Streamline Training & Documentation: Hancock Shaker Village

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Hancock Shaker Village

After years of having Hancock Shaker Village on my list of sights to visit, I finally got there today with a cousin and his wife. We ended up spending the entire afternoon, visiting most of the 20 buildings, which contain artifacts recalling the busy communal life of the Shakers who occupied the site until 1960.

Although the utopian nature of the Shaker religion worked against its long-term vitality (celibacy being a particular stumbling block), the industrious lifestyle based on high-quality work in farming, textiles, metalworking, and woodworking continues to be an inspiration to the likes of me.

The best-known building of Hancock Shaker Village is the 1826 Round Barn.

The intelligence of the Round Barn's design is explained at the Village's website:

The Round Stone Barn offers ground-level access on all three levels. Wagons entered on the upper level to deposit hay into the central haymow on the main floor below. This allowed the Shaker Brethren to utilize the force of gravity rather than fight against it, as is the case in a more traditional barn when tossing hay up into a loft. The Brethren would drive the empty wagons around the circular barn floor and exit the same door they came in, eliminating the time-consuming and potentially dangerous activity of backing wagons out of a barn.

The cows were stabled on the main floor for milking, facing inward toward the haymow for ease of feeding. Manure was shoveled through trapdoors to the cellar and stored until needed as fertilizer in the fields and gardens.

A contemporary account describes the high value the Shakers placed on work:

Every man among the brethren has a trade, some of them have two, even three or four trades. No one may be an idler, not even under the pretence of study, thought and contemplation. Everyone must take his part in family business; it may be farming, building, gardening, smith work, painting, everyone must follow his occupation, however high his calling or rank in the church ... The Shakers believe in variety of labor, for variety of occupation is a source of pleasure, and pleasure is the portion meted out by an indulgent Father to his saints.

The Shakers also insisted on scrupulous honesty: "The honesty of the Shakers is proverbial, and everything they make is sure to be as represented," as an 1885 visitor put it.

The Shakers called their village the City of Peace.

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