Birthday Road Trip July 9, 2019 - Hancock Shaker Village

     During the afternoon of July 9, 2019 My wife and I, both being "a year older and deeper in debt", took a trip down to Hancock, Massachusetts to visit the Shaker Village. My younger brother and sister-in-law had visited a few days before, and Kathy thought it sounded very interesting.

My Wife at Hancock Shaker Village

The 1826 Round Barn

     The Round Barn is the centerpiece of the Village. It housed up to 52 cows and was very efficient in design. It was also seemingly a first, as most round barns were built after 1850 and those were really octagonal. True round barns began to be built about 1880.
     The collapse of the sheep boom around 1850 and the coming of the railroads at the same time led to a changeover in Northeastern American agriculture from sheep (and wool) to dairy. Hancock doesn't seem to have had a railroad so the market for milk must have been purely local, but the Shakers were growing rapidly at the time. Still, I expect from 1791 until the 1820's they probably focused on sheep.

     There were huge gardens used to raise herbs and vegetables. The museum does a lot of work keeping these up!

The Gardens

     The Shakers used these herbs themselves and sold them also. Many were used as medicines back in the early days, and for other purposes as well. Some of the other buildings are in the background of this photo.

Marsh Mallow

The Laundry Room was, of course, where the clothes were washed.

Laundry Room

   The Shakers used this room for ironing clothes. Always in the forefront of new ideas, they had developed wrinkle resistant and water repellent clothing in the 1800's.

The Ironing Room

     Notice the railing running around the room. These were in almost all rooms and had pegs and were used to hang clothing, furniture, and anything else that could be hung there for convenience and in order to clear the floor for cleaning. Notice also the many windows which helped with lighting in the days before electricity.

These rooms in the "Trustee's Building" were where the residents met the public.  This building was redone in Victorian style by the Shakers in later times.
Residents were not allowed to meet the public, or even relatives, in their own quarters. Their store was also here, where products were sold to the public.

Store

Turbine

 

     The Shakers used water power extensively before electricity. The above turbine powered the cider press and other machinery.

Cider Press

     This is the frame for the Cider Press. Above and behind you cans see some of the shafts and pulleys for the water power system. They also tanned hides in this building.

Smithy

 

 

      There was also a smithy in the same building.

     The Brick Dwelling is where the Shakers lived, and also where they held their meetings. It was the center of their lives. I thought I had gotten a photo of it, but can't find it.

Kitchen

     The Kitchen and Food Preparation and Storage area occupied the entire first floor of the building.

Beverage Storage

      The Shakers originally had no objection to alcoholic beverages in moderation, hence this room, but by 1900 they were banned.

Canning Room

      Here they canned jams, jellies, and other products from their gardens to last the winter, and for sale to others.

Dining Room

     The Dining Room was on the second floor, directly over the kitchen. This floor, and the rest of the building above it, was divided in half by an imaginary north-south line up the middle. The photo is taken from the women's side, looking east towards the men's side.

How the building was divided

The Meeting Hall

    This also was divided, but everyone is sitting on the Men's side here (there were only 3). They Shakers met in here for services.
     Below are some prints on display at Hancock showing Shaker Services and Hymnbooks:

Print Showing a Shaker Service

Shaker Hymnbooks

Bedroom

     On the third floor were the bedrooms and a small meeting space for each sex. This very pleasant room is on the women's side.

     On the way home we took a brief side trip through the Mt. Lebanon settlement, just down the road a few miles on the New York side of the line. It was actually an earlier settlement (1787) than Hancock, larger, and became the Central settlement of the Shakers, displacing Watervliet. It closed in 1947. But much of it was sold off as population declined, the Dwelling House got so bad it had to be torn down for safety reasons, and it hasn't gotten the funds for restoration that Hancock managed.

Mt. Lebanon Shaker Village

Mt. Lebanon Barn. This burned in the 1970's and is still awaiting reconstruction.

My Great-Grandparents visited here in August of 1886:

"Aug. 7: This morning I arranged with Miss Anna Dawes to give a lecture to the "Wednesday Morning Club' on the seventh of September. Then we drove over the mountain to the Shaker Village in Lebanon, N.Y. We visited various shops and houses, bought a few things, one a low rocking chair for Marion's room, had a delicious luncheon in a little room by ourselves which was served by Sister Ann Elisa Charles. Afterwards she showed us the "meeting place", a bare room with a few chairs/and a desk or altar in the middle of it. Her face showed no lines of care, anxiety or sorrow though she was sixty years old, but her hands gave evidence of hard work. She talked with apparent frankness to us and we sat for awhile in her own room. She confessed that the Shakers experience great difficulty now in inducing suitable persons to join their community nor can they easily secure young children. Among the reasons for this the utter lack of intellectual life must in these days affect them more than they can possibly be aware of. In the afternoon we drove on through Lebanon. People were gathering for the funeral of Mr. Tilden and we met many carriages. The Shakers were surprised that we did not care to stop and "view ·the corpse" at least. Then homewards by way of Hancock, which was a journey of sixty five miles in two days. A longer drive than Marion has been able to take in many years. She enjoyed every hour and is not weary at its end".