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.
This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Houghton County, Michigan.
Shaker Village may refer to:
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.
The Whitewater Shaker Settlement is a former Shaker settlement near New Haven in Crosby Township, Hamilton County, Ohio, United States. Established in 1824 and closed in 1916, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 as a historic district.
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.
The Avon Hill Historic District is a residential historic district near Porter Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Set atop Avon Hill southwest of Porter Square, this subdivision, laid out about 1870, contains a concentration of the finest Victorian and Second Empire residential buildings in the city. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
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 2022. 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.
Harvard Shaker Village Historic District is a historic former Shaker community located roughly on Shaker Road, South Shaker Road, and Maple Lane in Harvard, Massachusetts. It was the second oldest Shaker settlement in Massachusetts and the third oldest in the United States.
The Tyringham Shaker Settlement Historic District was a historic Shaker village on Jerusalem Road in Tyringham, Massachusetts. Among the buildings in the village were mills and workshops. There was a reduction in members prior to the American Civil War and in the 1870s the remaining "believers" moved to Hancock Shaker Village in Massachusetts and Enfield Shakers Village in Connecticut.
The Shirley Village Historic District encompasses the main commercial and industrial village of Shirley, Massachusetts. It is located in the southern part of the town, and grew up around a series of mills that were located along Catacoonamug Brook, and then the railroad, which was built through the area in the 1840s. The district contains 441 properties. It is roughly bounded by Center, Harvard, Leominster and Shaker Roads. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.
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.
Shirley is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is approximately thirty miles west-northwest of Boston. The population was 7,431 at the 2020 census. The town has a well-preserved historic New England town center.
South Union Shaker Center House and Preservatory is a historic Shaker building on U.S. 68 in South Union, Kentucky. It was built in 1822 and added to the National Register in 1974. Located within the building is the Shaker Museum at South Union.
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.
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.
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.
William Dean Howells, Shirley Shaker Village, an illustration from Three Villages, 1884.
Ministry Shop, Shirley Shaker Village
Cemetery, Shirley Shaker Village
