Doug Winiarski

Some of the earliest converts at Watervliet near Albany, New York, were Black Shakers.

Some of those Western Shaker villages that got established in Ohio and Kentucky took on Black members.

Sometimes Shakers actually purchased the emancipation of enslaved people in Kentucky.

And so during the Civil War, a couple things happened to the Shakers.

Those Kentucky communities are on the front lines of the Civil War, and they experienced a lot of difficulties, especially South Union Shaker Village in Southside Kentucky.

Union Confederate armies marched through the Shaker villages.

Shaker buildings are used as hospitals.

They're forced to feed and clothe and help both armies as the tide of war changes.

Mm-hmm.

I think in the long term, the impact of the Civil War on the Shakerism is a negative one.

Because in some ways, the Civil War

completes, at least it quickly advances the industrialization of the United States.

So many things change, the emergence of food and transportation infrastructure.

Everything just grows at such a rapid pace during the American Civil War that the things that made Shaker villages these reserves for people where you could live a high standard of living if you're willing to conform and unite with Shaker principles, you could be sure that your family would be fed, clothed, and taken care of.

That world, I think, is easier to find after the American Civil War.

And as a result, the allure of Shakerism, I think the allure of communalism as a whole, kind of declines after the American Civil War and during the Gilded Age.

And I think Shakerism, I think, winds up then...

most of its members wind up melting away.

So after the American Civil War, starting in about 1850, we see a really sharp decline in the membership of all the different shaker villages.

By the end of the 19th century, by the turn of the 20th century, most of those shaker villages are beginning to shutter their doors and sell their properties.