Shakers

The Shakers, formally the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, trace their roots to a breakaway Quaker group formed around 1747 in Bolton, in the north of England. Led first by Jane and James Wardley and then by Ann Lee, who her followers called Mother Ann, the sect became known for the trembling, shouting and dancing that overtook believers during worship, which earned them the nickname Shaking Quakers. Lee and a small band of followers sailed for the American colonies in 1774, settling at Watervliet, New York, and from that seed the movement grew into one of the most distinctive religious and social experiments in American history.

Shaker life was built on celibacy, communal ownership of property, pacifism and a belief that women and men should share spiritual authority equally, a conviction the group put into practice in its leadership structure a century before it became mainstream political thought. Converts gave up personal possessions, marriage and family ties to live in gender-separated but equal communities devoted to work, worship and simplicity. At its height in the mid-19th century the Shakers numbered between two thousand and four thousand members spread across roughly eighteen major communities from Maine to Kentucky.

The Shakers left a cultural legacy far larger than their numbers. Their furniture, pared down to plain, sturdy, functional forms, became internationally admired and widely imitated. Their song "Simple Gifts," written by Elder Joseph Brackett in 1848, went on to be woven into classical and folk music well beyond the community, most famously by Aaron Copland. Shaker craftsmen and craftswomen are also credited with everyday inventions, including the clothespin, the flat broom and an early washing machine, products of a work ethic the Shakers treated as a form of prayer.

Because members could not have children of their own, the Shakers relied on conversion and the taking in of orphans to sustain their numbers, a practice that became legally difficult in the 20th century and contributed to a long, steady decline. By 1920 only twelve communities remained, and by 2019 a single village, Sabbathday Lake in New Gloucester, Maine, was still active. As of 2025 that community counted just three living Shakers.

On November 3, 2026, Sister June Carpenter, one of those three remaining Shakers, died at Sabbathday Lake in the early morning hours, surrounded by her Shaker family, according to a statement from the community. She was 88. Her death leaves Brother Arnold Hadd and Sister April Baxter, who joined the community in 2025, as the only two practicing Shakers in the world, a stark marker of how far a movement that once numbered in the thousands has fallen, even as the survivors insist their faith and way of life continue.