Canterbury Shaker Village – NHL

Canterbury Shaker Village is a historic site and museum in Canterbury, New Hampshire.

It is one of the most intact and authentic surviving Shaker community sites founded in the 19^th century. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1993.

The “United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing”, more commonly known as the Shakers, was founded around 1747 in England. The Shakers first emigrated to the British North America with an initial settlement at Watervliet, New York (present-day Colonie), in 1774. They were initially known as “Shaking Quakers” because of their ecstatic behavior during worship services.

They were a  millenarian restorationist Christian sect. Millenarian because they believed in a coming fundamental transformation of society, after which “all things will be changed”. Restorationist because they considered that the early beliefs and practices of the followers of Jesus were either lost or adulterated after his death, and therefore require restoration.

Espousing egalitarian ideals, the Shakers practice a celibate and communal utopian lifestyle, pacifism, uniform charismatic worship, and their model of equality of the sexes, which they institutionalized in their society in the 1780s. They are also known for their simple living, architecture, technological innovation, music, and furniture. Women took on spiritual leadership roles alongside men.

Over the period in which the Canterbury Village existed as a working Shaker community, various inventions from mainstream society were adopted by its members. The Canterbury Village had telephones installed in 1901, a powerhouse constructed in 1910 and also welcomed television sets as soon as they were invented. Shakers themselves were pursuing innovation and patented a washing machine.

The Shakers were organized in a hierarchical system of four levels. The first level to which every member of the community was involved was the family. Above the family were members known as elders and eldresses, deacons and deaconesses. The third level consisted of two men and two women who formed a ministry, which governed over the individual communities. Finally, the fourth level was the bishopric, which governed the local communities in a geographical area.

At its peak in the mid-19th century, there were 2,000–4,000 Shaker believers living in 18 major communities and numerous smaller, often short-lived communities. Shakers are celibate, new members cannot be born into the group and must join from the outside. With members leaving or dying with few converts to the faith to replace the Shaker community shrank.

By 1920, there were only 12 Shaker communities remaining in the United States. As of 2019, there was only one active Shaker village: Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village, in Maine. Consequently, many of the other Shaker settlements are now museums. As of August 2025, there were three members