Shaker History Timeline

The Shakers published Millennial Praises in 1813. This hymnal contained lyrics without musical notation and helped preserve and circulate Shaker worship songs.

The Shakers at New Lebanon, New York, began keeping a school in 1815 as part of their communal educational life.

Beginning in 1817, the New Lebanon school was certified as a public school by New York State. Its teachers used the Lancasterian system, considered advanced for its time.

During the mid-19th century, an Era of Manifestations brought dances, gift drawings, and gift songs inspired by spiritual revelations. These practices became distinctive expressions of Shaker religious culture.

Eldress Polly Reed, active as an artist in the 1840s and 1850s, created Shaker gift drawings, including “A present from Mother Lucy to Eliza Ann Taylor” from 1851.

Elder Joseph Brackett composed “Simple Gifts” in 1848, around the time he moved to the Shaker community at Alfred, Maine. The song later became one of the best-known works associated with Shaker music.

At the end of the 19th century, Shakers adopted aspects of Victorian decor, including ornate carved furniture, patterned linoleum, and cabbage-rose wallpaper, contrasting with their earlier plain style.

Image source: Shaker furniture

The Shakers published their last hymnbook in 1908 at Canterbury, New Hampshire, documenting the movement's continuing musical tradition during its period of demographic decline.

Aaron Copland's 1944 ballet score Appalachian Spring, written for Martha Graham, used the Shaker tune “Simple Gifts” as the basis of its finale.

Image source: Appalachian Spring

The most extensive recordings of Shakers singing their own music were made between 1960 and 1980. They were later released in the two-CD set Let Zion Move: Music of the Shakers.

English poet and songwriter Sydney Carter used the Shaker song “Simple Gifts” as the basis for his 1963 hymn “Lord of the Dance,” also referenced as “I Am the Dance.”

In 2019, the Warren County Historical Society relocated the 1795 Beedle Log Cabin to its current site next to the Harmon Museum in Lebanon.

External and internal societal changes in the mid- and late 19th century caused the Shaker community to thin as members left or died and few converts joined to replace them.

By 1920, only 12 Shaker communities remained in the United States, reflecting the movement's long-term decline from its 19th-century peak.

By the middle of the 20th century, new federal laws denied religious groups control of adoption. This made it impossible for children to join Shaker communities through the earlier adoption-based pathway.

In 1957, after months of prayer, Canterbury elders and eldresses Gertrude, Emma, and Ida voted to close the Shaker Covenant to new members because only a handful of surviving members remained.

Canterbury Shaker Village dissolved by 1992, leaving Sabbathday Lake in Maine as the only Shaker village still open.

Frances Carr died at the Sabbathday community on January 2, 2017, aged 89. Her death left two remaining Shakers there: Arnold Hadd, aged 58, and June Carpenter, aged 77.

Since 2019, Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in Maine has been the only active Shaker village, preserving the community's traditions and buildings.

The Spring/Summer 2019 issue of the Shaker newsletter The Clarion listed the current membership as Brother Arnold, Sister June, and Brother Andrew.

A New York Times profile published in September 2024 described Arnold Hadd and June Carpenter at Sabbathday Lake as they prepared to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Ann Lee's arrival in New York.

In August 2025, April Baxter began living with the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community. NPR reported that she was living with the community but was not yet a full member.