Richard McNemar

Richard McNemar (20 November 1770 – 15 September 1839) was a Presbyterian-turned-Shaker preacher, revivalist preacher, writer, and a historian of the early nineteenth century. He published the Shakers’ first printed bound book and is considered by historians as the father of Shaker literature. He started the Shaker colonies of Union Village Shaker settlement in Ohio and Shaker village of Pleasant Hill in Kentucky. He is the most prolific composer of Shaker hymns and anthems.

McNemar was born 20 November 1770 at Tuscarora, Pennsylvania. He was the youngest of the McNemar children and had several brothers and sisters. According to family records and an existing poem by McNemar his family name means "Nobody's Son." There are several variations on the name, but the two prominent ones are "McNemar" and "McNamer". He is of Scotch-Irish descent that populated Pennsylvania.

The McNemar family moved when he was five years old to Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. They lived there for four years and then moved east about ten miles to a settlement on Shaner's Creek where they stayed for three years. The family moved again in the fall of 1783 south to the Kishacoqueller Valley. This was at the end of the Revolutionary War. McNemar worked on the family farm in the summers from 1783 and in the winters went to school. He was the last to leave the family, at the age of fifteen, since he was the youngest.

In 1786 he became a schoolteacher and was in charge of a school in Stone Valley, Pennsylvania. In 1787 during the summer he worked at odd jobs for an income. In the fall of 1787 he taught school at Redstone Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania. In the fall of 1788 he taught school in Stone Valley and in the spring of 1789 he returned to Redstone to continue teaching. In the summer of 1789 McNemar went to Kentucky. He returned from there on the first day of January 1790 and began teaching at Ligonier, Pennsylvania in Westmoreland County, where he continued until April 1791. McNemar began teaching at New Salem, Pennsylvania, in May 1791. In October he traveled down the Ohio River and arrived in the beginning of November at Maysville, Kentucky.

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