The Year of the Shaker Woman
By Laura Mars
MOTHER ANN LEE’S MISSION FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM LIVES ON
CANTERBURY SHAKER VILLAGE
This year marks the 250th anniversary of the American Shakers, a Christian sect that broke from the English Quakers in 1747. Celebrations will be held far and wide for founder Mother Ann Lee, the charismatic leader who, with eight other Believers, arrived in New York City in 1774 to escape religious persecution. Driven by poverty in her hometown of Manchester, England, widespread food riots, and an unwanted marriage, Mother Ann advocated for religious freedom, social justice, and the Shakers’ “separate but equal” lifestyle.
Considered by some to be America’s first feminist, Mother Ann died at age 48. Today’s wisdom points to leukemia as the cause, but certainly the physical and mental abuse she suffered as a woman who was believed to be the female Christ incarnate, who led with exuberant abandon, and who advocated celibacy and the destruction of marriage, weakened her mind and body to a breaking point.
Today, the Shaker story resonates in a way that Mother Ann could never have imagined. What the Shakers believed in 1774 are perhaps ideals that we are still trying to attain in 2024: gender equality, freedom of religion, and a slower, simpler life.
The Shaker legacy is further recognized this year when the U.S. Postal Service unveils 12 collectible stamps at Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield on June 20. The stamps will show Shaker workmanship in various forms. The Shakers viewed all work as a form of worship and aspired to create heaven on Earth. “Do all your work as though you had a thousand years to live,” urged Mother Ann, “and as you would if you knew you must die tomorrow.”
Interest in Shakerism has not only endured but has increased in recent years. Eight of the original 19 Shaker settlements in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana are comprehensive living museums, and another seven offer limited access to the grounds and a Shaker building or two. The four remaining settlements are in private hands and not accessible to the public. Books, movies, study groups, even a Shaker-inspired restaurant in New York City tell pieces of the Shaker story, which is much more than beautiful chairs made by industrious religious folks who shake, wail, and see visions. And it is a story that Oscar®- and Emmy®-winning director and filmmaker Cynthia Wade is itching to tell.
Wade is a self-described Shaker nerd who lived in the Berkshires for many years and returns regularly from LA. In 2013, looking to reset and recharge, she lived the life of a docent at Hancock Shaker Village, where she not only found her mojo but also compelling stories of Shakerism that included scandal, secrets, and conflict. She started writing.
Women were equal to men in Shaker communities, including their responsibilities, from plowing the land to fabric work to leading services. HANCOCK SHAKER VILLAGE (LEFT) AND LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
What Wade and collaborator Nannina Gilder ended up with is an intense narrative about two young Shaker Sisters (all Shaker women are Sisters, all men are Brothers, all members are Believers) embroiled in a conflict between the Hancock and Tyringham settlements surrounding Gift Drawings—manifestations of visions that Hancock Believers felt were causing Shakers to become laughing- stocks to the outside world.
“We wanted to do a story based in the Sisters’ world. There is not much written about the women,” says Wade, calling Shakers utopians who sustained the longest-lived American experiment of equality. “The appeal of the Shaker lifestyle is very strong for many Americans. That is what appeals to me—the social aspect, not the design.”
SHAKER MUSEUM
The film is expected to be released in 2025, and the screenwriters hope to offer readings this year at Hancock Shaker Village, where it will likely be filmed.
While it took years after Mother Ann’s death in 1784 for most of the Shaker settlements in America to take hold, it didn’t take her long after arriving in New York City to realize that it was not the ideal place to grow Shaker roots. She found herself the target of persecution, much like back in England, so she sent Shaker Brothers northward to find a place where they could peace- fully practice, guided by her three Cs—celibacy, communal living, and confession of sins.
As a result, Watervliet in Colonie, New York, became the first Shaker settlement in 1776. Today, the site includes nine Shaker buildings, gardens, a nature preserve, and the Shaker cemetery where Mother Ann is buried. The property is sandwiched between Albany International Airport, a prison, and a Minor League baseball stadium.
Trouble continued to follow the unwavering leader, and she was arrested in 1780 for treason, her pacifist doctrine preventing her from taking sides in the American Revolution. After being released from prison in 1781, Mother Ann, accompanied by James Whittaker and her brother William Lee, embarked on a preaching mission throughout Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. They followed the religious zeal that pervaded at the time, a wave of increased religious energy—the Great Awakening that emphasized personal religious experiences over rote observance.
The sect grew despite being celibate, no doubt helped along by the widows and orphans with no place to go as a result of the American Revolution and by women looking for freedom from the demands of sex and the risk of painful childbirth. “I don’t understand the fascination with the issue of celibacy,” says Wade. “We accept how communities of celibate nuns and monks grew their ranks, but we’re still asking the question about the Shakers?”
Successful businesswomen, Shaker sisters made and marketed products to sell to the outside community. HANCOCK SHAKER VILLAGE
The number of Shaker settlements increased rapidly after Mother Ann’s death, with more than 6,000 Believers at one point. Each village offered its own personality and strength. Shakers in Tyringham, an outpost of Hancock, lived more intuitively than the orderly Hancock Shakers. The two groups often disagreed about how to interpret the rules (the basis of Wade’s upcoming film).
According to Nini Gilder, historian, author, and mother of screenwriter Nannina, Tyringham Shakers also were met with resistance by townspeople who viewed them as strange and even tried to smoke the Shakers out by planking over their chimney—not their finest hour. Over time, the town grew to respect the Shakers and their business innovations, such as illustrated seed packets. The Seed House in Tyringham became a gallery in the late-20th century for Jean and Leonard Brown’s Fluxus and avant-garde collection, which included work by Yoko Ono and John Lennon, who visited the Tyringham Seed House back in the day. Today, Jean Brown’s art collection is at the Getty Museum; the Seed House was moved to another part of the town and is a private home; and one very private family owns the compound where the remaining Tyringham Shaker buildings still are located.
Mount Lebanon Shakers settled on a mountain that straddles New York and Massachusetts. They led all-Shaker communities in administrative and spiritual matters and stepped in to help the Shaker village in Enfield, Connecticut organize and settle into the lifestyle. The Enfield site closed in 1917 and was purchased by the state in 1930 to establish a prison, which opened in 1962 and is now the state’s largest prison complex.
New York photographer Jane Feldman lived on the Mount Lebanon Shaker site, which was originally home to five Shaker Families: Church, North, South, Second, and Center. Members of the families were not related but lived in the Shaker’s commune tradition. Feldman was a student at Darrow School, which sits on the former Church Family site, and returned as community outreach coordinator.
According to Darrow’s Head of School Andy Vadnais, the Shakers gifted the property in 1930, and the Lebanon School for Boys opened in 1932. In 1938, it changed hands and was renamed Darrow School in honor of the first family to farm the land. Vadnais and his wife were on the faculty from 1983 to 1990. He served as assistant director/curator of Hancock Shaker Village before returning to Darrow as head of school in 2019, where he says that preserving Shaker heritage is a sacred responsibility.
Darrow’s Hands to Work service-learning program pays homage to the Shaker phrase, “Hands to Work, Hearts to God.” Program crews embark in purposeful work— growing vegetables, tapping maple trees, running the Living Machine wastewater treatment system, and helping advance sustainability. “The Shaker Meeting House at Darrow School was considered the Vatican of Shakerism,” says Feldman, who notes that President Abe Lincoln granted the first conscientious objector status to the Mount Lebanon Shakers, and Mount Lebanon hosted the 1905 Peace Conference.
Darrow School is not the only Shaker site on Mount Lebanon that was transformed after the Shakers left the mountain in 1947. Other sites are now being used for different purposes, but all are aligned to some degree with Shaker values and design. Hoping to get a sense of the transformation, I drove up Mount
Lebanon, past Darrow School and various Shaker buildings dotting the road. The views were breathtaking, and a feeling of peace settled in. I came to a group of buildings at the end of Darrow Road—The Abode of the Message—a retreat center founded on former South Family land in 1975. Several people stopped to ask if I needed help as I stood next to my car taking in the vista. I walked to the dining hall, poured myself a cup of tea, and waited for Executive Director Kim Martel.
“The Abode began in the Sufi tradition, a mystical religion that seeks to find truth through personal experience of God,” says Martel. “In October, leadership changed, and we are no longer associated with one group, but continue to provide sanctuary in harmony with nature. More and more people come every year to the mountain to walk and hike, to find solace.”
Martel points to the building’s separate staircases for men and women built by the Shakers back in the day, and the Shaker Bell, which the Abode uses to call people together for meals, births, and emergencies. She pulls the chord, and we hear a low, “Gong!”
We walked out to the heated patio, where we saw two buildings nearby that stood close to each other and were connected by a wooden walkway on the second floor. Men would build the chair frames and leave them on the balcony. Women would take the chairs and weave the seats— separate but equal. As the mother of six daughters, Martel doesn’t advocate celibacy but is passionate about gender equality and offering a place of solace. She points out a small white house up the hill, surrounded by nature, where Mother Ann lived. Down the road from the Abode is The Ruins at Sassafras on former Second Family property.
Although gender equality and Mother Ann’s three Cs are intriguing aspects of Shaker life, there is more to it. Shaker scholar and author Fran Kramer says that enduring values are why Shaker life resonates today. “That’s what they gave us. You are kind. You are helpful. They took in battered women, those who couldn’t subsist for whatever reasons, and children. If you had ten kids and you couldn’t take care of them, the Shakers would bring them up. They gave people a place to sleep, food, and companionship. People were obviously looking for something, and the Shakers offered it.”
Kramer, who lives in upstate New York, discovered the Shakers in the ’70s at Hancock and joined a Shaker study group based at Berkshire Community College. She has been involved in Shaker activities all over the country, organizing Shaker events, connecting Shaker enthusiasts, keeping Shaker traditions alive. When she discovered that the Groveland Shaker site in upstate New York was slated to become a prison, she convinced then-Governor Mario Cuomo to preserve the exterior of the Shaker buildings, install signage, and allow limited access to the property. Hancock Shaker Village Executive Director Carrie Holland notes that Kramer is a force with longtime connections to many Shaker villages and will be at Hancock during the 250th celebrations in May.
Despite the utopian label, Shakers were not perfect. The Great Divorce by Ilyon Woo is the story of a young mother’s battle to win back her children who were kidnapped by the Shakers. The Visionist by Rachel Urquhart, who lives in one of the former Tyringham Shaker buildings, tells of a young teenage girl with a secret who flees to Hancock Shaker Village looking for refuge but finds something else. What would Mother Ann think of all this? Shaker sites transformed into museums, schools, wedding venues, and prisons? Shops selling items that Shakers invented and inspired? Hard to say, but chances are she’d love that the Shakers are still being talked about in 2024, celebrating a legacy that includes strong women willing to stand up for what they believe in.
Amid specific celebrations being planned by various Shaker communities, Hancock Shaker Village has kicked the idea up a notch, declaring 2024 The Year of the Woman—not just Mother Ann, not just Shaker Sisters, not just Berkshire women, but all women. Curator Kathleen Lynch is using every corner of the village for exhibits that showcase the work of women artists, leaders, and inventors. The exhibits run from April 13 to August 31.