Pleasant Hill, Kentucky,

USA The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territor ...

, is the site of a Shaker

religious Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...

community that was active from 1805 to 1910. Following a

preservationist Preservationist is generally understood to mean ''historic preservationist'': one who advocates to preserve architecturally or historically significant buildings, structures, objects, or sites from demolition or degradation. Historic preservation us ...

effort that began in 1961, the site, now a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places listed ...

, has become a popular

tourist destination A tourist attraction is a place of interest that tourists visit, typically for its inherent or an exhibited natural or cultural value, historical significance, natural or built beauty, offering leisure and amusement. Types Places of natural b ...

. Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, or Shakertown, as it is known by residents of the area, is located 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Lexington, in Kentucky's

Bluegrass region The Bluegrass region is a geographic region in the U.S. state of Kentucky. It makes up the central and northern part of the state, roughly bounded by the cities of Frankfort, Paris, Richmond and Stanford. The Bluegrass region is characteri ...

. It is a

District.

History

Founding

The

Second Great Awakening The Second Great Awakening was a Protestantism, Protestant religious Christian revival, revival during the early 19th century in the United States. The Second Great Awakening, which spread religion through revivals and emotional preaching, sparke ...

began in the late 1700s and continued into the early 19th century. A revival was characterized by large

camp meeting The camp meeting is a form of Protestant Christian religious service originating in England and Scotland as an evangelical event in association with the communion season. It was held for worship, preaching and communion on the American frontier d ...

s, where ministers from various

Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

groups would preach for long periods, with music and dancing often adding to the emotional pitch of the congregation. These religious gatherings sometimes drew thousands of observers and participants in the Ohio Valley of

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virgini ...

. They were a form of community for people living scattered in relative isolation on the frontier the rest of the time. The powerful interest in religion sweeping the region inspired the Shakers to broaden their ministry into Kentucky.

Lucy Wright Lucy Wright (February 5, 1760 – 1821) was the leader of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, also known as the Shakers, from 1796 until 1821. At that time, a woman's leadership of a religious sect was a radical departu ...

, the head of the Shakers' parent Ministry at New Lebanon, New York, decided to send missionaries west. On January 1, 1805, with eleven Shaker communities already established in

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

and

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian province ...

, three Shaker

missionaries A missionary is a member of a religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Mi ...

, John Meacham, Benjamin Seth Youngs (older brother of Isaac N. Youngs), and

Issachar Bates Issachar Bates (January 29, 1758 – March 17, 1837) was among the most prolific poets and songwriters among the early 19th century Shakers. Several of his songs, poems, and ballads are known outside of the Shaker movement, including "Rights of ...

, set out to find new converts. Traveling more than a thousand miles, most of the way on foot, they joined the pioneers then pouring into the western lands by way of

Cumberland Gap The Cumberland Gap is a pass through the long ridge of the Cumberland Mountains, within the Appalachian Mountains, near the junction of the U.S. states of Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee. It is famous in American colonial history for i ...

and the Ohio River. By August, they had gathered a small group of new adherents to the doctrine of

Mother Ann Lee Ann Lee (29 February 1736 – 8 September 1784), commonly known as Mother Ann Lee, was the founding leader of the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, or the Shakers. After nearly two decades of participation in a re ...

who believed in celibacy. Ann Lee was born February 29, 1736, in Manchester, England. She was a member of the Quaker sect called the Shaking Quakers. She ran afoul of the law and was imprisoned for trying to teach her sect's beliefs. During her time in prison, she claimed to have a vision that she herself was the second coming of Christ. Upon her release in 1772, she founded a new religious sect, which came to be commonly known as the Shakers because of the adherents' dancing and motions. She taught that God was a dual personage, male and female, instead of the masculine-orientated traditional belief in an all-male trinity. She interpreted the passage in Genesis that stated "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female, created he them," to mean that both sexes were in God's image therefore God was both male and female. She acknowledged that Jesus was the first coming of the messiah but believed the second coming had already occurred with herself, Ann Lee, based on her vision. Thus Shakers believed they were living in the last millennium and since all people shared a brother/sister relationship, they should not marry as there was no longer a need to procreate. Instead they believed people should live communally as a family of brothers and sisters. Couples joining the community lived separately, with their young children and foundlings raised in a nursery. Children could decide whether to remain in the community when they reached the age of maturity. Many of those proselytes had earlier been influenced by the fervent

Cane Ridge Revival The Cane Ridge Revival was a large camp meeting that was held in Cane Ridge, Kentucky, from August 6 to August 12 or 13, 1801.E. Michael, & Rusten, S. (2005). The complete book of when & where in the Bible and throughout history. Wheaton, IL: Ty ...

. In December 1806, forty-four converts of legal age signed a covenant agreeing to mutual support and the common ownership of property. They began living together on the farm of Elisha Thomas, whose lands formed the nucleus of the Pleasant Hill Shaker village. Additional converts and property were quickly added, with the community occupying . By 1812 three communal families—East, Center, and West—had been formed, and a fourth, North, was established as a "gathering family" for prospective converts. On June 2, 1814, 128 Believers bound themselves together in a more formal covenant, which established the community in the pattern of the Shaker Ministry's village at

New Lebanon, New York New Lebanon is a town in Columbia County, New York, United States, southeast of Albany. In 1910, 1,378 people lived in New Lebanon. The population was 2,305 at the 2010 census. The town of New Lebanon is in the northeastern corner of Columbia ...

Early years

Though the Kentucky Shakers were poor when they started out, they were skilled farmers who made the most of their property. Even the most skeptical observers saw that they prospered, in part because of the high quality of their products. In 1852, a visitor wrote that every article of Shaker produce sold for a third more than what other farmers received. Another reason for their prosperity was their location, which was ideal for marketing their produce and home manufactures. By 1816, they regularly traveled the rivers to larger cities (some at great distances, such as

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

"Shaker Farming in Kentucky," ''Pittsfield Sun'', January 15, 1857. By 1825, the Pleasant Hill Shaker village was a handsome community with large stone and brick dwellings and shops, grassy lawns, and stone sidewalks. One visitor, though dubious about their mode of worship, was impressed by their prosperity and delighted by their hospitality. He concluded that they were a "trafficking, humane, honest and thrifty people.""Kentucky," ew Bern''Carolina Sentinel'', May 21, 1825, p. 1. Over the years they expanded their land holdings by acquiring adjacent farms for orchards and fields, and fenced it with stone walls. According to a visitor in 1857, they had paid a hired man for twelve years to work full-time at building stone walls, and he had completed forty miles of walls, at a cost to the Shakers of about $1000 per mile. Their buildings were large, substantial, and well-built, and furnished with modern conveniences. The Pleasant Hill community was known for its excellent livestock. In 1838, Shaker John Bryant sold one pair of Berkshire hogs for $500. In the 1850s they kept about 500 head of well-fed cattle, and bred imported cows to improve their herd's milk production. They practiced

selective breeding Selective breeding (also called artificial selection) is the process by which humans use animal breeding and plant breeding to selectively develop particular phenotypic traits (characteristics) by choosing which typically animal or plant ma ...

and scientific agriculture well before the average farmer did. They also raised Saxony sheep for the wool, which Shaker sisters spun and wove into cloth for home use. The Pleasant Hill Shakers were also known for their labor-saving engineering accomplishments. They had a municipal water system well before some towns in their area. By 1825 they had pumps in their kitchens for the sisters' convenience (at a time when many farmwives had to carry water from a creek). Their

mill Mill may refer to: Science and technology * * Mill (grinding) * Milling (machining) * Millwork * Textile manufacturing, Textile mill * Steel mill, a factory for the manufacture of steel * List of types of mill * Mill, the arithmetic unit of the A ...

had an

elevator An elevator or lift is a cable-assisted, hydraulic cylinder-assisted, or roller-track assisted machine that vertically transports people or freight between floors, levels, or decks of a building, vessel, or other structure. They ar ...

for moving grain to the upper floor, and they had a mechanical corn sheller. Shaker sisters also had the benefits of machinery for doing laundry by horse power. One of their barns included an upper floor for storage of grain and hay, a cutting machine for chopping fodder, and an ingenious railway for delivering feed to the cattle.

Through the Civil War and Reconstruction era

The Kentucky Shakers' locations, however, were problematic during the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by state ...

. Even before the war began, the Pleasant Hill Shakers ran into controversy. The New York-based religious organization had a policy of pacifism and was also opposed to

slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

. Members who made up the Pleasant Hill society mostly came from the region and, as a result, ''may'' have had a variety of views on the war and slavery, although this cannot be proven by the sources. Formally they adhered to the principles of the Shakers. The Shakers at Pleasant Hill adopted the practice of buying and freeing slaves. In 1825, because of mounting tensions over slavery in Pleasant Hill's surrounding community, a mob attacked Pleasant Hill and destroyed some of its facilities. While members of Pleasant Hill were sympathetic to the Union, their Southern location made them the target of some neighbors and bands of extremists. (This experience was relatively similar to the

Koinonia () is a transliterated form of the Greek word , which refers to concepts such as fellowship, joint participation, the share which one has in anything, a gift jointly contributed, a collection, a contribution. It identifies the idealized state of ...

situation during the

Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...

.) Pleasant Hill was at risk during the war, although it did not suffer as much damage as its sister colony at South Union, Kentucky. The Civil War depleted Pleasant Hill's resources. The members of Pleasant Hill fed thousands of soldiers who came begging, particularly in the weeks surrounding the

Battle of Perryville The Battle of Perryville, also known as the Battle of Chaplin Hills, was fought on October 8, 1862, in the Chaplin Hills west of Perryville, Kentucky, as the culmination of the Confederate Heartland Offensive (Kentucky Campaign) during the ...

. Both armies "nearly ate

hem A hem in sewing is a garment finishing method, where the edge of a piece of cloth is folded and sewn to prevent unravelling of the fabric and to adjust the length of the piece in garments, such as at the end of the sleeve or the bottom of the ga ...

out of house and home." They also lost manpower when some young Shaker brethren left to join the army. More importantly, the social environment and cultural changes in the decades before and after the war made Shaker life less appealing for converts. During Reconstruction and later, very few new converts joined the Shakers.

Last days

Kentucky Shakers had a number of problems after the Civil War, which had sapped their communities' strength. They continued to take in orphans, but few stayed past the end of their indentures. So-called "Winter Shakers", impoverished locals feigning interest in joining the colony during the cold season, were a drain on the village, and rarely earned their keep. Apostasy increased. As membership declined, the Shakers began closing communities and consolidating Believers into the remaining villages. Pleasant Hill, which had once had almost five hundred members, dwindled away. By 1875, despite an influx of new proselytes from Sweden , it had fewer than half that number. In 1900, only 34 remained. The Pleasant Hill Shaker community was dissolved in 1910. Its last surviving Believer was Mary Settles (1836-1923). She was pleased to live long enough to see women's suffrage and planned to vote a straight Democratic ticket on her first ballot. She said that Shaker sisters had always had equal rights within their

communal society An intentional community is a voluntary residential community which is designed to have a high degree of social cohesion and teamwork from the start. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, religious, ...

."Says Suffrage a Shaker Doctrine," ''Lexington Herald'', October 8, 1920, p. 20.

Life at Pleasant Hill

Many visitors to Pleasant Hill, observing the nineteenth-century architecture, crafts, and clothing, mistakenly assume that the Shakers, like the

Amish The Amish (; pdc, Amisch; german: link=no, Amische), formally the Old Order Amish, are a group of traditionalist Anabaptist Christian church fellowships with Swiss German and Alsatian origins. They are closely related to Mennonite churches ...

, rejected technological advancements. In fact, the Shakers were

inventors An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an id ...

early adopters An early adopter or lighthouse customer is an early customer of a given company, product, or technology. The term originates from Everett M. Rogers' ''Diffusion of Innovations'' (1962). History Typically, early adopters are customers who, in ad ...

of many new tools and techniques. For example, in the early 1830s the Shakers of Pleasant Hill constructed a

water tower A water tower is an elevated structure supporting a water tank constructed at a height sufficient to pressurize a distribution system for potable water, and to provide emergency storage for fire protection. Water towers often operate in conjun ...

on a high plot of ground. A

horse The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million ...

-drawn pump lifted water into the tower, and from there a system of pipes conveyed it to the kitchens, cellars, and wash houses. It is believed to have been the first in the state. In the wash houses, the members built

washing machine A washing machine (laundry machine, clothes washer, washer, or simply wash) is a home appliance used to wash laundry. The term is mostly applied to machines that use water as opposed to dry cleaning (which uses alternative cleaning fluids and ...

s (also powered by horses) to reduce the heavy work of laundering the community's clothes and linens. Music was an important part of Shaker life, with the community performing songs, hymns and anthems written by both men and women. One of the best known songs is "Gentle Words", written by Polly M. Rupe in the 1860s. It includes a quote from the Bible ().

Preservation effort

Following the dissolution of the Shaker society in 1910, the property changed hands several times and was used for a variety of purposes. Elderly Shakers continued to live on the property until the death in 1923 of Mary Settles, the last Pleasant Hill Believer. The Meeting House was converted for use as an automotive garage; the wood floor, built to withstand the dancing of several hundred brethren and sisters, proved strong enough to support the vehicles driven onto its surface. Some years later the structure was again converted, this time for use as a

Baptist Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christianity, Christian believers only (believer's baptism), and doing so by complete Immersion baptism, immersion. Baptist churches also generally subscribe ...

church. Following

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, residents in the region took a renewed interest in the crumbling village of Pleasant Hill. An admirer was the writer

Thomas Merton Thomas Merton (January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968) was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. On May 26, 1949, he was ordained to the Catholic priesthood and g ...

, a

Trappist The Trappists, officially known as the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance ( la, Ordo Cisterciensis Strictioris Observantiae, abbreviated as OCSO) and originally named the Order of Reformed Cistercians of Our Lady of La Trappe, are a ...

monk at the nearby

Abbey of Gethsemani The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani is a Catholic monastery in the United States near Bardstown, Kentucky, in Nelson County. The abbey is part of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (''Ordo Cisterciensis Strictioris Observantiae''), ...

. Having mentioned Pleasant Hill in his writings as early as 1949, Merton took considerable interest in the community from his first visit there in 1959 until his death in 1968. Describing his first look inside the Trustee's Office in 1959, Merton wrote in his journal to describe:

e marvelous double winding stair going up to the mysterious clarity of a dome on the roof ... quiet sunlight filtering in—a big Lebanon cedar outside one of the windows ... All the other houses are locked up. There is Shaker furniture only in the center family house. I tried to get in it and a gloomy old man living in the back told me curtly 'it was locked up.' The empty fields, the big trees—how I would love to explore those houses and listen to that silence. In spite of the general decay and despair there is joy there still and simplicity ... Shakers fascinate me.

Others shared his interest. In 1961, a group of Lexington-area citizens led by Joseph Graves and Earl D. Wallace launched an effort to restore the property. By 1964 the Friends of Pleasant Hill had organized a

non-profit corporation A nonprofit corporation is any legal entity which has been incorporated under the law of its jurisdiction for purposes other than making profits for its owners or shareholders. Depending on the laws of the jurisdiction, a nonprofit corporation may ...

, raised funds for operating expenses, and secured a $2 million

federal Federal or foederal (archaic) may refer to: Politics General *Federal monarchy, a federation of monarchies *Federation, or ''Federal state'' (federal system), a type of government characterized by both a central (federal) government and states or ...

loan to purchase and restore the site. James Lowry Cogar, a former Woodford County resident and first curator of

Colonial Williamsburg Colonial Williamsburg is a living-history museum and private foundation presenting a part of the historic district in the city of Williamsburg, Virginia, United States. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has 7300 employees at this location a ...

, was recruited to oversee the complex preservation project. Today, with 34 original 19th-century buildings and 2,800 acres (1100 hectares) of farmland, Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill claims to be "the largest historic community of its kind in America."

Gallery

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References

External links

Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill (Official site)

Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill at American Byways