Shaking the Faith: Women, Family, and Mary Marshall Dyer's Anti-Shaker Campaign, 1815-1867

In 1815, Mary Marshall Dyer renounced her Shaker beliefs and departed from the religious community in Enfield, New Hampshire, that she had called her home, leaving behind her husband and five children. Angry and alone, Dyer embarked on a fifty year public campaign against the Shakers in an effort to obtain custody of her children and to discredit the sect. The American public followed the debate with great interest. De Wolfe tells this now little-known story in brilliant detail, and shows why Dyer's life captured America's imagination. Titillating details about the mysterious sect no doubt contributed to Dyer's popularity, but her story also resonated because it reflected profound changes in family, religion, and gender that Americans faced in the world before the Civil War.