I walk the Blossom Hill Cemetery on a spring morning. The sun is shining and the cloudless sky a vibrant blue. The trees remain leafless and the stark branches cast shadows upon the gravestones. This moment of tranquil solitude greets me at the common grave for deceased Centennial Home residents. I visit the deceased for one particular reason: I am here to visit a former member of the Canterbury Shaker community.
About 40 years ago, my wife and I purchased a waterfront lot on New Pond in Canterbury. As a young man, my knowledge of the Shaker Community was modest, but I was always impressed with the history of this group of people that lived long before me. When we signed the deed, we enjoyed the setting immensely. It provided an inner peace as we enjoyed the waterfront.
I read the deed and researched the property extensively back in 1984 and was quite amazed to discover some very interesting facts about our new property. I wanted to know how the Shakers came to exist here in New Hampshire. I found they initially emigrated to the United States in 1774 and set about establishing 19 communities from Maine to Kentucky. I was further intrigued by the fact that the Shaker Village in Canterbury is the oldest and most preserved Shaker Village.
I realized we purchased more than a piece of property. We purchased history. The pond was actually man-made by the Shaker’s a century or so before. They found locations near their village that would provide a natural location for ponds in order to harvest the water power for their various mills. A simple life without the need for names the Shaker’s referred to these ponds by assigned numbers. It was not until the Shaker community was greatly diminished and the property sold that names were given to the ponds. Our little Shaker-made pond had history, and my love for Shaker history followed me through the years.
I attended dinners at the Shaker Village with my wife and family. I toured the village and I read volumes about a group of people that lived simply with brilliance. Countless uses applied in simple ways with an immense amount of common sense and logic. Efficient and productive, the Shakers established many inventions that we see to this day. It is one Shaker in particular I visit today: Nicholas Briggs. He is resting eternally at the Blossom Hill Cemetery in Concord.
While in the process of researching the care of the elderly in New Hampshire during the 19th century, I visited the Centennial Home in Concord. The old home, the second nursing home on this site, is located on Pleasant Street and now known as the Centennial Inn. The Centennial Home offered care for the aged during a time when the life expectancy was short and women outlived men to a greater degree. Because of these factors, there were more women living at the Centennial Home than men. This is evident when you visit Blossom Hill Cemetery.
One white marble gravestone in this pristine common ground was a bit askew and beckoned me. I walked to this stone and knelt, and I found I was standing over Nicholas Briggs. Buried beside him is his beloved wife, Elizabeth. Together forever in death as they were in life.
When I saw the gravestone of Briggs, I was initially impressed with the fact he lived for 96 years during a period when life expectancy was far less. He was born in 1841 and passed in 1937. I could sense there was a story that Briggs wanted to share with me. So, I ventured to my office and researched my new friend late one evening.
Briggs’s is not so uncommon. The Shaker lifestyle and practice of celibacy meant the population must be sustained in another way that would provide new members and ongoing Shaker life. This was accomplished with converts, people that chose to become Shakers and joined the people in the village. Another common practice was to provide for orphans. A child might lose both parents and not have extended family to provide for them. With this being the case, the Shaker Community would provide a home with the conversion of that child to the Shaker life. After Briggs’s father passed away, his widowed mother brought him and his brother, William, to the Canterbury Shaker Village in 1852. Nicholas was just 10 years old when he became immersed in the Shaker Village way of life. As expected of all members, the new family adapted and converted, completing assigned chores and befriending members of the community. It became apparent that Briggs was very intelligent and he was thought of highly by the Shaker elders.
He lived in Canterbury for the next 40 years. He was a devout Shaker and contributed immensely to the Village. Of particular interest was his ability to organize and establish the work of collecting maple sap to make syrup. It was a common practice for the Canterbury Shakers to tap maple trees when the season started. Tin sap buckers were hung on the taps and the Shakers would wander to the wooded forest collecting the full buckets of sap. They would gather and transport all of the buckets back to the village where the sap was boiled into maple syrup over a roaring fire.
Briggs worked for years and eventually suggested some changes that might make the work more efficient. He built a sugar house in the sugar grove, miles from the main village. The house contained sleeping quarters and a room to boil the sap. With water being the majority of the sap, the needless chore of carrying buckets for miles to boil it into sap was no longer needed. Briggs’s unique ability to think in a logical manner greatly helped the Shaker Village members for years.
Briggs left Shaker Village in 1894 and moved to Concord. There are many unknown reasons for his departure, but I have seen reference to his desire to marry as a pivotal point. If Briggs remained a Shaker, he would never be allowed to meet a woman, fall in love and marry. He also would not be allowed a formal education or to own a home or business and ultimately wealth. He was 52 years old when he moved to Concord and married Elizabeth. Briggs eventually wrote about Shaker life in his work “Forty Years a Shaker.” I was further inspired by this man at Blossom Hill Cemetery.
As the years passed and the couple grew old, there was a need for help. The Centennial Home on Pleasant Street was a relatively new concept in Concord and briggs was an adventurer. The thought of living together as an older couple with constant care was intriguing to the Briggs’s. They spent their last two decades as residents of the Centennial Home.
Elizabeth died on Valentines Day in 1918. Nicholas followed her in 1937 and rests eternally at her side. I walk down the cemetery road and, looking up above me, I am standing beneath a fine sugar maple. I think Nicholas Briggs would like that.