Isaac Newton Youngs (July 4, 1793 – August 7, 1865) was a faithful member of the Shakers for most of his life. He was a prolific diarist who left a large collection of manuscripts that document the history of the New Lebanon, New York Church Family of Shakers from its early years to 1865.
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Isaac Newton Youngs was born in Johnstown, New York on July 4, 1793, the youngest child of Martha (Farley) and Seth Youngs, Jr. He was christened in the Methodist church there.
Seth Youngs decided to join the Shakers when Isaac was about six months old, and took Isaac and his other young children into the Shaker society at Watervliet, New York, where Isaac's aunt and uncle, Molly (Van Epps) and Benjamin Youngs, lived. Isaac's mother chose not to join, so the infant Isaac was [Fosterage|fostered]] by Benjamin and Molly Youngs at first.[1]
Youngs lived with his aunt and uncle for several years in an arrangement that was not unusual at the time. Many children, Shaker or not, were separated from their parents at young ages. Being “put out” or sent to live with another family was an old custom meant to keep children from being spoiled. Children were indentured to learn trades, as well, and that often meant living as an apprentice with the family of a master craftsman, rather than with kin.[2]
Youngs thrived under the care of his aunt and uncle, a clockmaker. He was a precocious child, inventive, and fascinated by machinery. His idea of fun was to build a little mill. He learned to tell time before he could talk, and enjoyed watching his uncle work on clocks.[3]
At age thirteen, Youngs was sent from Watervliet to the New Lebanon, New York Shaker village, where he became an apprentice to tailors David Slosson and Rufus Bishop. He spent most of his life at New Lebanon. Due to his good work ethic and remarkable intelligence he was allowed to branch out into additional trades, including clockmaking.
Youngs struggled with the demands of life as a Believer. Celibacy was especially difficult for a young man. He was rebellious and sexually tempted, but he learned humility, resisted temptation, conquered his lust, and became a role model to younger Shakers.[4]
Shakers had a strong work ethic and each Believer’s workday was supposed to be filled with productive activity every waking moment. The New Lebanon Shaker village journals show how busy Youngs was.
Youngs was exceptionally versatile. He taught the New Lebanon Church Family boys' school (held from December into March) for many years. He spent part of every fall, winter, and spring in the tailors’ shop, making clothes for the brethren and training new apprentices. During planting and harvest seasons, he worked on the farm.
From 1821 to 1833, a wide variety of activities occupied him. He went to the fledgling Shaker community at Savoy, Massachusetts, and visited his mother in Schenectady, New York, and his foster mother Molly Youngs at Watervliet. He co-authored A Juvenile Monitor, which was a guide for good behavior for children and youth. He helped build the new meeting house for the New Lebanon Church Family, wrote poems and a hymn for its dedication, and repeatedly repaired its tin roof. He built a table for a harness maker, traveled to Saybrook, Connecticut, transcribed hymnals by hand, helped build the brethren’s new workshop, and attended a camp meeting.
Youngs kept at least two meeting or religious journals for the Church Family from 1815 to 1828, composed a dialogue between the Flesh and the Spirit, repaired the village’s waterworks, built an arch in the sisters’ weave shop, ran social meetings for the Children’s Order, worked on the Church Family’s dwelling, turned more than a thousand clothespins on a lathe, and laid a new floor in the dairy.[5]
A prolific scribe, Youngs kept detailed records about himself and his society. More than four thousand pages are known to have survived and constitute significant historical documentation of the Shaker Ministry's home village for almost sixty years. Youngs kept several journals covering most of the years from 1820 to 1865. In 1834, he toured the Shaker societies in Ohio and Kentucky, kept a journal of the trip, and made maps of the villages he visited.
Youngs also wrote poetry (some of it lyrics for hymns) and did the Church Family's bookkeeping.[6]
He continued to work on clocks, and perfected his wall clock designed with wooden works in 1840. Several examples of his 1840 wall clock are at Hancock Shaker Village.[7]
Brother Elisha Blakeman wrote that Youngs’s mechanical genius was remarkable. He could turn machinist, mason or anything that promoted the general good. Many conveniences, which added so much to Shakers' domestic happiness, Blakeman concluded, owed their origin to Youngs.[8]
Youngs mastered a number of trades. He was a tailor, clockmaker, mechanic, and inventor (of a metronome, toneometer, leveling instrument, and five-pointed pen for drawing music staffs (several now at Hancock Shaker Village). He was also a lens-grinder, stonecutter, button maker, tinsmith, printer, pipe fitter, joiner, and blacksmith. He built a sundial, made sisters' tools such as knitting needles, bodkins, and a weaver’s reed. He was the master builder for the New Lebanon Church Family’s 1839 schoolhouse, and designed a new teacher’s desk. He also may have had a hand in the village's water-powered machinery.[9]
Youngs was also gifted in music. His fine voice gave him the first position in the Shaker choir, where he set the pitch for their hymns. He wrote tunes and lyrics, and taught singing. He also corresponded with other musicians throughout the society to standardize their music notation. He wrote The Rudiments of Music Displayed and Explained in 1833.[10]
His A Short Abridgement of the Rules of Music, published in 1843, was the second historically notable collection of Shaker music to be published (the first being their hymnal Millennial Praises in 1813).[11]
From 1856 to 1860, Youngs wrote a history of the New Lebanon Shakers. In it, he covered a wide variety of topics, including equality of the sexes, worship, building construction, farming practices, brethren's trades, food, dress (women's as well as men's), women's work, music, education, avoidance of militia service and other conflicts with the state, donations, and casualties.[12]
Youngs' health took a turn for the worse in late middle age, perhaps a result of years of soldering seams in tin roofs. His later years were uncomfortable physically and emotionally. He grew to despise tailoring, his primary trade, and had spells of acute anxiety. Even so, he continued to keep the New Lebanon Church Family journal almost to the end of his life.
Finally he slipped into dementia, as had his parents and several siblings before him. Left alone by his caretaker, he died from defenestration (a fall out of an upper-floor window in the New Lebanon Church Family dwelling) in August 1865. Despite the problems of his later years, he was eulogized with affection, respect, and empathy.[13]