From “The Communistic Societies of the United States” by Charles Nordhoff, 1875
The Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, near Harrodsburg, Kentucky, is now a historic site and museum, but was a thriving community from 1805 to 1910, the third-largest Shaker settlement in the United States. Like many communal and utopian communities, Pleasant Hill faced abundant challenges. Among the most fraught was the sect’s commitment to pacifism during the Civil War. Sketchy applicants for admission who were not fully committed to the Shaker principles were another. According to the landmark’s website:
“After the Civil War, the community’s population remained fairly stable at more than 300, and the economy somewhat improved. However, with a vacuum of leadership, by 1886 the community was $14,000 in debt, and membership was composed of the very young and very old. New converts were often widowed women with small children or freeloading men.”
Among those freeloading men was a Cincinnatian named Joel Gibbs. He applied for membership at Pleasant Hill around 1869 and spent most of the next couple years supposedly living under the covenants of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, the formal name of the sect.
Founded in England in 1747 and introduced to the United States in 1780 the United Society believed that the end of the world was imminent and that Christianity had drifted apart from the original teachings of Jesus. They believed in communalism, confession of sin, separation from the world, and celibacy. Whatever he believed about common property, isolation and confession, Joel Gibbs was no fan of celibacy.
Born in 1805 in New Jersey, Gibbs arrived in Cincinnati as a young man and found work as a drayman. Today, he’d be a truck driver. Back then, he drove a team of sturdy horses pulling a good-sized wagon around town, making deliveries. He was married and had four children. Joel’s first wife died and he married a seamstress named Susanna Turner in 1849. They had a son together named James.
By the 1860s, that marriage was all but legally kaput. Susanna lived in a very nice house in Walnut Hills. Joel and the younger children were consigned to a house next door. In 1864, Susanna had Joel arrested because he was beating her and the children with his teamster’s whip. On another occasion, Susanna called a watchman into the house. He discovered Joel and son James in a heated argument with Susanna. James held a dirk in his hand. Although Susanna pleaded for assistance, the watchman left the family to sort things out for themselves. Neighbors described fights spilling out of the house into the streets and Joel, during one such incident, threatening his wife with a cudgel. According to the Cincinnati Commercial [January 11, 1872]:
“The parties have been living in a condition for many years that was not agreeable. They had separated and got together again, but each time failed to live in harmony. One was excitable, and the other what might be termed ‘immobile.’ No doubt, taking the parties separately from each other, they were respectable people.”
From Library of Congress
In 1869, Joel Gibbs, claiming Susanna threatened to kill him if he did not leave, departed Cincinnati and found his way to Pleasant Hill. He remained in that community for most of the next three years. Sometime during that extended stay, Susanna discovered Joel’s whereabouts and visited Pleasant Hill, apparently to invite him to return home. She said she was worried and thought he might have committed suicide. Joel rejected her offer, but did make a brief trip to Cincinnati to pick up some additional clothing.
Which brings us to the blackberry patch. The Shakers lived, worked, ate and worshipped communally; men usually being strictly segregated from women. Among the few circumstances in which men and women worked together was berrying. It was the custom to send four or five “sisters” out to the blackberry patch, accompanied by one “brother” to protect them.
On one fateful June day in 1871, Joel was recruited to participate in a berrying crew along with five sisters, among whom were Ella Huston, Maggie Link and Susan Paine. As Ella later recounted, after the women had filled their baskets, Joel said there were larger berries in another nearby field and took Maggie and Susan over yonder. Ella, having heard some rumors, decided to investigate and found Joel and Susan in flagrante, while Maggie sat alone under a tree. The next year, Ella testified in court:
“I had heard remarks of an improper intimacy between them before, but had supposed he was too much of a gentleman to be guilty of anything wrong. I watched them, however, on this occasion, and saw them commit adultery. He cautioned me not to tell what I saw near the blackberry fence, and said, ‘If you do, you will be sorry to the end of your days.’
This sordid tale emerged in January 1872 as Joel sued Susanna for divorce on the grounds of cruelty and abandonment and she countersued on grounds of cruelty, abandonment and adultery. The court, and the local newspapers, relished the blackberry patch story, Susanna’s attorney asking Ella if she was aware of other incidents of licentiousness among the supposedly celibate commune. Although the judge rejected the question, he wasn’t fast enough, and Ella replied that she knew several “sisters” sent away because of sexual behavior.
As an aside, between the blackberry incident in June and the divorce proceedings in January, Ella Huston had become Ella Gibbs because she had left the Shakers and married Susanna’s and Joel’s son, James. She was, in other words, a witness against her father-in-law.
Although enjoying the salacious testimony no end, the court ruled that Joel had no grounds for divorce. He was unable to produce any credible witnesses to Susanna’s alleged cruelty and, since it was he who had left home to join the Shakers, she had not abandoned him. This was a great disappointment to Joel because he had primarily sued for divorce to impel Susanna to sell the property she owned in Walnut Hills and give half to him as alimony.
The judge ruled that Susanna had not sufficiently proven cruelty, that adultery was an unnecessary addition to the charges and that Joel’s departure to join a celibate sect constituted all the proof that was necessary to prove abandonment. Susanna got the divorce and Joel got nothing.
Three years later, in 1875, a neighbor told Susanna there was an old man in apparent distress at the Walnut Hills train station. From the description, she knew it was Joel. She rushed to the station, where she found her ex-husband in a stupor. Joel told her he was not drunk but had taken poison. Susanna had him brought back to her house and called a doctor. Joel asked her to get a book out of the nightstand drawer and he showed her the recipe for his fatal concoction. There was no antidote and he died shortly thereafter.
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