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American Communal Societies Quarterly 
Volume 11 Number 1 Pages 1-2 
January 2017 
Table of Contents 
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digitalcommons@hamilton.edu. 
1American Communal Societies Quarterly
Volume 11, no. 1 –– January 2017
Table of  Contents
From the Editor        2
Our Thriving Neighbors. A Shaker Elder Tells of  the 
Success of  His Colony Adjoining St. Cloud. By Ezra J. Stewart 3
Shaker Testimony.      15
Pineapples in Florida. The Shakers Have Made a Great Success 
with This Delicious Fruit. By Ezra J. Stewart   16
Banana Culture. The Splendid Fruit Grows Naturally 
in Florida–How to Cultivate.    24
St. Cloud. Plat of  the Surveys and Lines for the Town 
and Farming Tracts.     25
The Five-Acre Tracts.      26
The Subdivision.      27
Stop the Seining. Our Lakes are Being Depleted and 
Future Profits Discounted. By Ezra J. Stewart  28
The Pineapple. Destined to Be a Leading Crop of  Florida. 30
The American Eagle….      31
The Shakers….       31
A Tribute to Benjamin Gates. By Ezra J. Stewart   31
There are openings….      33
Hunting and Fishing. South Florida a Paradise for Hunters 
 and Fishermen. By Ezra J. Stewart    33
Pineapples.       38
Citrus Groves in Florida. Practical Information Relating 
 to Planting, Cultivating, Gathering and Marketing Oranges, 
 Grapefruit, etc. By Ezra J. Stewart    39
The Shaker Community.     46
Cassava and Arrowroot. Two Prolific Plants Which Promise 
 Great Profits in the Coming Industrial Development of  
 Florida. By Ezra J. Stewart     47
Yule-tide Meditations. By Ezra J. Stewart   53
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2The Shakers….       55
Nut-Bearing Trees. Pecans, Walnuts, Chestnuts and Almonds 
 of  Many Varieties Can Be Profitably Produced in Florida. 
 by Ezra J. Stewart.      56
News from the Shaker Colony.     61
Winter Strawberries. A Great Money Crop, but One 
 Requiring Care, Skill and Industry. By Ezra J. Stewart 63
 
Front cover illustration: “Shaker Orange Grove. St. Cloud, Fla.” 
Postcard, Communal Societies Collection, Hamilton College.
From the Editor –
We hope to help our readers shake off some of  the winter chill with this 
special issue of  ACSQ dedicated to the Shaker community at Narcoossee, 
Florida, sometimes referred to as “Olive Branch.” This relatively unstudied 
southern outpost of  Shakerism existed from 1896 until 1924 under the 
supervision of  the Mount Lebanon Bishopric. It consisted of  one family 
managed by Elder Ezra J. Stewart that never exceeded twenty Believers.  
From September 16, 1909, until April 14, 1910, the St. Cloud Tribune 
of  nearby St. Cloud, Florida, ran a series of  articles by Elder Stewart and 
others describing the Shaker community and its agricultural enterprises 
in detail. Remarkably, this series was illustrated with photographs of  
the Shaker community and its associated properties. This newspaper is 
exceedingly rare, as are most printed items from the early days of  settlement 
and development in Florida. 
In this issue of  ACSQ we are pleased to present all of  Elder Stewart’s 
articles in their entirety, as well as other content relevant to the Shakers 
from these issues of  the newspaper. We have complemented these texts 
with images of  Narcoosee published on contemporary postcards. We hope 
that by making this primary source material more widely available we can 
spur further research into this fascinating sidebar of  Shaker history. Who 
would have inagined Shakers farming bananas, pineapples, and oranges? 
Or giving advice on how to hunt alligators?
Best wishes for 2017!
  – Christian Goodwillie, Associate Editor
2
American Communal Societies Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 1 [2017]
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English

American Communal Societies Quarterly 
Volume 11 Number 3 Pages 142-142 
July 2017 
From the Editor 
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BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. For more information, visit http://digitalcommons.hamilton.edu/about.html or contact 
digitalcommons@hamilton.edu. 
142
From the Editor –
In this issue we have an account of  Abijah Alley, a Shaker apostate. 
Authored by Nancy Gray Schoonmaker and Christian Goodwillie, the 
article traces Alley’s journey into and out of  the Shaker community. 
Schoonmaker is an independent scholar in Durham, North Carolina. She 
holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of  North Carolina at Chapel 
Hill, and studies religion in the nineteenth-century United States with an 
emphasis on Christians who believed the ability to converse with the dead 
was a new dispensation from their loving God. Goodwillie is the director 
of  special collections and archives at Hamilton College, and a prolific 
author on the Shakers and American history in general. His most recent 
book is History of  the Shakers at New Lebanon by Isaac Newton Youngs, 1780-
1861, which he and Glendyne Wergland edited. This work is a critical 
edition and transcription of  Youngs’s “A Concise View Of  the Church 
of  God and of  Christ, On Earth,” which is printed here for the first time 
in unabridged form. It includes an introductory essay comparing Shaker-
authored histories of  Shaker communities, appendices related to the 
members of  New Lebanon’s Church Family, and numerous illustrations. 
See the enclosed flyer for more information about it.
 I’d also like to remind you of  Seeking Robert White: Quaker, Shaker, Husband, 
Father, by Sandra A. Soule, published by Couper Press last year. Soule 
describes her work as an exploration of  Robert White’s spiritual journey 
which eventually led him to the Shakers. Much to his dismay, however, 
his wife did not share his views and remained committed to Quakerism. 
As a married, celibate Believer, Robert White had to balance the often-
conflicting dual roles he played in his natural and Shaker families. How 
he functioned as a Shaker convert living “in the world” is a story of  faith 
and challenges—an exceptional Shaker experience in the mid-nineteenth 
century.
 For all Couper Press publication, go to https://www.hamilton.edu/
offices/lits/special-collections/couperpress.
—Randall L. Ericson
 
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From the Editor

Reprint of an article published in the September 23, 1909, St. Cloud Tribune

American Communal Societies Quarterly 
Volume 11 Number 1 Pages 24-24 
January 2017 
Banana Culture. The Splendid Fruit Grows Naturally in 
Florida–How to Cultivate. 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.hamilton.edu/acsq 
 Part of the American Studies Commons 
This work is made available by Hamilton College for educational and research purposes under a Creative Commons 
BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. For more information, visit http://digitalcommons.hamilton.edu/about.html or contact 
digitalcommons@hamilton.edu. 
24
BANANA CULTURE.
The Splendid Fruit Grows Naturally in Florida–How to 
Cultivate. 
[After three paragraphs about general cultivation of  banana plants, the 
article addresses the Shakers and their experience with growing them].
As stated in last week’s St. Cloud Tribune, the Shakers in their pretty 
little settlement have given considerable attention to banana raising, and 
they find that it is a fruit which offers fair returns for the labor and expense 
involved. The experiment was started by planting about one-quarter of  an 
acre of  muck land in which about 170 plant were set eight feet apart each 
way. As the plant in this latitude is hardy, the plants of  course commenced 
growing right away, and in a little less than a year the first flowers appeared, 
and then the bananas. It is stated that the plants in this first experiment 
had, in that brief  12 months, attained a growth of  stalk and foliage of  
nearly 20 feet, and having five and six giant plants in each hill. In January 
of  that year there was a slight frost, and nearly all these large leaves were 
killed, but it was not long until new leaves began unfolding from the center 
stalk, and in less than two months the plants were just as big as ever. In a 
year and a half  from the time of  setting out the first plants, fine bunches of  
fruit were harvested, and these banana plants have been yielding ever since. 
The Shakers think that the “Hart’s Choice” or “Lady Finger” banana is 
the variety best suited for this section of  Florida, as it is very hardy and 
the fruit is of  superior flavor. It is a dwarf  variety and does not produce so 
much fruit to the bunch as the Martinique, for instance, but it is thought 
that the quantity is abundantly compensated for in quality. To the real 
banana lover there is no comparison to be made between the home-grown 
banana and that which is shipped from a distance. The shipped banana 
must necessarily be green and must ripen after the huge stalk is cut off. It 
is thought that banana growing will become one of  the great industries of  
Florida with proper culture as a fruit venture. 
St. Cloud Tribune, 1, no. 3 (September 23, 1909).
1
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