Seventy-four years after the death of the last Southern Shaker, the Pleasant Hill settlement is thriving.
There are cows to milk, eggs to collect, fields to plow, sheep to sheer and wool to dye, spin and weave. And there are tourists to entertain.
Thousands visit annually to see the restored culture of this communal sect that got its name from its exuberant style of worship and is famous for making plainly elegant–and highly collectible–furniture that endures.
The restoration of the Shakers’ old Kentucky home began in 1961 with the formation of a nonprofit corporation. Property that had been used as homes and businesses for 50 years was bought back; the Shakertown Baptist Church, with promise of a new building with Sunday school rooms, was persuaded to vacate the old meetinghouse.
U.S. Highway 68 was rerouted away from town and the first buildings opened to the public in 1968. Costumed workers re-enact the Shaker life year-round in some of the 33 original structures (there were once 270) that remain.
Retired schoolteacher Dixie Huffman has donned the long dress, dark stockings and neck scarf of a Shaker every summer for 27 years. The village restoration has become such an accepted part of the Harrodsburg community that Huffman says she’s not even self-conscious if she has to stop by the grocery store fully costumed on her way home.
“What appeals to me about the Shakers,” she says, “is you have to admire the dedication they had to their religion, to be able to live this life. And I admire them for selecting this place to build their village. It’s such a pretty place.”
Shaker missionaries first came to Kentucky in 1805, drawn by the famous Cane Ridge Revival, a camp meeting begun four years earlier that eventually gave birth to several Protestant denominations. Farmer Elisha Thomas, impressed with the Shakers’ lifestyle, joined their movement and invited them to share his land. By December 1806, 44 Shakers had signed the first family covenant in Kentucky. Two years later, they purchased the first of the parcels that became Pleasant Hill.
At its peak, Pleasant Hill was home to about 500 dedicated souls who farmed and packaged seeds; made brooms, copper cookware and shoes; and traded their goods up and down the Kentucky, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Known for industriousness and innovation, Shakers are credited with inventing the flat broom, the clothespin and the circular saw.
They lived communally in “families,” each assigned to a large house where men slept on one side of the wide hallway and women on the other. But, since they considered themselves brothers and sisters in spirit, they looked upon lovemaking as “spiritual incest.”
Families held daily Bible study in their dormitories and on Sunday gathered in the clapboard meetinghouse, men entering through the eastern door and women through the western.
From April to October, Randy Folger greets tourists at the meetinghouse and sings a few of the 20,000 songs credited to the Shakers, including–of course–“Simple Gifts.” As Folger stomps the wooden floor, raises his arms and shakes his hands, a baby in a stroller covers his ears.
Shakers claimed to have found 19 places in the Bible that instructed believers to dance, said Folger, the village’s music and programs director. They whirled and spun and rolled on the floor, stomping, clapping, shouting and singing in unknown tongues they called “the language of angels.”
“Sometimes on Sunday morning more than a thousand visitors would come to watch,” Folger says. “It got to be the Sunday afternoon thing to do, just like going to the circus.”
The leader of the American Shakers was Ann Lee, known to her followers as Mother Ann. Born in Manchester, England, in 1736, she was both the daughter and the wife of a blacksmith. Her religious group became known as Shakers because of their “uncommon mode of religious worship,” says Stephen J. Stein in his 1992 book, “The Shaker Experience in America.”
Following a vision that came to Lee–or, on a more practical level, because of continued conflict with authorities–she and eight other members of the group left England in 1774. Within two years, they had a permanent settlement outside Albany, N.Y.
After Lee’s death in 1784, “without a struggle or a groan,” her followers carried on, ultimately founding 19 villages, the southernmost in Kentucky. (An attempted settlement in Georgia near Brunswick around 1900 failed.)
Today, the original Shakers of Pleasant Hill are gathered on a hillside surrounded by a white fence and covered with grass, clover and an occasional dandelion. Weathered headstones mark their places.
DETAILS ON PLEASANT HILL
Getting there: Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill is located 7 miles northeast of Harrodsburg, Ky., and 25 miles southwest of Lexington on U.S. Highway 68.
The basics: Open 9 a.m.-6 p.m. daily except Dec. 24 and 25; full tours are offered April 1 through October. Tours are limited, and admission rates are reduced in winter. (Tours are $9.50 for adults or $13.50 with a riverboat ride. Discounts are available to children and families.)
Accommodations: The village has overnight guest rooms in 15 historic structures.
Information: Call Shaker Village at 800-734-5611, the Kentucky Tourism Council at 800-225-TRIP or visit its Web site at www.tourky.com
