Shaker Village places oldest and rarest artifacts on display in honor of 250th anniversary
Published: 08-15-2024 4:38 PM |
In August 250 years ago, a woman named Ann Lee stepped off a boat in a New York City port after multiple months at sea.
Four years prior, a revelation had propelled Lee to declare herself the second coming of Jesus Christ and to become the leader of a burgeoning Protestant sect that would later be known as the Shakers.
With her new beliefs came religious persecution – including several stints in jail. In 1774, she and eight followers departed Manchester, England in pursuit of a new life in America.
Over the ensuing decades, the Shakers went on to form nearly 20 communities in the United States, including a village in Canterbury, and others in Kentucky, Maine, and Indiana. Their way of life emphasized five major tenets: celibacy, equality of the sexes, communal living, confession, and ecstatic worship – for which the Shakers’ name originates. The Shakers’ leadership structure, in which a woman and man held co-leadership roles at each level of the hierarchy, was profoundly unorthodox for the time.
A new exhibit that opened last weekend at Canterbury Shaker Village honors the 250th anniversary of the first Shakers’ arrival in America. The exhibit – which will be on display in the village’s Carriage House until at least the middle of 2025 – includes more than a dozen of the collection’s oldest and rarest artifacts, including a piece of cloth said to have been part of Lee’s apron.
“These are not items that we would typically have on display,” said Kyle Sandler, the education manager at Canterbury Shaker Village. “So it is kind of a special thing for the 250th that we’re bringing some of these out of deep storage to be on display for the public.”
The exhibit is called “Keeping Faith,” which is a reflection both of the founding generation’s faithfulness and of the fact that the true provenance of some of the objects is less than certain.
“You have to have a little faith to believe that they are what they say they are,” Sandler said. “It’s like any relic around the world.”
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The objects in the exhibit track some of the most important Shakers during the group’s foundational years in America – from 1774 to the 1820s.
In addition to Lee’s dress, exhibit-goers can view dressing pins worn by Canterbury leader Lucy Wright and a Bible read by second leader James Whittaker.
After Lee, her husband, and seven others arrived in New York City on Aug. 6, 1774, they initially settled in New Lebanon, New York, before embarking on a multi-year missionary journey throughout southern New England.
In 1782, a missionary arrived in Canterbury for the first time. Ten years later, the Canterbury Shakers received formal permission from headquarters in New Lebanon to establish a new village of their own.
A box made by Job Bishop, one of the Canterbury Village’s first and longest-serving leaders, is part of the exhibit.
“He’s got this really dynamic personality, he’s a strong public speaker, and he’s just an interesting character,” Sandler said of Bishop.
The exhibit, Sandler hopes, will be a lens into the “people behind our artifacts.” It includes panels that detail central figures’ biographies.
The opening of the exhibit coincides with new leadership at Canterbury Shaker Village. Erin Hammerstedt, previously the executive director of a non-profit in Harrisville, will take over the new role on Sept. 3.
The history of the Shakers in Canterbury spans exactly 200 years, from 1792 to 1992. At its peak in the mid-1800s, the village had between 250 and 300 people, according to Sandler.
Shaker villages’ populations dropped precipitously after the Civil War. Today, only one village – in New Gloucester, Maine – is operational, and the two residents there are both over the age of 60.
New members came into the community through a variety of avenues: some converted in adulthood, while others were abandoned as babies in Shaker Villages from people outside the sect, or adopted as children.
Sandler said celibacy was not the only reason why the villages failed to sustain themselves.
“Part of it is just American society changes,” he said. “Pre-Civil War, most Americans are living an agrarian subsistence lifestyle. The Civil War – especially in the North – you have massive urbanization and industrialization. And more and more people are moving away from these rural areas.”
The exhibit will focus not on the Shakers’ downfall, but rather on their rise.
“The exhibition preserves the unique aspect of Shakerism’s religious and cultural history and invites audiences to reflect on these enduring principles,” Sandler said.
It is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. For more information, go to www.shakers.org.
Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.