor­mon evan­ge­list in Ohio essen­tial­ly went from Quak­er town to Quak­er town try­ing to recruit peo­ple. The Quak­er defense of female lead­er­ship and the prin­ci­ple that women can preach obvi­ous­ly rubbed off on the Shak­ers and oth­er movements.

The idea that the British colonies in Amer­i­ca were some pure land where we could rein­vent a prim­i­tive Chris­tian­i­ty was a pow­er­ful meme (if you will) at the time and cer­tain­ly drew Ann Lee to cross over and plant a reli­gious move­ment here. But Ann Lee picked one of the least Quak­er areas to plant her com­mu­ni­ty and drew ear­ly mem­bers from New Eng­land mil­len­ni­al­ist revival­ists. She def­i­nite­ly want­ed to build some­thing dis­tinct from Friends.

Ann Lee Was Nev­er a Quak­er: Here’s the Evidence 

Five rea­sons why Wikipedia is wrong.

Friends Journal