Doug Winiarski

And then all the sectarian groups, the rapites and the harmonites.

These are all forms of sort of a combination of work and religion in which people are living in real tight communities because that sense of community gives them a sense of purpose and mission in a

rapidly changing America.

So at its peak, Shakerism has about roughly two dozen Shaker villages.

There's kind of a second act on which Shakerism expands to the West.

So it begins as a New England phenomenon because of the Second Great Awakening revivals in Kentucky and Ohio in the early 1800s.

There are now half dozen communal villages in Kentucky, Ohio, and as far West as Indiana.

Shakers will eventually set up satellite communities in Philadelphia, in Florida, in Michigan.

But at its high watermark in about the 1840s, I think scholars would say somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 people.

If you look at the census records for 1840 or so, probably...

But overall, if you consider all of the people that spent time in a Shaker community in the 19th century, we're probably talking as many as about 25,000 people at one time for a couple of years, maybe just a couple of months, have spent time living and worshipping in a Shaker community.

So that high watermark period of the 1840s is also a period of real religious renewal among the Shakers that the Shakers themselves called the new era or the period of mother's work.

Scholars, they call it the era of manifestations.

It comes at a time when

When Anne Lee's first converts, those young husbands and wives that had joined the Shaker movement in the 1780s and 90s, are aging and dying.

And their children that they may have brought in tow with them may or may not have spent their lives as Shakers.

They are also now kind of in their 50s or 60s at the time.

So Shakerism has reached a demographic moment where it needs to turn itself over and attract a new group.

of believers, because as a fellow of a community, they're not going to grow their own followers.

They're going to need to gather those people out of what they would call the world's people.