Shaker Heritage Society Children's Programs

Make a Lavender Sachet
Wednesday, August 4
10:00 am - 11:00 am
Explore the Shaker herb garden and discover the many ways that the Shakers used plants. Craft a fragrant lavender sachet to use at home or give as a gift. Appropriate for ages 8-12. Parents or caregivers are encouraged to attend with the child. Price per child: $5.00.
Pre-registration is required by August 3.

Paint a Shaker Style Box
Thursday, August 5
10:00 am - 11:00 am
Learn how the Shakers worked as a community to build oval boxes and furniture. See an original Shaker box and discover how they were constructed. Participants will have the opportunity to paint a Shaker-style box to take home. Appropriate for ages 8-12. Parents or caregivers are encouraged to attend with the child. Price per child: $5.00.
Pre-registration is required by August 3.

Write with a Quill Pen and
Make a Fabric Covered Journal
Friday, August 6
10:00 am - 11:00 am
View copies of original Shaker journals and learn about how they kept track of the daily activities and events of the community. Make a fabric-covered journal to take home and try your hand at writing with a quill pen. Appropriate for ages 8-12. Parents or caregivers are encouraged to attend with the child. Price per child: $5.00.
Pre-registration is required by August 3.

Please call (518) 456-7890 x23 for more information or to register.

Last of the Mohicans Outdoor Drama

THURSDAY, JULY 29
6:30 pm - 8:30 pm

Throughout the summer the cast and crew of the Last of the Mohicans Outdoor Drama have been rehearsing at the Shaker Historic Site. On Thursday, July 29, SHS members and friends have been invited to attend a dress rehearsal at the 1848 Meeting House. Admission is free. RSVP required by 4 pm on July 29.

For more information or to reserve your seat, please call (518) 456-7980 x25

For more information about their performances in Lake George this summer, visit their website.

Albany County Family Day

Visit the Shaker Site on Saturday, August 7th for a day of fun activities, including

• Carnival Games
• Face Painting
• Petting Zoo
• Shaker Craft Demonstrations
• Bouncy Bounce
• Prizes and Drawings
• Site Tours
• Food Vendors
• Various Music Performers through the day

For more information, call (518) 447-7100 or visit Albany County's website.

The event will run from 10am - 4pm.

The Shaker Heritage Society is located across from Albany International Airport on Meeting House Road off of Heritage Lane.

Shaker Summer Craft Fair

Saturday, July 10 & Sunday, July 11

10:00 am - 4:00 pm

This stained glass ornament was made by SHS volunteer Rebecca Langer.

Find the perfect item for your home or gift for a friend at our Shaker Summer Craft Fair! Explore the booths of over 75 crafters on the grounds of the Shaker Heritage Society. Jewelry, apparel, household goods, toys and gourmet foods are among the popular items. A Family Activitiy Station will host activities for all ages. FREE Pony rides will be availalable to children on Saturday between 1:00 and 3:00. Site tours will be offered at 11:30 and 1:30 on both days.

Admission is $4.00 per person or $3.00 with this ad.

SHS members and those under 18 are admitted free.

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Picking Beans with the Farmerettes

Most are familiar with the “Rosie the Riveters” of World War II. These strong, industrious women are immortalized through a number of familiar photographs and paintings. Yet few are aware that a generation before, thousands of women helped to keep America fed while the young men went to Europe to fight in World War I. As part of the Women’s Land Army, women from a variety of backgrounds and regions took to the fields to plant and harvest crops. Often called the “farmerettes,” these adventurous women helped out on farms across the country. This fascinating article from Smithsonian Magazine offers more information on this nearly forgotten chapter in American history.

Yet what do these young women have to do with the Shakers? While trying to find information about life at the South Family* of the Watervliet Shaker Community, I re-discovered transcripts of journals from the early twentieth century. Sister Anna Goepper kept these particular journals between 1915 and 1922. In the 1918 journal, a series of entries caught my eye.

May 23 – Have rented West Family* for 5 months at $25 per month for agricultural purposes. Lot of college girls coming. Eldress Anna and Lucy got to see about. One of our renters will have to move to a smaller building to make room for the girls.

May 24 – Mary, Lucy and girls go to West Farm all day, cleaning and straightening up.

June 11 – The farmerettes get $15 a month and board. They prove to be good workers.

July 19 – We strung 4 barrels of beans at home. This is our first day this year in beans for canning. Four Farmerettes from Land Army at West Family helped pick, plus Eldress Anna, Mary and Grace.

July 26 – Our folks and farmerettes picked large field of beans last evening. Everybody busy these days.

Evidently the Shakers enjoyed the help of the Farmerettes. We hope that someone eventually finds information on what the Farmerettes thought of living and working on a Shaker farm.

*- The "South Family" and "West Family" don't refer to biological families, but to parts of the Watervliet Shaker Community that could be considered "mini-communities," each with their own dwelling house, workshops and barns. Most Shaker settlements split up into these families for practical reasons- so that each family could specialize in particular industries or products. Also, one can imagine that it would be easier to cook and do laundry for one quarter of the community, rather than the full population. At the Watervliet Shaker Community, there was the Church Family (named so because they maintained the Meeting House), the West Family, the South Family and the North Family. The Shaker Heritage Society is now located at the Church Family.

Clip Art from http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/index.htm

Just in Time for Mother's Day...

This article appeared in 1849 and offers one woman's view of the Canterbury Shaker community. Interestingly, she seems to fixate primarily on what was missing.

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Morning Herald
Thursday Morning, July 12, 1849

A Chapter on Babies

Betsy Blake, a pleasant correspondent of the Home Journal has recently paid a visit to the Shakers, where she was well pleased with everything except the absence of babies.
Hear her eloquence and mourn ye bachelors over the blessings ye are deprived of.

“They don’t use any noise excepting Sunday, and for a little while I liked the plan. But oh, Mr. Morris and Willis, if people could live a great while without some noises, say hand organs and crackers, and be very happy, yet think of a beautiful green hill, covered with white houses and perhaps two hundred people in them, and not the sound of a baby! Not a cry, not a laugh, not a crow, not a first “Ma Ma!” Every house shining and clean inside and out, and not the mark of a little soiled hand on the door, or a sign of a baby shoe and stocking on the varnished floor! Oh I couldn’t have stayed a week with those grown up men and women, without feeling that I’d lost something that through a baby keeps us in sight of heaven. To be sure they have forty children there, but the girls are all kept in one house by themselves and the boys in another. Of course there isn’t a baby among them, and then too I wanted them mixed in among the sisters and brethren like leaven to the whole lump. Oh! How I should like to have seen the leaven working in those nice houses that looked as if they kept for a show. But then I don’t know as it would have made much difference, for the children even seem to make no use of noise excepting when they’re singing and dancing in their religious way. I thought if I ever got back to Boston I wouldn’t be tired of noise very soon, but would insist upon being contented even if the babies should all get crying at once.”

She found so many things of an agreeable nature among the Shakers that for a time, she thought life might be tolerable among them. “But all at once,” she says,

“I looked back with my mind to Boston where I’m living with my dear brother Charles for a little while (Charles isn’t a Shaker so he approves of getting married) and there I saw a little crib with a curly head peeping out and a voice like a soft music box crowing for me. Oh! the poetry couldn’t tempt me any more- the naughty world couldn’t be so very naughty while it had “of such is the kingdom of Heaven” in it!

I wish that mothers who get tired of their babies and make dreadful complaints about their noise and pulling things about, would go to Canterbury for a week- I’m sure they’d be cured of their ingratitude and hurry back to them with just such delight as was felt at sight of two pets of Charley’s by
BETSY BLAKE

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Image courtesy of http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/

Article found using www.fultonhistory.com newspaper archive

A Shaker Saint Patrick's Day?

In the study of history, change is one of the few things that remains constant. This is particularly true among the Shakers. Something that may have been unheard of in 1823 might be truly commonplace by 1923. Rules evolved and new ideas were introduced. One example of this is the celebration of social holidays. The Shakers celebrated many religious holidays throughout their history, but by the twentieth century, social holidays such as Halloween and Saint Patrick's Day were occasionally observed. This entry from a journal kept by Sister Lucy Bowers at the Watervliet South Family describes an unusual meal.

17 March 1923 - Mary prepares a green supper which we enjoy. Chicken salad, green jello, candy and cake and creamed potatoes, also ice cream with green jello topping. Mary tires herself and is sick all night.

It is possible that the Shaker Sisters got the idea for a green meal from one of the women's publications available in that era. Evidence suggests that the Shakers received Ladies Home Journal and used some of the craft patterns and recipes included in the issues.