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Hancock Shaker Village
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Shaker barn
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| Nearest city: | Hancock, Massachusetts |
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| Built: | 1790 |
| Governing body: | Private |
| NRHP Reference#: | 68000037 |
| Added to NRHP: | November 24, 1968[1] |
Hancock Shaker Village is a National Historic Landmark District in Hancock, Massachusetts that was established by Shakers in 1791. It was the third of nineteen major Shaker villages established between 1783 and 1836 in New York, New England, Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana under the leadership of Joseph Meacham and Lucy Wright.[2]
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The Shakers are a religious order who believe in pacifism, celibacy, communal living, and gender equality. In the nineteenth century, Shaker worship included singing, shaking, and ecstatic dance, which is why they were called the "Shaking Quakers," or "Shakers." The utopian sect is renowned today for its plain architecture and furniture.
The Hancock community was started in 1783 with the consolidation of land donated by converted farmers, many of them members of the Goodrich family, who were New Light Baptists in the congregation of Valentine Rathbun. Elder Calvin Harlow and Eldress Sarah Harrison were the first leaders of the Hancock Shakers. The group was poor at first, but with good leadership, hard work, and thrift, they attracted more members and built a thriving community of several communal families.[3]
All supported themselves by the proceeds of their farmland. The raising and sale of garden seeds was perhaps the most lucative of their early businesses.[4]
Non-Shakers were impressed by the Hancock Shaker property - scrupulously clean, neat, and well-tended - as well as their innovations in farming, such as the round barn that attracted so much attention (see description below). Visitors also praised Hancock Shakers' products, including boxes "of beautiful workmanship" and garden seeds. Before 1820, the village was prosperous and the Shakers were respected as good neighbors.[5]
Land acquisition and conversion continued for decades, with the area peaking at 3,000 acres (12 km2) and the population rising to over 300.[6]
After reaching peak membership in the 1840s, the Shaker movement gradually dwindled, partially due to the urban migration that accompanied the Industrial Revolution, and by the westward migration of New England's youth.
By the early twentieth century, the population of the village had fallen to around 50, most of whom were children. The remaining Shakers sold off their excess land, and many buildings were destroyed.[6]
One of the most notable buildings is the "Round Stone Barn" built in 1826. That barn was created in a circular form for several reasons, the primary one being that it was the most functional.
Inside the barn there are four rings. The innermost is also the smallest and is used for ventilation. This ventilation is necessary to help draw the moisture up and out of the hay which prevents mold from growing and the hay from eventually spontaneously combusting.
The next ring out is where the hay was stored. It was tossed in from an upper level. That balcony was accessible by ox-drawn wagon via a ramp outdoors. Because the barn was round the wagons could enter, unload the hay and then exit the barn without ever having to back up.
The third ring out was where the Shaker brothers would walk to distribute the hay in the second ring to the cows standing in the outermost, fourth ring. The barn could hold up to 70 cows at a time. They would go to the barn twice a day: once in the morning and once in the evening to be milked. Inside the barn they were put into wooden stanchions. Standing there, the cows could eat while the brothers milked them. The floor of the outermost ring is split level, with the inner part raised up 3 inches (76 mm). This was so that the milk buckets were not on the same level as the manure which was unsanitary.
The other conspicuous building is the large red-brick dwelling the Hancock Shakers built in 1830 to house more than a hundred brethren and sisters. The dwelling, like the barn, shows the Shakers' prosperity, as well as their appreciation of the benefits of space, ventilation, and labor-saving modern conveniences such as water piped indoors. The dwelling was a good advertisement for the creature comforts the society provided to its members.
The dwelling also shows how the sexes lived apart under one roof. Wide hallways separate the brethren's rooms from the sisters' rooms; separate doors and stairways for men and women meant that a sister never had to pass a brother going through those openings. Men and women ate at opposite ends of the dining room.
The dwelling also has features unusual in habitations of their era: interior windows for borrowed light to illuminate an otherwise-dark stairwell, built-in cabinets and cases of drawers, dumbwaiters for moving food and dishes between the downstairs kitchen and the dining room on the floor above, an abundance of windows for light and ventiltion.
In 1960, the Shaker Central Ministry closed the Hancock community, and sold its buildings and land. Purchasers formed the not-for-profit Hancock Shaker Village, Inc. to preserve the historic site.[7] The museum opened on July 1, 1961,[7] and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1968.[1]
Hancock Shaker Village was featured in Bob Vila's A&E Network production[8] Guide to Historic Homes of America.
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