The ministry of Union Village, while subordinate to that at Mount
Lebanon, rules or has a general oversight of the western societies in
Ohio and Kentucky; and in former times there has been a good deal of
printing done there, a number of Shaker publications having been written
and published at Union Village.
The society at Union Village consists of four families, containing at
this time two hundred and fifteen persons, of whom ninety-five are males
and one hundred and twenty females. Of the whole number, forty-eight are
children and youth under twenty-one, and of these twenty are boys and
twenty-eight girls. Between 1827 and 1830 it had six hundred members,
and at that time there were six families. It had, however, about that
time received sudden and considerable accessions from the dissolution of
the Shaker Society in Indiana, which left that state on account of the
unhealthfulness of the country, and whose members were divided among the
Ohio societies. In the last ten years I was told there had been neither
gain nor loss of numbers, taking the average of the year; for here, as
elsewhere, there is usually a swelling of the ranks in the fall, from
what are called "winter Shakers."
The society at Union Village was "gathered" between 1805 and 1810.
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