Small Shaker Village Offers Lesson in History

To me, Shaker always signified a certain style of chair and a lot of money for the seller.

Now I know Shakers as a people--who they were, what they believed, where they lived.

The Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, commonly known as Shakertown, in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky, 25 miles southwest of Lexington, supplied all the answers.

Pleasant Hill is one of America’s most successful religious communal societies. Established by the Shakers in 1805, it has been accurately restored by a nonprofit preservation group, recreating the Shaker environment, with 27 of the original buildings accessible. The Department of the Interior has declared Pleasant Hill a national landmark.

Shaker Village first opened to the public in April, 1968, after decades of deterioration and neglect, to illuminate memories of a simpler time, little known and long forgotten.

Progressive Principles

The Shakers were religious zealots who upheld principles foreign to their time--the early and mid-19th Century. Their progressive concepts espoused racial and sexual equality, environmental conservation, staunch pacifism, collective holdings of goods and property. They also insisted upon celibacy.

Dissidents from the English Quaker Church, they had earned the derisive title of “Shaking Quakers” because of their frenetic shaking and whirling dances, part of their worship ritual.

In 1774, their leader, Mother Ann Lee, an inspired prophetess, set sail from Liverpool with eight disciples, following release from prison for disturbing the peace.

Within 10 years, 11 Shaker villages were founded in New England and New York. The Pleasant Hill village was founded on land owned by a farmer who had been converted to the religion. By 1820, Shaker mills and shops were supplying markets throughout the region.

Ten years later, the village, prosperous and self-sustaining, and encompassing 5,000 acres, had grown to nearly 500 inhabitants.

The Shakers encouraged the growth of new crops, tested and grafted different kinds of fruit, experimented with feed, soils and fertilizers, and cultivated the most prolific nurseries and orchards in the Ohio Valley.

Quality Products

Shaker women achieved recognition for quality merchandise, pursuing a thriving business in willow baskets, rag carpets, woolen goods, palm-leaf bonnets, cornshuck mattresses, pickles, preserves and pressed cheese--sold to ready consumers in the “outside world.”

During the Civil War, the Shaker community suffered reversals from which it never recovered. As Southern markets were being destroyed, villagers were called upon to feed and care for the wounded of both Union and Confederate forces, a charitable undertaking that depleted their supplies.

In 1896, the Shakers were forced to mortgage their land. The last Shaker, an aged woman, died at Pleasant Hill in 1923.

One year later, an auction of buildings and furniture took place. During the next 40 years, ownership changed several times. Finally, in 1961, a group of private citizens enlisted support to save the remaining buildings and extensive farmlands.

Angus Cattle

Situated on 2,250 acres of serene countryside, Pleasant Hill is currently operated as a modern farm with corn, tobacco crops and a herd of Angus cattle.

In the kitchens of the 40-room Centre Family House, now serving as the museum, one sees the ingenious tools that helped the Shakers cook in quantity: the pea sheller, double-barreled Shaker stove, cylindrical wooden meat grinder, cider press and automated apple peeler.

Each time we use a flat broom, wooden clothes pin, circular saw or washing machine, we are using one of the many Shaker inventions.

A plaque in the water house explains that the Shakers, in 1831, initiated the first civic waterworks west of the Alleghenies. Water was pumped from the spring by horsepower a half-mile up a hill to the water house, where it flowed by gravity through pipes to village kitchens and cellars.

Flawless Craftsmanship

The Shakers’ talents remain widely recognized and acclaimed, their fine design and flawless craftsmanship a perpetual monument on the village grounds.

Outstanding are the graceful, superbly executed twin stairways in the Trustees’ House, which contains the public dining rooms and superior network of notched trusses in the attic of the Meeting House.

Dual staircases and entrances were obligatory, since men occupied one side of the dwelling house, women the other. Strict laws of chastity kept the two forever apart.

The society was divided into five communal families, each numbering from 50 to 100 members. In these semi-autonomous units, every family had its own home, shop, barn, field and orchard.

Above the main room in the Meeting House were apartments of the Ministry, a ruling body of two elders and two eldresses, who wielded equal authority.

Shaker Dances

After weekly meditation and singing in the somewhat primitive Baptist style of linking out songs, Sunday worshipers pushed the benches back and started their intensely emotional, impassioned religious dances.

“They put their whole body into motion, got down to the floor, leaped up, twirled and shaked away their sins,” said a Shaker Village guide.

Begun in 1824, with outside walls of stone almost three feet thick, the Centre Family House--the largest dwelling, with three spacious floors and a cellar, and built for the most spiritually advanced--was home to more than 100 families.

Furnishings are original, except for the chairs in the hall and the stoves. Furniture had to be plain and utilitarian, with no allowance for ornamentation. Many of the simple, clean lines have been copied by the Danish Modern style.

Beds with slatted headboards look like Frank Lloyd Wright creations. No one seems to know why the celebrated Shaker chairs were buit low to the ground. On bureau tops are the famous oval Shaker boxes, in graduated sizes. Reproductions are still a best seller in gift catalogues.

In the Centre Family House, the bannister railing is magnificently crafted from a single section of walnut, 30 feet long. An office contains interior windows. Shakers considered circulation of air to be important to good health.

Vocational Talents

Demonstrations by skilled artisans afford a glimpse into the vocational talents of the Shakers, disciplined by a creed of maximum utility, wasting neither time, material nor resources. Each engaged in labor, from members of the ministry to humblest converts, practicing Mother Ann’s dictum: Put your hands to work and your hearts to God.

Weavers in the Sisters’ Shop operate spinning wheels and looms. Candle dipping, soap rendering, basketry, tinsmithing and tole painting are ongoing presentations. Coopers turn out one butter churn, one bucket and three dippers a day.

Displayed at the East Family Wash House is a rare and outstanding assortment of quilts. “The Shakers would have worked in groups, but I work alone,” said an accomplished homemaker seated before the nine-foot-long original quilting frame.

It takes this skilled craftswoman from five to 10 months, eight hours a day, five days a week, to complete a quilt. One coverlet consisted of a pattern of 50 stars stitched into the fabric, with a colorful floral border. Another, beautifully crafted in orange and green, outlined the symbol of all Shaker villages: the tree of life.

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Rates for tours of Shaker Village are $5.50 for adults, $2.50 for students.

Lodging is in the Shaker tradition, with accommodations in 15 original dwellings. Guest rooms are furnished in handwoven spreads, curtains, rugs and reproduction Shaker pieces, including the typically high bed and trundles that slide underneath.

We stayed at the Old Stone Shop, built in 1811 as a residence, then used for a workshop and eventually converted into offices for the village physician and dentist after the Civil War.

Clothes are hung Shaker-style on hardwood pegs that line the wall. There are no closets. Twentieth-century concessions comfortably intrude: modern bath and TV in each room, and air conditioning.

Breakfast is a bountiful country buffet: juice, eggs, sausage, bacon, hashbrowns, breads, fruit compote, buttered grits, cobbler. For calorie counters, the continental menu includes juice, beverage and as many warm, flaky biscuits and pumpkin muffins as you dare devour.

Dinners rank as the hallmark of Kentucky down-home hospitality: Abundant appetizers and entrees supplemented by vegetables straight from the village garden, and pastry baked on the premises. A favorite of ours was Shaker lemon pie, a double-crusted dessert with a tart custard filling.

Throughout the year, a varied calendar of events includes guided nature walks, performances by the Louisville Ballet Company, pageants of Shaker music, folk singers, wagon and sleigh rides, and visiting artisans.

Riverboat excursions on a paddlewheel depart in the morning and afternoon during spring, summer and fall. The village is closed Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Special winter weekends are planned for Dec. 27-28; Jan. 12-13, 19-20, 26-27, and Feb. 2-3, 9-10, 16-17, 23-24. These weekends include Friday and Saturday nights’ lodging, plus five meals, Friday dinner through Sunday buffet breakfast, a tour ticket for all exhibition buildings open on Saturday, a Shaker music program, guided tour and folk music program. The all-inclusive price is $115 per person.

The Winter Weekday one-price plan includes two nights’ lodging, five meals and a village tour ticket, available Sunday through Thursday nights Nov. 26 to Dec. 21, and Jan. 14 through March 8. The price is $85.

Otherwise, rates for single rooms are $30 to $55; double rooms, $40 to $70, depending on size and location. There is no charge for children 18 and under when occupying a room with parents. Reservations should be made as far in advance as possible.

Country buffet breakfast, served in the Trustees’ Office Inn, costs $5.50. Luncheons range from $5.50 to $9; dinner, $11.25 to $13.75.

For reservations and a calendar of events, contact Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill, 3500 Lexington Road, Harrodsburg, Ky. 40330, (606) 734-5411.