Enfield Shaker Historic District | |
Location of Enfield Shaker Museum in New Hampshire | |
Location | NH Route 4A, Enfield, New Hampshire, U.S. |
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Coordinates | 43°37′13″N72°8′49″W / 43.62028°N 72.14694°W |
Area | 1,235 acres (500 ha) |
NRHP reference No. | 79000198 [1] |
Added to NRHP | November 7, 1979 |
Community | Enfield Shaker Village, New Hampshire [2] |
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Dates | 1793-1923 |
Bishopric | Canterbury |
Spiritual name | Chosen Vale |
Families | Church, North, South |
Maximum population | 297 in 1840 |
Topics |
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Notable people |
Founders
Other members |
The Enfield Shaker Museum is an outdoor history museum and historic district in Enfield, New Hampshire, in the United States. It is dedicated to preserving and sharing the history of the Shakers, a Protestant religious denomination, who lived on the site from 1793 to 1923. The museum features exhibitions, artifacts, eight Shaker buildings and restored Shaker gardens. It is located in a valley between Mount Assurance and Mascoma Lake in Enfield. [3] [4]
One of the buildings, the Great Stone Dwelling, was the largest residential building north of Boston and is the largest Shaker building. When the Shaker community closed, most of the land that made up the Enfield Shaker Village was sold to the Missionaries of La Salette. The state owns 28 acres (11 ha) and 13 buildings, which is now the Enfield Shaker Museum.
The Shakers, or United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, settled on the site in 1793 [5] along Lake Mascoma on up to 1,200 acres (490 ha). [6] [7] A meetinghouse was built May 1793 and a residential building was constructed in 1794. [6] Subsequent buildings were made of granite with advanced stone masonry techniques, which was revolutionary for that time period. [7] There were 132 members of the village by 1803, and by 1840 there were nearly 300 people. [6]
Within the village was the largest Shaker dwelling and the largest residential dwelling north of Boston, the Great Stone Building. Built from 1837 to 1841 for the Church Family, it had four full stories and a total of six stories. Men and women lived in the building, but entered doors specific for their gender to separate quarters. [6] [7] [8] It was designed by Ammi Burnham Young, [9] who created the designs for the second state capitol in Vermont and was the first supervising architect for the United States Treasury. [10] The granite stonework on the exterior and the slate roof were constructed by stonemasons from Boston. The Shaker brothers constructed the rest of the building themselves. [9] [11]
In 1849, the Shakers built the half-mile long Shaker Bridge that crossed a narrow portion of Lake Mascoma to the railroad line. [6] In 1870, the elaborate Victorian and Shaker architectural Ministry shop was built to house the community's religious leaders. [7] To support itself, the community made brooms, buckets, spinning wheels, tubs, dry measures and shirts. It also made and sold applesauce, maple syrup, herbs, medicines and seeds. [6]
Like other Shaker communities, the Enfield Shaker village declined throughout the second half of the 19th century. [7] In 1923, they closed the Enfield Shaker village and moved to the Canterbury community in central New Hampshire. [12]
Much of the village property was sold in 1927 to the La Salettes. [7] The site is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places as the Enfield Shaker Historic District. [1]
Since 1986, the Enfield Shaker Museum has worked to preserve the Shaker heritage of the site without neglecting the 20th century history of the village. The Great Stone Dwelling houses the gift shop and the primary exhibition space. The museum is open 7 days a week, offering tours of the site, [7] [13] and offers overnight stays in the original Shaker bedrooms of the Great Stone Dwelling. [14]
There are 13 remaining Shaker village buildings and gardens on 28 acres, which can be seen during a self-guided walking tour. [8] The village museum is owned by the state of New Hampshire. [15]
In 1927, the site was sold to the Missionaries of La Salette, who converted the site into a seminary for the Catholic priesthood, school and conference site. [7] [16] The La Salettes built in 1930 the Mary Keane Chapel, a neo-classical revival chapel, which is now part of the museum and open to visitors. The Missionaries of La Salette closed the seminary in 1974, and the center is now known as the Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette, which is a center of "reconciliation". [16]
In 2020, the Missionaries of La Salette announced that the organization would be shutting down operations at the Enfield site, including the Marian shrine located on the eastern slope of Mount Assurance. Sale of the shrine and all accompanying real estate to the Enfield Shaker Museum was completed in July 2023.
Enfield is a town in Grafton County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 4,465 at the 2020 census. The town includes the villages of Enfield, Enfield Center, Upper Shaker Village, Lower Shaker Village, Lockehaven, and Montcalm.
Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, USA, is the site of a Shaker religious community that was active from 1805 to 1910. Following a preservationist effort that began in 1961, the site, now a National Historic Landmark, has become a popular tourist destination. Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, or Shakertown, as it is known by residents of the area, is located 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Lexington, in Kentucky's Bluegrass region. It is a National Historic Landmark District.
Shaker furniture is a distinctive style of furniture developed by the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, commonly known as Shakers, a religious sect that had guiding principles of simplicity, utility and honesty. Their beliefs were reflected in the well-made furniture of minimalist designs.
Sarah "Tabitha" Babbitt was a Shaker credited to as a tool maker and inventor. Inventions attributed to her by the Shakers include the circular saw, the spinning wheel head, and false teeth. She became a member of the Harvard Shaker community in 1793.
James Whittaker was the second leader of the Shakers.
Canterbury Shaker Village is a historic site and museum in Canterbury, New Hampshire, United States. It was one of a number of Shaker communities founded in the 19th century.
Mount Lebanon Shaker Society, also known as New Lebanon Shaker Society, was a communal settlement of Shakers in New Lebanon, New York. The earliest converts began to "gather in" at that location in 1782 and built their first meetinghouse in 1785. The early Shaker Ministry, including Joseph Meacham and Lucy Wright, the architects of Shakers' gender-balanced government, lived there.
Hancock Shaker Village is a former Shaker commune in Hancock and Pittsfield, Massachusetts. It emerged in the towns of Hancock, Pittsfield, and Richmond in the 1780s, organized in 1790, and was active until 1960. It was the third of nineteen major Shaker villages established between 1774 and 1836 in New York, New England, Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana. From 1790 until 1893, Hancock was the seat of the Hancock Bishopric, which oversaw two additional Shaker communes in Tyringham, Massachusetts, and Enfield, Connecticut.
Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village is a Shaker village near New Gloucester and Poland, Maine, in the United States. It is the last active Shaker community, with two members as of 2020. With a new member, it had expanded to three members by 2021. The community was established in either 1782, 1783, or 1793, at the height of the Shaker movement in the United States. The Sabbathday Lake meetinghouse was built in 1794. The entire property was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974.
Donat R. Baribault (1885–1970) was an American architect who designed a number of Catholic churches, schools, convents and rectories in Western Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
The Enfield Shakers Historic District encompasses some of the surviving remnants of a former Shaker community in Enfield, Connecticut. Founded in the 1780s, the Enfield Shaker community remained active until 1917. The surviving buildings of their once large community complexes are located in and around Taylor Road in northeastern Enfield, and were listed as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The listing included 15 contributing buildings and one contributing site.
Alfred Shaker Historic District is a historic district in Alfred, Maine, with properties on both sides of Shaker Hill Road. The area had its first Shaker "believers" in 1783 following visiting with Mother Ann Lee and became an official community starting in 1793 when a meetinghouse was built. It was home to Maine's oldest and largest Shaker community. Two notable events were the songwriting of Joseph Brackett, including, according to most accounts, Simple Gifts, and the spiritual healing of the sick by the Shakers. When the Alfred Shakers products and goods were no longer competitive with mass-produced products and the membership had dwindled significantly, the village was closed in 1931 and members moved to Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village, also in Maine.
The chronology of Shakers is a list of important events pertaining to the history of the Shakers, a denomination of Christianity. Millenarians who believe that their founder, Ann Lee, experienced the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, the Shakers practice celibacy, confession of sin, communalism, ecstatic worship, pacifism, and egalitarianism. This spans the emergence of denomination in the mid-18th century, the emigration of the Shakers to New York on the eve of the American Revolution, subsequent missionary work and the establishment of nineteen major planned communities, and the continued persistence of the faith through decline into the 21st century.
The Shakers are a sect of Christianity which practices celibacy, communal living, confession of sin, egalitarianism, and pacifism. After starting in England, it is thought that these communities spread into the cotton towns of North West England, with the football team of Bury taking on the Shaker name to acknowledge the Shaker community of Bury.The Shakers left England for the English colonies in North America in 1774. As they gained converts, the Shakers established numerous communities in the late-18th century through the entire 19th century. The first villages organized in Upstate New York and the New England states, and, through Shaker missionary efforts, Shaker communities appeared in the Midwestern states. Communities of Shakers were governed by area bishoprics and within the communities individuals were grouped into "family" units and worked together to manage daily activities. By 1836 eighteen major, long-term societies were founded, comprising some sixty families, along with a failed commune in Indiana. Many smaller, short-lived communities were established over the course of the 19th century, including two failed ventures into the Southeastern United States and an urban community in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Shakers peaked in population by the 1840s and early 1850s, with a membership between 4,000 and 9,000. Growth in membership began to stagnate by the mid 1850s. In the turmoil of the American Civil War and subsequent Industrial Revolution, Shakerism went into severe decline. As the number of living Shakers diminished, Shaker communes were disbanded or otherwise ceased to exist. Some of their buildings and sites have become museums, and many are historic districts under the National Register of Historic Places. The only active community is Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in Maine, which is composed of at least three active members.
The Union Village Shaker settlement was a village organized by Shakers in Turtlecreek Township, Warren County, Ohio.
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The Enfield Village Historic District encompasses the historic 19th century village center of Enfield, New Hampshire. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010. Multiple buildings of the district were added to the New Hampshire State Register of Historic Places in 2012.
The Louis St. Gaudens House and Studio is a historic house at Dingleton Hill and Whitten Roads in Cornish, New Hampshire. The 2+1⁄2-story gambrel-roofed wood-frame structure was designed by Moses Johnson and built in 1793–94 at the Shaker village in Enfield, New Hampshire. At that site the building served as the main meeting space for the Shakers, with a main meeting space on the ground floor, offices on the second floor, and guest living quarters in the attic space. The building is similar in construction to buildings designed by Johnson for the Shaker villages in Canterbury, New Hampshire and Sabbathday Lake, Maine.
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Job Bishop was an American early Shaker leader. A missionary, he founded the Shaker communities of Canterbury, New Hampshire, and Enfield, New Hampshire.