The purpose of this study is to present an example of a Shaker teacher-musician whose thinking and activities exemplified those Shakers living in the "western" Shaker societies of Ohio and-Kentucky. Oliver C. Hampton is that person. Hampton was a teacher, musician, composer, poet, writer of prose, elder, and trustee of the Union Village, Whitewater, and North Union, Ohio societies. Historians do not rank Hampton and his several teacher-musician friends as highly as other, better-known Shaker leaders. Nevertheless, Hampton and his colleagues contributed much to the betterment of their fellow Shakers' lives through their considerable efforts.Chapter Two gives the reader a brief historical background to enable him better to understand the beginnings of this unique religious movement.Chapter.Three deals with Shaker attitudes on religion, education, and music. The philosophy of these facets of Shaker life are explored because these attitudes affected everything the Shakers did.Chapter Four gives details of the life of Oliver C. Hampton. His personality is set forth. His responsibilities as elder, teacher, and musician are discussed. Thirty examples of Oliver Hampton's hymns and laboring songs are briefly analyzed from the singer's perspective.Chapter Five discusses Susanna M. Brady, the Rupes, and other musicians and teachers of the Ohio and Kentucky societies.Chapter Six gives a brief summary of the contributions of Oliver Hampton and his friends in the Ohio and Kentucky Shaker societies.Appendices further illustrate the musical, poetic, and prose efforts of Hampton, the Rupes, Brady, and others. Appendix A lists all Shaker teachers and musicians found by the writer. Appendix B is an article by Hampton as published in The Shaker. Appendix C contains the thirty musical examples of Hampton as copied from the originals and then transcribed by the author. Appendix D lists the musical examples contained in the paper and where they may be found. Appendix E contains music attributed to the Rupes and Brady. Appendix F is a set of three photographs, including one of Hampton.

In 1807 the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing (Shakers)established a society near the Gasper River in Logan County, Kentucky. The society was soon named South Union, and it lasted until 1922, the longest-lasting Shaker community west of the Appalachians. Most of the first Shaker converts in Logan County had only a few years beforehand participated in a series of evangelical Presbyterian camp meetings known collectively as the Kentucky Revival, the Revival of 1800, or the Great Revival.Though Presbyterian revivalism and Shakerism shared certain characteristics (particularl millennialism and enthusiastic forms of worship), there were many differences between them as well; Shakerism was not necessarily a logical continuation of the Great Revival. So why did so many Scots-Irish Presbyterians in south-central Kentucky convert to Shakerism? How did conversion make sense to them? And how was Shaker conversion understood by those who did not convert? Through a close reading of primary sources, this thesis attempts to answer these questions. Shaker conversion is better understood as an interaction within a community rather than as a transaction between an individual and God. The decade or so preceding the establishment of South Union—the disestablishment of state churches, the mass migration to the trans-Appalachian west, the burgeoning market economy—was, for many Scots-Irish Presbyterians, a period of social disorder. This was especially true in south-central Kentucky, where the local Presbyterian establishment was riven by schism. The Great Revival was a brief but ultimately disappointing creation of an alternate community, a way of escape from the surrounding chaos. Shakerism offered the apotheosis of that alternate community. South Union was a camp meeting that never ended. However, the denizens of south-central Kentucky who did not convert to Shakerism were quite hostile to the new sect. They understood conversion as a form of betrayal, a renunciation of a community which they still identified with. This understanding became especially clear during a divorce case involving William and Sally Boler, in which William Boler’s rights as a man and a citizen became circumspect because of his conversion to Shakerism. Since the mid-nineteenth century, Shaker conversion has become less threatening to the outside world. Indeed, the popular imagination has co-opted South Union as quintessentially American. By reclaiming the Shakers from the margins of society, popular memory has effectively erased conversion from the Shaker story. After all, Shaker conversion was never as much about belief or even practice as it was about a distinct and separate community.