Excerpt from Henry S. Nourse’s “History of the Town of Harvard Massachusetts 1732–1893,” written in 1894.

During the month of December, Mother Ann and the elders left Harvard for Petersham, where they experienced much brutal treatment from those who accused them of witchcraft, hostility to the country, and false prophecy. Returning to the Square House in January 1782, they were again formally warned to leave the place, and Captain Phineas Farnsworth with his militia company visited them prepared to enforce the order. They accordingly promised to leave on the next day, and the captain marched away without molesting them further. Having been absent but a brief time they returned, when a mob assembled before the Square House to drive them away. Mother Ann, warned of the coming danger, had the night before sought refuge at the home of Zacheus Stevens, and with the elders at once journeyed to Enfield.

About May 20, 1782, the return of Ann Lee and the elders to Harvard again excited the fears and passions of the people in the region around. A day in the latter part of July was set for the expulsion of the Shakers, and notices were posted in all the neighboring villages bidding the people meet on Harvard Common for the purpose. It happened that the same day there was a ministers’ meeting at Harvard, and the clergymen advised the people to go no farther until a committee had visited the Shakers and ascertained whether the charges made against them had any foundation. This being agreed to, four ministers, of whom the astute Zabdiel Adams—known as the “Bishop of Lunenburg”—was the spokesman, appeared at the Square House and sought audience with the elders. After much questioning by Mr. Adams, the committee returned to the Common and advised the people there congregated to abandon their intention, and finally persuaded them to disperse.

During August large numbers of believers from all over the country, even from a hundred miles away, came to Harvard and assembled at the Square House. On Sunday, the eighteenth, this throng of Shakers, in the words of their annalists, “went forth with great zeal, and worshipped God with singing, dancing, leaping, shouting, clapping of hands, and such other exercises as they were led into by the Spirit . . . But the sound of this meeting, thought joyful to the Believers, was terrible to the wicked; for the sound thereof was heard at the distance of several miles.”

The next morning very early a mob began to collect about the Square House, and rapidly increased until three or four hundred had assembled. The leaders of the crowd were Captain Phineas Farnsworth, Lieutenant Jonathan Pollard, Isaiah Whitney, Jonathan Houghton, Asa Houghton, Elisha Fullam, among others. They soon announced their purpose, which was to drive the nonresident believers out of town. One hour was given them for breakfast and preparations for the march, at the end of which time the procession was formed. The male believers were compelled to walk, but the females were allowed to ride the horses belonging to them. The mob escorted them, half in front and half in the rear. Having advanced about three miles a halt was called and James Shepherd, an Englishman, was scourged with switches cut by the wayside. Ann Lee, James Whittaker, and others had the previous week gone to Abel Jewett’s, in Littleton, and thence to Woburn, thus escaping the wrath of these infuriated men, which was especially violent toward those of English birth. The march continued to Lancaster, ten miles from the Square House, and was “one continued scene of cruelty and abuse.” The believers from other places were dismissed at Lancaster with warning never to appear in Harvard again, and the mob returned guarding a number of the resident Shakers who had persisted in accompanying their brethren. Reaching Captain Pollard’s, the first house after crossing the Harvard and Bolton line, a ring was formed and Abijah Worster was stripped and whipped for the crime of “going about and breaking up churches and families.” When Jonathan Houghton, one of the two chosen by the mob to inflict the stripes, had finished his ten and Elijah Priest was about to complete the allotted number of twenty, James Haskell, a reputable citizen of Harvard, chanced to ride up, and seeing what had been done, dismounting, stripped off his coat and offered to take the remaining stripes. At this the company, ashamed, released Worster, who went singing on this way.

The violent proceedings of this mob were not favored by the town’s people in general. Throughout the ten-miles’ march many had expressed their displeasure with the cruelty shown, but their remonstrances only called forth threats and curses; and January 20, 1783, the feeling against the communists was strong enough in town-meeting to cause the voting of instructions to the selectmen “to warn and carry out of town all the Foreigners called Shaking Quakers.”