going to Albany with Calvin Green more than 20 times to the
Legislature while trying to get exemption from the military
obligations." He was actively engaged in this business from at
least 1820 to 1829 and still to some extent as late as 1857.
The pens were of two types. One was a barrel or tube pen, the
tube made of tin in which was slid a silver pen attached to a
common lead pencil of suitable length. The other was a wooden
handle on which the silver pen was slipped. Some time previous
to the date of March 9, 1822, Freegift had made about 4 gross of
silver pens. On March 15, 1822, he cut 292 pens in 14 minutes
with new cutters or shears which he had invented. On May 18 he
turned 1538 handles of red cedar on a foot lathe. On August 27
he split out timber for 2560 pen handles, and melted, cast and
rolled $25 into plate. I might point out that he used silver
coinage of the time to melt and produce the thin silver plate
needed for the pen nibs.

In 1817 Freegift went to the Watervliet West Family to see his
father and mother. His father must have left the Shakers about this
time and died in 1819 on Long Island, with three of his children
(although not Freegift) going down for the funeral. His mother
died in 1826 at the age of 85.

But Freegift had another side of him from the practical and
mechanical^ and was G oncer nod enough about the way--fefoe Sha-kers
were p^r-ogres-siftg ta, *pu.t. JiJLs. -tiioiifr&fe-6~-4-n
writit*g .
Priscilla Brewer relates that the MILENNIAL LAWS, the written
book of regulations, was assembled by Freegift Wells shortly
before Mother Lucy Wright's death in February 1821. "Wells col-
lected all the rules that could be recalled from the ministra-
tions of Father Joseph Meacham and Mother Lucy and arranged them
in categories "Separation of the Sexes," "Orders Pertaining to
the Sabbath," and the like. He showed the book to Mother Lucy,
recommending that copies be distributed to all Shaker families
and read aloud to members in meeting. Mother Lucy refused his
request. She was afraid that the act of recording Shaker rules
would limit the freedom of successive leaders to change them as a
result of divine revelation; she was reluctant to have rule books
spread so widely throughout the Society that the regulations
would become too familiar and thus less sacred; and she disliked
the prospect that some of the orders might leak to the World.
But after her death, and perhaps because of it f the MILENNIAL
LAWS were transcribed many times over and copies dispatched to
every Family in the Society."
In 1823 Freegift went to the West Family to talk with his brother
Seth about building a windmill for cutting wood. A month later,
Freegift started the mill and it worked fine. In 1824 he was one
of twelve brethren taken to jail for failing to pay militia
fines. Two years later he became an Elder. He was now 41.
In 1831 he sounded for rock on the properties of the First and
Second Orders (now the Church and North Families) and found it in
two places 42 ft. from the surface. One of these places became
the quarry from which was extracted the stone used in the founda-