From the Quakers to the Children of Peace: The Development of David Willson's Mystical Religion

THOMAS GERRY From the Quakers to the Children of Peace: The Development of David Willson's Mystical Religion I In studying the many writings of David Willson, a visionary noted in his own lifetime, but largely ignored since his death at eighty-seven in 1866, I have encountered several focal events that radiate significance over Willson 's entire career. Willson was known in Upper Canada for his controversial theological writings, for the many hymns and poems he composed , and for the utopian community, the children of Peace, he helped to build at Hope (renamed Sharon in 1841), Upper Canada. Now, however , Willson is best known for his designing of the Sharon Temple, the Meeting House and Study, although his musical activities are receiving some public attention because ofthe annual/Music at Sharon' festival and the CBC'S broadcastingofthese concerts. His membership in the Societyof Friends (Quakers) from 1805 to 1812 made an indelible impact on him despite his claim, similar to that of most mystics, that he was wholly inspired from "Yithin. To concentrate on the event of Willson's split with Friends at Yonge Street Meeting, Newmarket, in 1812, in turn allows a perspective on Willson's life work in which some of the most fascinating aspects of his mystical writings stand out vividly in the foreground. The details of David Willson's arrival in Upper Canada in 1801 are so symbolically suggestive ofhis laterexperiences thatit is difficult to believe the single surviving account of it is not legendary. In her History of the Children of Peace of 1898, Willson's grandniece, Emily McArthur, relates that twenty-three-year-old David Willson, his wife, Phebe, and their two sons, John David and Israel, were shipwrecked on their crossing from New York State to the Canadian side of Lake Ontario, and struggled to shore by clinging to a spinning wheel.1 Out ofwater and a tempest David Willson appears with his family and a wheel: a striking image ofregeneration through mystical powers that contrasts prophetically with the straight roads laid out by Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe's soldiers, roads that physically represent the rationalist British orthodoxy enforced in the wilderness province. Concerning Willson's life prior to his emigration, few facts remain. He was born on 7 June 1778 in Dutchess County of New York State, near Poughkeepsie, 'of poor but pious Presbyterian parents,' as Willson him- DAVID WILLSON 201 self notes in A Collection of Items of the Life of David Willson ... , in 1852 .2 From genealogical records we know that the family originated in Carrickfergus , County Antrim, in Northern Ireland, where his grandfather, Hugh Willson, was a linen merchant. In 1770 David Willson's father, John, arrived in Dutchess County with his son Hugh L., during whose birth in 1768 the mother had died. John Willson remarried, and Catharine, his wife, bore four children: John J., David, Ann, and Mary. Young David's life, according to his own account seems to have been pitifully bleak: My occupation was hard labour in cultivating the soil, tillIwas left an orphanin a friendless world at the age of fourteen, without a father or a motherto assist me in life; after which I inclined to mechanical business in joining timber one part unto another ... My education was bounded by one year, and a considerable part of that time almost in my infancy.3 Besides carpentry, Willson engaged in the shippingbusiness as a sailoron his brother's merchant vessel, The Farmer, which operated between New York City and the West Indies.4 Henry Scadding, in Toronto of Old, states that Willson 'had visited the Chinese ports.'5 David Willson does not mention his seafaring directly, 'but often the imagery in his poems, hymns, and other works indicates a close knowledge of the sea and sailing, so that his having been a sailor is quite plausible. Sometime during the 1790S Willson met and married Phebe Titus, a young Quaker woman. Minutes from the Nine Partners Monthly Meeting of the Society of Friends in Dutchess County show that Phebe Titus was disowned by the Quakers on 17 September 1794, for 'keeping company with one not of our society,,6 most probably David Willson. The Titus family...