The following is the second of a two-part story written in the early 2000s by Darryl Thompson of Canterbury, who lived with the Canterbury Shakers for three decades.
The Shakers as Providers of Social Services
The Shakers’ record of social action is a remarkable one. An example of their generosity is found in a letter to the editor “from a Gentleman in Hudson” which was printed in the Pittsfield Sun (Pittsfield, MA) on November 28, 1803:
“On Thursday morning, last, between eight and nine o’clock, 23 waggons arrived in this city from New Lebanon, loaded with differing kinds of provisions, which is a donation from the Societies of Shakers in New Lebanon and Hancock, to the sufferers by the late terrible (yellow fever) epidemic in New York. The following are the quantities of provisions which they shipped from this to New York.
| 853 lb. of Pork |
| 1951 lb. of Beef |
| 1744 lb. of Mutton |
| 1685 lb. of Rye Flour |
| 52 Bushels Rye |
| 24 Do. Beans |
| 179 Do. Potatoes |
| 34 Do. Carrots |
| 2 Do. Beets |
| 2 Do. Dried Apples |
Besides these provisions, the two Societies made up 300 dollars in specie, which is also presented to the poor of New York. Would not the more wealthy part of the community do well to imitate this most noble example of the Shakers1”
Any Shaker Village that had food to spare would feed (the less fortunate) that wandered by. The “poor office” at the New Lebanon, NY, Shaker community routinely gave material aid for many years
A number of villages responded to the Irish potato famine, with Union Village, Ohio, sending 1,000 bushels of corn2.
During the Civil War the Shakers at Pleasant Hill, KY, nursed wounded soldiers and provided thousands of meals to combatants of both sides.
When the country was held in the grip of a depression in 1874, the Believers at Union Village gave away 4,300 meals to the unemployed3.
This tradition, albeit on a much tinier scale, continued at Canterbury during my slightly more than three decades of life there.
Every Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving, the Sisters would prepare holiday dinners for some low-income families in the area. My father and I would spend the day before the holiday driving from home to home to deliver these. This went on for a number of years until the Sisters’ steadily advancing age made the mere preparation of holiday meals for themselves a challenging task.
On occasion the Sisters would aid local people who had lost their homes to fire. A sort of treasure hunt would ensue. The Sisters would rifle through the drawers and cabinets in search of blankets, sheets, pillows, mittens, old coats or any other items that they could spare. If nothing could be found, then a trip would be made to a local thrift shop to pick up the needed items. Later delicious smells would emanate from the kitchen as the Sisters prepared food “to send over” to the fire victim (or victims). Next in order would be a trip to the local store to pick up canned goods for “our friends.” In reality, the Sisters might not really know the people directly, but may have heard about them from a neighbor who did know them or through a member of a local church that was trying to aid one of its parishioner families. However, the Sisters always seemed to feel that such people whose plight they had merely heard about were just “friends we haven’t met yet.”
Through the years the Sisters had expressed their caring for others in a variety of ways. One neighbor told me about how, on a few occasions, the community had given shelter to people who lacked a place to stay during the winter. Another recounted how from time-to-time individual Sisters had provided “respite care,” sitting with a sick invalid for a day so that their usual care-providers could get away for needed business or a rest.
The Sisters also showed their love for others in far more mundane ways. Together they formed sort of a knitting needle and crochet hook brigade dedicated to the service of God and others. Their expert hands were constantly crafting all kinds of clever and beautiful items to sell in their gift store or give as gifts to friends and relatives, but frequently they were producing baby clothes for young married couples of meager means whose new arrivals needed apparel. The Sisters kept them well supplied with caps, booties, sweaters and even occasional handmade toys.
Sometimes, however, the help that the Sisters provided to others consisted of non-material forms of assistance.
The Shakers as Good Neighbors
I spent much time in the brick Trustees’ Office, the building that fronted the road. It was here that the dwindling band of Sisters had a little gift shop and where they greeted tourists. (The genteel Sisters always referred to this steady stream of people as “our visitors” or “our company” or “our guests,” and rarely, if ever, called them “tourists.”) Guided tours at Canterbury were, however, not a result of 20th-century commercialism but actually a time-honored tradition. While my father and the Sisters founded the museum at Canterbury in the late-1950s, tours of the grounds had been conducted by the community’s members as far back as the 1850s and maybe even beginning in the 1830s. Nineteenth-century Canterbury Shakers saw the tours as method of making converts, as a source of income, and as a means by which they could exorcise erroneous misconceptions about their faith and lifestyle that floated about in the public mind.
From early childhood onward, I was familiar with the sight of individuals laden with cameras and curiosity entering the middle hallway of the Trustees’ Office to (if I may borrow an expression which they frequently used) “find out what this place is all about.”
On rare occasions, however, I would see a very different sort of visitor come to the door. He or she would, often with some hesitation, explain that it was not a tour that they wanted but rather a Sister “to talk to.” It was obvious that they had some kind of problem and sought a listening ear, some prayer, perhaps some counsel. Sometimes the visitor was directed across the street to the former Infirmary building where Eldress Marguerite Frost had her home. But more often it was Eldress Bertha Lindsay, or Sister Lillian Phelps (or, on several occasions in later years, Eldress Gertrude Soule) who would take them into the “back office” on the south side of the Trustees’ Office, close the door, and do their best to assist. I was never, never told the content of these interviews or the nature of the person’s problem. The Sisters kept that absolutely confidential. The Sisters would say that the caller had been “someone needing help.” But that is all that they would ever say.
On several occasions a distraught woman in quest of guidance pedaled her bicycle all the way from Concord. Each time she was invited to have “dinner” (as the Shakers called lunch) with the Sisters before her private session with Bertha in the back office. She was, in fact, invited to lunch on the very first day that she appeared and I found myself sitting across from her at the dinner table.
Once a woman was roughly shoved out of a car by her boyfriend, who then sped away and left her stranded. She angrily pounded on the Trustees’ Office door and demanded a ride as if it were her right. The Sisters called my father, who generously drove the stranger home—even though it was two hours’ distance away.
On one summer night, a family’s car suddenly gave up the ghost just as it crested the hill. The father knocked on the door and asked to use the telephone to call a garage. The man was not an AAA member and, to make matters worse, it was Sunday night and no help was available from any local garage. The Sisters housed the family for the night at the Trustees’ Office and provided breakfast for them the next morning.
The Sisters’ willingness to open their door to any stranger was a source of consternation for some of their friends who feared for their safety. One friend, whom I will call “Amanda” (not her real name) with very good-hearted intentions, proposed the following rather novel solution to my father.
“Bud, we have to do something to protect them. They will let anyone into the house, even at night. Dozens of tourists troop into that house all day long. I want to have a screen or bars put up in the hallway that the Sisters can sit behind when they greet visitors. It’s for their own protection.”
Dad burst into astonished laughter. “Good grief, Amanda! The Sisters are human beings, not monkeys! You can’t put them in a cage! Do you also intend to put up a sign saying, ‘Please do not feed the Shakers’?”
Amanda herself burst into laughter at the ludicrousness of the image. “Of course, you’re right, Bud. But I’m only trying to think of their safety. We have to do something!”4
The Sisters, of course, would smile and listen politely to their friends’ entreaties for more caution in dealing with strangers, thank them warmly for their concern, and then serenely go about doing as they pleased. They continued their open-door policy to the end of their days. They always wanted to be available to any person who needed help. I was extremely proud of their generosity of heart and during my teenage years their spirit of independence particularly tickled my sense of humor. But there were moments when my concern over their well-being caused a tighter breathing within me. I was torn. I totally understood and sympathized with Amanda’s alarm about her friends’ safety, and yet I rejoiced that the Sisters didn’t let Amanda’s security “solutions” keep them from holding their arms wide to the entire world.
My Canterbury Shaker grandmothers have all passed away, but their kindnesses live on in the minds and hearts of all those who knew them. The Shaker tradition of compassion also lives on at the nation’s last surviving colony of Believers, the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community at New Gloucester, Maine. For some years, the members provided a meal for homeless people at a shelter in Portland every Thursday night. More recently, the community has run an annual Christmas fair and used the proceeds from one room of sale items to buy warm mittens, coats, boots and hats for children of local low-income families.
It is recorded that Mother Ann Lee, the founder of American Shakerism, once said that the gospel which she was presenting would be spread less by preaching than by the good works of her people. History has shown that she was right.
- Extract of a Latter to the Editor, from a Gentleman in Hudson, Dated Nov. 21. The Pittsfield Sun. 4: (3) November 28, 1803. [Note: The abbreviation “Do.” Means “ditto,” indicating bushels in this case.] ↩︎
- Marguerite Fellows Melcher, The Shaker Adventure. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), 174. ↩︎
- [William Reynolds?], Journal, Union Village, Ohio. Western Reserve Historical Society Collection, microfilm reel #42. ↩︎
- I have changed the name of the Sisters’ friend in telling this story. ↩︎
Another wonderful piece of writing. Thank you Darryl. I often dream about Sarah and the late eldresses Bertha and Gertrude, and the wonderful times we shared with them. Your dad had cameo roles in some of those dreams. But the most common theme is the unconditional love of the last of the Shakers for Sarah. By osmosis or just by proximity, I received some of that love too. But you and Sarah were the lucky ones. Their love for you was universal and profound. I feel fortunate to have witnessed it. Write on. Harry