West Union (Busro), Indiana

West Union (Busro) is an abandoned Shaker community in Busseron Township, northwestern Knox County, Indiana, about fifteen miles (24 km) north of Vincennes. The settlement was inhabited by the Shakers (United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing) from 1811 to 1827. Though short-lived, West Union was the westernmost Shaker settlement.

By 1808, the Shaker communities in New England and New York were on a firm foundation. Seeking to take advantage of the rising tide of religious fervor on the trans-Appalachian frontier, particularly the Cane Ridge Revival in Kentucky, the Shaker lead ministry at Watervliet and Mount Lebanon in New York sent Issachar Bates, John Dunlavy, and other missionaries west to spread knowledge about the Shaker faith. These early Shaker missionaries walked 1,200 miles (1,900 km) on foot into the "West" to "open the Gospel" in the Ohio Valley. The new faith soon attracted enough converts to open fresh communities in Kentucky and Ohio, including Pleasant Hill in Mercer County, Kentucky, South Union in Logan County, Kentucky, and Union Village, near Dayton, Ohio.

While the Shakers' unique ideas about communal ownership of property, sexual equality, celibacy, and economic cooperation appealed to many new settlers driven by religious fervor and the harshness of life on the frontier, their initial reception by some frontiersmen was not auspicious. Fearing that celibate utopians would break up families and compete with established churches, when Issachar Bates and fellow Shaker missionaries came to Indiana around 1809, a few settlers there resorted to violence to keep them away. Bates recalled that on his second trip to the Wabash Valley:

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