[8] As an adult, Ireland was a pipe maker from Charlestown, Massachusetts, where he had a wife, Martha (or Elizabeth), and six children.
[9][10] In the 1750s, Shadrack Ireland experienced a change in his "mind and body" that he believed resulted in his becoming "perfect and immortal".
"[15] Ireland then went upstairs, knelt under a window, and prayed for the "hundred & fiftifour thousand" concluding by saying, "father I am but [past] do thy will".
Ireland's body was left as he had ordered until the smell became so bad[16] that he was put into a long white box in a corner of the cellar and covered with lime.
His body remained there until July 1779, when his followers, David Hoar and Abijah Worster, buried him in an unmarked grave in a cornfield.
[17][18] Many of Shadrack Ireland's followers were converted to Shakerism by Mother Ann Lee, who then took over the Square House.