The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God

"Back in the early 1980's, when my then wife Amy Stechler and I were driving through rural western Massachusetts, we came across a remarkable round stone barn on the side of the road whose shape and exquisite workmanship made me stop in my tracks...Who are the people who would make such a thing?  It turned out to be the religious converts at the Hancock Shaker Village." (Ken Burns)

After completing The Brooklyn Bridge, an urban based documentary, Ken Burns turned his attention towards a rural documentary, The Shakers:  Hands to Work, Hearts to God.  While their official name remained the "United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing", unofficially they were called the Shakers after the ecstatic dancing they performed.

Ken Burns came upon the Shakers by accident.  "Back in the early 1980's, when my then wife Amy Stechler and I were driving through rural western Massachusetts, we came across a remarkable round stone barn on the side of the road whose shape and exquisite workmanship made me stop in my tracks...Who are the people who would make such a thing?  It turned out to be the religious converts at the Hancock Shaker Village." (http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/shakers/shakers/)

The Shakers movement began with a former factory worker from England named Ann Lee who immigrated to America in 1774 with eight pilgrims on the eve of the American Revolution.  She practiced celibacy, never married and never had children as did all of the Shakers.  She told her followers to give up their families, property and ties "to know...the peaceable nature of Christ's kingdom" Quakers believed that Christ had come again in the form of "Mother Ann".  Soon, the religious movement was sweeping New England.  At its peak, in 1840, the Quakers included 6,000 people in 19 communal villages which stretched from New England to Ohio to Kentucky.

Shakers were passionate about their work which produced reliable goods and bounteous gardens.  Surplus food was given to the poor.  They were ahead of their time:  women were granted equal rights within the commune by 1787, the year that the United States drafted their Constitution.  In 1817, members who had joined the movement with slaves set them free.  The Emancipation Proclamation was not signed until 1863.  A Shaker owned one of the first automobiles in New Hampshire.  While the state capitol was burning gas, Shakers in the state already had electricity.  

Because the Shakers did not believe in procreation, they eventually died out.  At the time of Ken Burns' documentary debut, there was only a single village of Shakers remaining in Maine.

http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/shakers/shakers/