A Day No Pigs Would Die

Robert Newton Peck

The Shaker Religion

The Shakers are a Christian religious organization whose leader and members set sail for America in 1774. Mother Ann Lee, the founder of the Shakers, began life as a member of the Quaker religion, but later founded Shakerism which she would have called the "United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing."

Shaker Religion

• There are still Shakers alive today, although only fewer than a dozen remain. Real Shakers are in fact not much at all like the Peck family as portrayed in the book.

• If a worldly (outside the Shaker religion) family went to live with the Shakers, they would be split up according to sex. For example, all male children would live with men. All female children would live with women. Parents would not necessarily live with their own children, and married men and women would no longer live as husband and wife.

• Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Shaker life to us worldly people is the order and simplicity self-imposed by the Shakers themselves.

Old Shaker Church 1794

The Belief in Celibacy

• One of the best-known Shaker beliefs is an emphasis on celibacy. A celibate lifestyle was seen as important because Shakers felt that by remaining celibate, they were more closely imitating the life of Jesus Christ. This has resulted in the Shaker movement dying out over time, especially since they were not concerned about bringing in new converts. Ann Lee, the founder, may have turned to celibacy and rejected even marital sex out of torment for the deaths of her four children.

• Shakers do not live in family units like Robert and his mother, father, and Aunt. They live in communities where men are completely separated from women. While men and women may maintain friendships, relationships must never develop into romantic love. To help ensure the Shaker doctrine on celibacy is followed, Shakers built houses, worship facilities, and all buildings with two sections and two doors--one for men and one for women.

A Simple Way of Life

• One of the core beliefs was simplicity in daily living -- simplicity in dress, food and living arrangements. Thus everyone wore old-fashioned clothes of similar plain cut.

Shaker Furniture

• Shaker furniture is known for being simple, functional and durable. Their sense of practicality has led to the invention of the circular saw and the apple peeler.

Shaker Law

• "Whoever would live long and happy, let him observe the following rules:----- Let your thoughts be rational, solid, godly.

• Let your conversation be little, useful, true. • Let your conduct be profitable, virtuous, charitable. • Let your manners be sober, courteous, cheerful. • Let your diet be temperate, wholesome, sober. • Let your apparel be frugal, neat, comely. • Let your sleep be moderate, quiet, seasonable. • Let your recreations be lawful, brief, seldom. • Let your prayers be short, devout, sincere."

•

Abner Doubleday• Doubleday has often been credited with

inventing the game of baseball in 1839 at Cooperstown, New York, now the location of the baseball's Hall of Fame. This claim appears to date from the late nineteenth century, when baseball owners tried to disassociate the game from any connection to the English game of rounders. The assertion that Doubleday invented baseball is almost certainly untrue. Doubleday was not at Cooperstown in 1839; he never referred to the game, much less claimed that he invented it, and his obituary in the New York Times did not mention baseball, either. Regardless of the questions concerning Doubleday's status as the creator of baseball, a 1907 commission, investigating all sides of the issue, gives official credit to him.

Ethan Allen• Allen spent a considerable portion of his life in the effort to achieve

independence for what is now Vermont, commanding (1770-1775) an irregular force called the Green Mountain Boys

• At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War (1775-1783) he led the expedition that captured Fort Ticonderoga in the first colonial victory of the war (notwithstanding the fact that he and the Boys basically knocked on the door, walked in and took over). He would soon thereafter attempt a badly planned, badly executed assault on Montreal which would result in his being imprisoned by the British and thus removed from further participation in the Revolution.

• After the War, he continued the campaign for Vermont statehood, a goal which was not to be achieved during his lifetime.

• Allen was no military genius, rather an overbearing, loud-mouthed braggart. He was also a staunch patriot who apparently did not know the meaning of fear. More importantly, he had the loyalty of the Green Mountain Boys, as unruly a bunch of roughnecks as any in history. He could control them better than anyone else, and they would follow him anywhere.

The Capture of Fort Ticonderoga May 11, 1775

• Born on February 17, 1928 in Vermont, Robert Newton Peck was the youngest in a family of seven children. He best known for A Day No Pigs Would Die which depicts both the simplicity and brutal realities of farm life. The novel was influenced by his father, an illiterate farmer and pig-slaughterer whose earthy wisdom contributed to his understanding of the natural order and the old Shaker beliefs deeply rooted in the land and its harvest.

• Peck was born in rural Vermont to Shaker farmers whose hard yet rewarding lives inspired much of his fiction. Just like the character in the novel, Robert Peck's father's name was Haven. Robert, although the youngest of his brothers and sisters, was the first to attend school. Also like the character in the book, neither Robert's father, mother, nor aunt could read or write. However, the author says he learned more from them than anyone else in his life.