01/08/2026
A number of these groups dotted the area near Wi******er.
The town of Leyden, Massachusetts was the birthplace of a polyamorous, vegetarian, messianic cult in the 1790s. It was led by William Dorrell, an illiterate former British redcoat who supposedly received a message from heaven while chopping wood in the forest. The voice said to “render yourself a fitting sacrifice,” so he began teaching and preaching to his fellow townspeople.
One of Dorrell’s key teachings was that it was wrong to take the life of any living creature. So, not only were he and his followers vegetarians, but they also avoided using leather and similar animal products. Instead of leather shoes, they wore ones that were made of cloth or wood, and they made rope harnesses for their horses. However, they were not purely vegan, at least not in the modern sense, since they did apparently drink milk.
More controversially, Dorrell rejected key Christian doctrines such as Jesus’s resurrection. He believed that he was to be worshipped as God, just like Jesus, and he also believed that he and his followers were perfect, and were thus no longer obligated to follow laws or marriage vows. During one interview, he told a pastor that, once they became perfect, his followers “have a right to a promiscuous intercourse” and could have other romantic partners outside of marriage.
The Dorrellites, as they were known, had their meetings here at Beaver Meadow, shown in this photo. According to contemporary accounts, these meetings were essentially drunken or**es. Dorrell’s interviewer described how:
“I would here observe, that I learnt from others who had attended some of their meetings, that they were guilty of conduct beastly in the highest degree. One told me that he saw Dorrel with his wife and a young woman of a respectable family, rolling together upon the floor in one of their meetings. They sing songs, the most vile and filthy that were ever written by bacchanalians. One verse of one of their songs I have obtained; it is so vile and filthy, that if such a thing were possible, it would defile even a brothel.”
Over time, Dorrell became even more bold in his claims, declaring that he was immortal and that no human could harm him. However, at one meeting around 1800, a man challenged him on this, and beat him until he forced Dorrell to publicly recant his teachings.
Dorrell lived the rest of his life in Leyden in relative obscurity. Future lieutenant governor Henry W. Cushman visited him once, and described how he lived “in a poor old house – in a cold, bleak place – far from any neighbors or a travelled road.” He died in 1846 at the age of 94, and he was buried in a cemetery on a hill overlooking Beaver Meadow, where he had once presided over his cult meetings a half century earlier.
