Writings in this group exemplify how the content of letters can be both trivial and important. Many of these manuscripts contain references to the weather and to the relative health of a community as well as polite passages in which the writer sends his good wishes to others. In contrast to these incidental remarks, lengthy passages in the letters chide other communities for their neglect, supposed or real, of the South Union, Ky., community and report on unseemly relations with "the world." For example, in 1815 the South Union Shakers felt that they had been cast adrift by the home ministry. Their reply to a letter from the ministry said, in part: "It was indeed great consolation to us to see once more that our names were still held in remembrance by our friends in the East--as it had seemed & sometimes felt to us as if we had been almost entirely forgotten." In 1828 the South Union community expressed contempt for its sister community, Union Village, Ohio, because the Ohio Shakers did not offer to help with a financial crisis called the "Willie debt." By the mid-1830s, judging from the tenor of the letters, South Union Shakers' ill feelings toward other communities had ended. Conversely, the South Union residents could in no way have felt neglected by the world that surrounded them. One of the letters in this group recounts how a mulatto, Juliet Mockaby, was born at the Shaker community and was adopted there to save her from certain death at the hands of her maternal grandparents. Several manuscripts describe Kentucky statutes that threatened the existence of Shakers in the state. The legislation was initiated by persons who had lived in Shaker communities and had left them after becoming dissatisfied with the lifestyle. Also, prominent among court cases affecting the South Union Shakers was one brought by John Boon, which resulted from a disagreement about an overpayment to the Shakers for building a boat. Even though the Shakers won the case, the costs to them from legal fees and lost time at work nearly exceeded what Boon had asked in his suit.
