In the northernmost wooded country side of Chester county lies a village called Shenkel, its serenity only a cover for the tumultuous hedonism of the past.

Consider the mid-19th century - as straight laced as women's corsets, covered by the layers upon layers of frills and enshrouding societal "lace." Somber and reserved.

Ironically considering the severity of repression at the start of the Victorian age, the era brought on the antithesis of reserve in many an unassuming American town.

Such was the advent of Free Love Valley (so designated on certain old Chester County maps): religious cult, nudist colony, alleged Utopia. The transformation of the small North Coventry township corners from a peaceful farming community to a haven for sexual exchange and un-inhibited nudity followed the arrival of an evangelist by the name of Theophilus Ransom Gates.

The story is told in detail by Charles Coleman Sellers in "Theophilus the Battle-Axe." A sickly boy, born in Connecticut in 1787, he was haunted by visions of the pits of hell.

Thrown into Philadelphia's Old Arch Street Prison for debt, Gates gained note for an impassioned public plea in which he attacked the practice of jailing debtors.

Gates rebelled foremost against the clergy and theology of his day, publishing a small sheet in Philadelphia entitled "Battle Axe" (1837) with a quotation from Jeremiah: "Thou art my battle-axe and weapon of war."

He walked the street selling the sheet for five cents a copy or a dozen for 20 cents.

Quoting from Cor. vii, 31, "Fort he fashion of this world passeth away," Gates construed the bond of man and wife a mere fashion.

"No two persons, therefore, ought now to agree or promise to live any longer together than they live in mutual good will, peace and comfort with each other," he wrote.

Gates said it would be better, in fact, to change partners 20 times than remain bound with an incompatible mate in strive and disagreement," and so in the order of the devil, and in his dominions on the road to hell."

It is assumed this may have arisen from the fact that his own marriage to a Philadelphia woman wasn't a happy one. She suspected him of insanity.

"Falling in love" he said, "now so common in the world, is in every case an enchantment of the devil, the direct tendency of which is to love and regard a creature more than the Creator."

Thus free love was granted a theological justification.

Gates also took a daring stand in defence that no one should have a child who did not want one. Even Gate's assistant John Humphrey Noyes, a Dartmouth dropout who latched onto Gates beliefs, was in dis-agreement by his advocation of birth control, then called "onanism."

When Gates moved from preaching before Baptist congregations in Virginia, he traveled north to Philadelphia -- in those days holding the reputation as big, bad city.

He had a hard time getting people to help him distribute his pamphlets until Hannah Williamson, a daughter of an old Welsh Quaker family in Chester County, offered to help.

She had left the farm of her stern parents to become a obstensible woman of easy virtue in the eyes of Philadelphia society. When she later joined with Gates, she went to work capturing converts. They left the judgement of the big city and set up camp on the South Bank of the Schuylkill.

The preacher and his followers, sometimes termed "Gatesites" were commonly called "Battle Axes" and labeled heretics. All members were listed as unmarried. Early communists, they shared common ownership of property.

Gates made a few dozen converts, among them the simple farms of German and Dutch heritage on whose farms the Battle Axes would gather and disrobe, leaving clothes and morals in a heap.

Gates doctrine of power over human and scriptural laws enticed the group of followers to meet in different homes around Shenkel, where they would engage in ritualistic exercises.

Before followers took part in the cerimony, they had to remove all of their clothes and forget about thier morals. Whenever the doctrine was attacked, members would justify thier actions by eluding to the existance of Adam and eve in Eden.

Williamson shared her affections with two brothers. Twice she was with child, twice she proclaimed she wold deliver the new messiah. But both babies died, and both were buried beside her log cabin. Neighborhood children reportedly avoided the spot where "Christ was buried."

The Battle Axes developed a ritual tailored to thier doctrine. The sect members disrobed and marched single file into a pool near their leader's cabin.

Despite their fragrant free spirit, looking around while waling was forbidden. Once in that pond, however, they were unrestricted -- so much so that Billy Rhoads, sheriff of neighboring Berks County, felt the call to cross into Chester County and disperse the cultists with a bull whip.

Gates also called for an end to the Sabbath laws that enforced inactivity on Sundays. An issue that remains in hot debate today, it was labeled blasphemous at that time.

Local Pastors were horrified. At one point, the pastor of the Shenkel Church brought his parishioners to task for their decadence, and a group of battle Axes walked naked up the aisle in declaration of their beliefs.

Williamson thought nothing of marching into the church and plopping a stack of tracts on the pulpit.

Members felt that through refusal to marry they would become immortal and inherit the riches of those around them. For five years, the county looked on the scandalous scene with interest, until townspeople decided that the time had come to intervene. When all else failed, Squire Willauer, the local justice of the peace, led a legal investigation and brought three men and a girl to trial for disregarding the marriage laws.

In 1844 a number of them wer arrested; some were tried and convicted. The courthouse in West Chester was packed with the curious, but the trial offered little sport as the four Battle-Axes convicted themselves through thier own testimony. David Stubblebine served the longest term for adultery, convicted on six of the seven counts against him and sentenced to 18 months in the county prison.

Others tried and convicted were Lydia Williamson and Samuel barde. Historians Furthey and Cope, in their "History of Chester County" (available for purchase at the Historical Society, West Chester, PA) record the fact that William Stubblebine died in this faith. In the case of Snyder vs. Stubblebine regarding the validiy of his will years after the sect had cleared out, there is mention of the Battle Axes.

A wager between Magdalena Snyder and Daniel Stubblebine, who died April 20, 1871, in North Coventry township, became connected with Snyder through the Battle Axes.

According to a newspaper account of the day, "she exercised undue influence over him over the management of his property. Stubblebine became infatuated and left his wife and six children.

"She estranged him from his family and finally caused him to drive his wife and children out of his house", the report stated. He left her $1,000 and his wife nothing and lived 25 years before his death.

Claiming influence and insanity, the jury found for the defendant against the validity of the will.

After the group had become subject to the law, the numbers decreased and eventually diminished. Asked in later years why he looked on life's darkest side, Gates solemnly replied that all sides of life are dark.

The end was near. The Battle-Axes had not risen to the universal society of which he had dreamed, but were one of the many struggling cults across the county in the 19th century.

Aged over the controversy and the fall of his once-booming sect, Gates died in 1846. His body rests in Union Cemetery along Rt. 724 in Parkerford. A small white tombstone now marks the spot where his body lies.

Hanna Williamson, remaining the one faithful convert, became the cult leader after Gates's death. But the cult died with the passing of it's first generation. At the demise of the Battle Axes, Williamson left the valley behind and headed west as a missionary.