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| Mount Lebanon Shaker Society | |
|---|---|
| Name | Mount Lebanon Shaker Society |
| Settlement type | Religious commune |
| Established title | Founded |
| Established date | 1787 |
| Founder | Mother Ann Lee |
| Subdivision type | Country |
| Subdivision name | United States |
| Subdivision type1 | State |
| Subdivision name1 | New York (state) |
Mount Lebanon Shaker Society is a historic United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing community located in New Lebanon, New York. Founded in 1787 by followers of Ann Lee, the society became the central administrative village and spiritual center of the Shakers in the United States, influencing religious communalism, material culture, and utopian movements. Its members interacted with figures and movements across early American history, including Charles Fourier-inspired phalanxes, the Oneida Community, and antebellum reformers.
The society was established soon after the arrival of followers of Ann Lee to the United States, contemporaneous with the founding of other communal experiments like the Harmony Society and the New Harmony (Indiana) project. During the Early Republic era it corresponded with leaders in Philosophical Radicals circles and exchanged ideas with proponents of Abolitionism, Temperance Movement, and Women's rights advocates such as Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott. In the 19th century the village expanded alongside advances in transport like the Erie Canal and the rise of the Hudson River School, attracting visitors including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and collectors associated with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The community weathered tensions during the Civil War era and navigated property disputes with neighboring townships such as Pittstown, New York and visitors from Boston, Massachusetts and Albany, New York.
Leadership originally traced to charismatic figures inspired by Ann Lee and later to elders and trustees comparable to leaders in Shaker North Family communities. Notable Shaker elders and eldresses corresponded with reformers like Horace Greeley and theologians such as Lyman Beecher. Membership dynamics reflected broader demographic shifts in 19th-century United States, with recruitment involving rural outreach to counties in Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut and contact with immigrant labor from Ireland and Germany. The Society instituted communal roles similar to industrial managers in Lowell textile mills, while overseers handled farmland adjacent to properties once owned by families linked to Benjamin Franklin circles. Governance interfaced with legal frameworks in New York (state) courts and trustees managed endowments tied to regional banks like Bank of New York.
The village featured canonical Shaker architecture exemplified by communal dwellings, meeting houses, workshops, barns, and gardens, comparable to structures at Enfield Shaker Village and Canterbury Shaker Village. The Great Stone Barn and the North Family buildings demonstrated masonry and timber techniques akin to contemporary projects at Old Sturbridge Village. Landscaped grounds reflected horticultural practices promoted by authors such as Andrew Jackson Downing and featured orchards similar to farms associated with Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. The spatial plan followed a quadrangle model echoed in Shaker villages, with separate family buildings for the North, South, Church, and Center groups and outbuildings for clockmakers, cabinetmakers, and seed producers.
Religious doctrine derived from the teachings of Ann Lee and evolved through exchanges with millenarian and perfectionist currents like followers of William Miller and Millerites. Central practices included celibacy, communal ownership, gender-balanced leadership reminiscent of co-leadership models in Quakerism, and ecstatic worship expressed through distinctive Shaker song and dance traditions that influenced hymnody in American folk music. The Society produced theological tracts aligning with millennial expectations similar to pamphleteering seen in Second Great Awakening circles and maintained ritual schedules analogous to those at Bethlehem (Pennsylvania) Moravian settlements.
Economic self-sufficiency relied on diversified agriculture, seed production, herbal remedies, and manufactured goods such as furniture, brooms, and textiles; these products circulated through markets in Boston, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, and New York City. Skilled craftsmen produced iconic minimalist furniture that later influenced designers like Gustav Stickley and movements such as Arts and Crafts movement and Modernism; collectors and dealers including Mabel Choate and institutions like the Museum of Modern Art acquired Shaker pieces. The Society engaged in publishing, patenting innovations in packaging and seed-cleaning machinery similar to industrial inventors like Eli Whitney, and sold goods via catalogues akin to Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck and Co..
Membership waned in the late 19th and 20th centuries due to industrialization, secular migration to cities such as New York City and Chicago, and changing social norms after World Wars I and II. Preservation efforts involved historians and preservationists linked to Historic American Buildings Survey and academics from institutions like Columbia University and Yale University. The site drew attention from organizations including the National Park Service and the National Trust for Historic Preservation and became subject to adaptive reuse debates similar to those at other sites like Fruitlands Museum. Restoration efforts incorporated input from curators at the Cooper Hewitt and conservationists formerly associated with Smithsonian Institution programs.
The Society's material culture and ideas influenced designers and artists such as Frank Lloyd Wright proponents, the Bauhaus movement, and Charles and Ray Eames collectors; its furniture and aesthetic principles appear in exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. Writers and scholars including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and folklorists chronicled Shaker hymns and lore that informed studies at Library of Congress and archives at Dartmouth College. The Mount Lebanon community inspired later intentional communities like Twin Oaks Community and scholastic research in fields cultivated at Harvard University and Princeton University, while its archival materials are preserved in repositories such as the New York Public Library and the American Antiquarian Society.
Category:Shaker communities Category:Historic districts in New York (state)