The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, more commonly known as the Shakers, are a millenarian restorationist Christian sect founded c. 1747 in England and then organized in the United States in the 1780s. They were initially known as "Shaking Quakers" because of their ecstatic behavior during worship services.
Harvard is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The town is located 25 miles west-northwest of Boston, in eastern Massachusetts. It is mostly bounded by I-495 to the east and Route 2 to the north. A farming community settled in 1658 and incorporated in 1732, it has been home to several non-traditional communities, such as Harvard Shaker Village and the utopian transcendentalist center Fruitlands. It is also home to St. Benedict Abbey, a traditional Catholic monastery, and for over seventy years was home to Harvard University's Oak Ridge Observatory, at one time the most extensively equipped observatory in the Eastern United States. It is now a rural and residential town noted for its public schools. The population was 6,851 at the 2020 census.
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.
Fruitlands was a utopian agrarian commune established in Harvard, Massachusetts, by Amos Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane in the 1840s, based on transcendentalist principles. An account of its less-than-successful activities can be found in Transcendental Wild Oats by Alcott's daughter Louisa May Alcott.
Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, Massachusetts, is a museum about multiple visions of America on the site of the short-lived utopian community, Fruitlands. The museum includes the Fruitlands farmhouse, a museum about Shaker life, an art gallery with 19th-century landscape paintings, vernacular American portraits, and other changing exhibitions, and a museum of Native American history. In 2023, readers of USA Today voted to name Fruitlands as one of the ten best history museums in the United States.
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.
St. Mary's Episcopal Church and Cemetery is a historic church and cemetery at 258 Concord Street, in the village of Newton Lower Falls, Massachusetts, United States. St. Mary's Parish was formed in 1811. The church, built in 1813–14 and restyled in 1838, is the oldest church in Newton, and is a fine example of Gothic Revival/Federal style architecture. The cemetery, which dates from 1812, is the oldest non-government-owned cemetery in Newton. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
Watervliet Shaker Historic District, in Colonie, New York, is the site of the first Shaker community, established in 1776. The primary Shaker community, the Mount Lebanon Shaker Society, was started a bit later. Watervliet's historic 1848 Shaker meetinghouse has been restored and is used for public events, such as concerts.
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.
Shirley Shaker Village is a historic former Shaker community in Lancaster and Shirley, Massachusetts. Defined as an historic district, it includes about half of the original buildings and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
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.
North Union Shaker Site is a historic site in Shaker Heights, Ohio. The site was founded by Shakers in 1822 and was added to the National Register in 1974. The Shakers ran grist and grain mills from the lakes created when they dammed Doan Creek. The community ceased to exist in 1899. All of the buildings that had been part of the North Union Shaker community have been demolished, and 280 of the original 1,000 acres are Shaker Lakes parkland, which includes walking trails and a Shaker archaeological site, the Shaker Historical Museum and Library.
Clara Endicott Sears (1863–1960) was a New England author, preservationist, and philanthropist.
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 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 Shelburne Village Historic District encompasses the central portion of the main village of Shelburne, Vermont. Centered on the junction of United States Route 7 with Harbor and Falls Roads, the district's architecture traces the town's history from the 18th to early 20th century. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.
Simon Tuttle Atherton was an early American Shaker, who became highly successful on behalf of his own community, in selling herbs in and around Boston, Massachusetts.
