ABSTRACT
Ann Lee, the woman whose religious teachings were to become the fundamental doctrines of the Shaker sect, was born in Manchester, England, in 1736, the second of the eight children of John Lee, a blacksmith and jobbing tailor. Little is known of her youth, but she appears to have had no formal schooling, and to have worked from an early age in a textile mill and, later, as a cook in a public infirmary.
