The Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake is the longest continually running Shaker community in the world and is in fact the only one still in existence. As such, the Sabbathday Lake community has take on the responsibility of safeguarding the history and culture of the religious group and its many previous settlements.
Founded in 1783 the community was actually the smallest of the Shaker Communities for a while, but eventually represented the last of the Shaker settlements. It has since, in addition to preserving its own traditions, collected the histories of those communities that no longer operate. The Shaker Library, founded in 1882, and the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Museum, begun in 1931, form the core of this repository of Shaker knowledge and history.
Selected United Society of Shakers images:
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Students, teachers, Alfred Shaker Village, 1885
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Aurelia G. Mace, Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village, 1905
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Shaker Meeting, Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village, 1885
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Shakers at Poland Spring Concert
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Sisters and young girls, Alfred Shaker Village, ca. 1927
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Herb catalog, United Society of Shakers, New Gloucester, 1864
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Hancock Shakers Visiting Scarboro Beach, 1916
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Sisters Ada S. Cummings and Lizzie Bailey, Sabbathday Lake, ca. 1915
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The Youth's Guide in Zion, 1842