Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village

One's first reaction on arriving at the last active Shaker Village is "It's so small!" It's barely bigger than a lot of family farms, if that. But it's home to the last practicing members of the United Society; five Shakers and two novitiates. They conduct services in their 1794 Moses Johnson meeting house every Sunday in summer, and continue to welcome the world to their services. Winter services are held in a chapel in the dwelling across the road. According to our tour guide, services no longer include the dances and marches so long associated with Shakers, but consist of songs, readings from the Bible, and reactions to the readings and testimonials.

As you enter the parking lot you are greeted with a sign in front of what you later learn is the herb house that proclaims "PRIVATE beyond this point. Car Exit Only." Being the home of the remaining Shakers, there are few places the visitor can go without a tour guide. Our tour guide did an excellent job, however, and we did get to see several of the buildings.

The tour starts in the Boy's Shop, where young boys were taught trades. There are museum exhibits here as well. But again, no interior photos were allowed. There are more museum exhibits in the Spin Shop next door.

The tour took us into the meeting house, which looks nearly the same as the Hancock meeting house, plus we got to see the second floor living quarters that the ministry once occupied. It is furnished with appropriate Shaker antiques, but no photography was allowed. Our tour guide reminded me of that fact frequently, since I still had my camera with me. On the return walk we got to visit the sisters' shop while there was a lull in the day's work there.

The sisters' shop is home to the village's herb industry and the smells were delightful.

After the short tour I wandered around outside the quarantine area, first to the barns. They certainly say "Maine'" don't they?

From there I walked up to the road to get a shot of the dwelling. Always the smallest of the Shaker communities, it reached a peak of around 200 shortly after its founding in 1783. That number had dwindled to around 150 during the time before the Civil War when the Shaker movement was at its height. From that point there has been a steady decline, as in other Shaker communities.

Our visit concluded at the Trustees' Office, which today still operates a store. Here my wife bought a few "stocking stuffers" for Christmas, plus a couple of items for our granddaughter that won't wait until Christmas.

I can imagine the stresses to residents of having their home open to tourists, and the need to exercise control over movement on the site. The tour guides are volunteers, not Shakers, and the two we encountered were knowledgeable and courteous. One was borderline paranoid about the possibility of pictures being taken inside buildings. Since I don't agree with that policy, and photographs are a large part of my reason for visiting in the first place, I found that annoying. Perhaps she had just recently been taken to the whipping shed for not being diligent.

Canterbury Shaker Village

The Canterbury, New Hampshire, Shaker village extends a warm welcome at first sight. Still rural, it is unique among Shaker museums in that it passed directly from the Shakers to the non-profit museum corporation. In fact, the last sisters remained here as the museum developed and their lodging was the last building to be incorporated into the museum. By not experiencing a period of private ownership, the village remains more intact than any other Shaker site, except for Sabbathday Lake, which remains an active community.

The first thing a person familiar with Shaker sites notices is the density of buildings. We know from old maps of other villages that they have lost many buildings to fire and demolition over time. Here at Canterbury, the Church Family site retains the density of a functioning Shaker community. Moreover, the buildings date from throughout its history, giving a feel for how life changed there over time and how technology impacted the people's lives.

Shaker life was all about the church, so the meeting house was of primary importance. The community was founded in 1792 and their Moses Johnson-built meeting house was completed the same year. The church family dwelling wasn't begun until the following year.

The initial building was small, but grew through many additions to where it could house up to 100 members. The bell tower, or cupola, was added in 1832 and met with opposition from the central ministry at New Lebanon.

According to their web site, the tower was shortened by 5 feet 5 inches in response. Mentally adding back that height, one can understand why the central ministry might not be pleased. Shakers were still strict about not making a show of things at that time.

The Enfield House was built in 1826 as the trustees office for the Canterbury Second Family. In 1921 the Shakers moved it to the Church Family where it housed the sisters who left the Enfield community as it was being closed in 1923. It became the preferred dwelling in the 20th century because it was more modern than the Church Family dwelling.

Like Enfield, the Canterbury museum does not permit photography inside the buildings. So interior shots are few and caught in unsupervised moments (I'll have a rant on this subject in a few days). Pity, for there is a lot to see here.

One of the outstanding features of the Church Family is this unique oven. There are four doors opening on revolving shelves each four feet in diameter. There is some sense of scale from the bricks, but consider that 60 loaves of bread could be baked simultaneously. The oven was designed by a Shaker sister and completed in 1878.

Tomorrow I'll take you to some of the dependent buildings and we'll investigate life at the Canterbury village.

Moses Johnson, Master Builder

Moses Johnson is known as the builder of Shaker meeting houses, or churches, although he built many other structures, as well. He apparently was a journeyman carpenter when he joined the Shakers at Enfield, New Hampshire, in 1782. He was thirty years old and brought his wife and three children into the Society with him. He was one of the original signers of the covenant at Enfield. He was sent to Mt. Lebanon in 1785 to build a church there and his design for that meeting house set the pattern for all of the early Shaker meeting houses. Sources vary, but he built at least 10 meeting houses at the various New England Shaker communities. All looked the same, inside and out. There were two entrances, the brethren on the left and the sisters on the right. They were unique among Shaker buildings in having gambrel roofs, and there were three dormers on each side. A chimney marked either end of the building.

Meeting houses were the only buildings that could be painted white, and the interiors were to be painted blue. While no particular blue was specified, the practice came to be a Prussian blue that became known as "meeting house blue." The interior had to be open to allow the dances and marches of the Shaker worship service. Johnson accomplished this by giving his buildings boxed beams that transferred the weight of the roof and upper floors to the outside walls by means of boxed knee braces. Wainscoting reached the lower edges of the windows and was faced with benches for the world's people who came to observe. Shakers sat on benches that could be moved to open floor space for the dances. Stairs at either end of the room led to ministry apartments on the second floor. In a few of the meeting houses, a small third floor was finished into rooms for visiting ministry from other communities.

The meeting house at Hancock, in the top photo, was moved there in 1962 from the Shirley community to replace one that had been torn down in 1938. It dates from 1793. The 1792 Canterbury meeting house, above, is distinguished mainly by the color of the doors and its surroundings. They were the same size and layout, but the Canterbury meeting house interior has been modified. The stairs were removed to provide more seating for the world's people and an ell was built in the rear to house stairs to the ministry apartments. The interior also was repainted a light blue around 1875, although the upper floor retains the original meeting house blue. Like Hancock, it too is now part of a museum.

The 1794 Sabbath Day Lake meeting house is still in use as worship space by the last remaining Shakers, and still welcomes the world's people. Like Canterbury, the interior stairs were removed for additional seating. In this case, the ell containing the new stairs was placed at the end of the building.

These three are the only Moses Johnson meeting houses that retain more or less their original appearance and function. Two were sold, moved, and modified to become private residences. The first meeting house at Mt. Lebanon was extensively modified, including getting a gable roof, and eventually became the home of the headmaster at Darrow School. All of the rest have been lost. But the Moses Johnson design lives on.

This private home, currently offered for sale, was built to mimic a Moses Johnson meeting house. The main floor is even open, except for a window-enclosed kitchen, and painted meeting house blue. It can be yours for a mere $1.125 million.