biography
| name: |
Lee, Ann
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originally Lees
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| sex:
| female
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| lived:
| (1736–84)
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| biography:
| Religious leader and visionary, born in Manchester, Greater Manchester, NW England, UK. A blacksmith's daughter, she was working in the textile mills when she joined a new group of Protestants known as ‘Shakers’ because of their agitation during worship services. She married (1762), but the death of her four children in infancy led to self-mortification, ending in a revelation that cohabitation of the sexes was the source of all evil. By c.1770 she was dedicating herself to preaching her new gospel and was twice imprisoned where she had a ‘grand vision’ that was later interpreted by her followers as the ‘second coming of Christ’. When the Shakers received a ‘revelation’ that they should be spreading their message in New England, she and eight followers went to New York in 1774. By 1778 they had settled in Watervliet, near Albany, and by then she was known as Mother Ann or Mother of the New Creation, and travelled throughout E New York State and New England to spread her message and gain converts to the Shaker faith. Imprisoned briefly in 1780 because of her pacifist teachings, she was also opposed to slavery, but it was her insistence on celibacy, however, that proved both to distinguish and ultimately doom her Shaker church. |
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