Issachar Bates

1758 - 1837  (79 years)

• Name	Issachar Bates
  Born	24 Jan 1758	Hingham, Plymouth, Massachusetts, American Colonies
  Gender	Male
  Died	17 Mar 1837
  Person ID	P44559544	My Genealogy
  Last Modified	10 Feb 2010

  
  

  Father	William Bates,   b. 2 Aug 1725, Hingham, Plymouth, Massachusetts, American Colonies
  Mother	Mercy Joy,   b. 8 Oct 1732, Cohasset, Norfolk, Massachusetts, American Colonies
  Married	29 Mar 1748	Hingham, Plymouth, Massachusetts, American Colonies
  Family ID	F579	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

• Notes

  He was brought up as a Presbyterian and was one of eleven children. He was a hard-bitten soldier of the Revolution and merry singer of ballad tunes, who gave up everything to join the Shakers, becoming their most indefatigable missionary to the "Southeastern Territory." It was he who travelled thirty-eight thousand miles in ten years, most of it on foot, converting eleven hundred people to Shakerism. It was he who wrote from Busro, Indiana in 1811, "My health is not very good, probably in consequence of having to travel seven miles every day to and from my work at the mill, sometimes in mud and water up to my knees, but my faith is everlasting and I mean to keep it." Issachar was a Shaker missionary to a new Shaker settlemement in Ohio that was dubbed Watervliet, after the Watervliet, New York settlement, which was the first Shaker settlement. The Ohio settlement was in what is now the Dayton, Ohio area. He was sent as a missionary from the Shaker settlement at New Lebannon, New York in 1805.