Mount Lebanon Shaker Society

Mount Lebanon Shaker Society

Main dwelling circa July 2008
Location New Lebanon, New York
Coordinates 42°27′9.18″N 73°22′50.37″W / 42.4525500°N 73.3806583°W / 42.4525500; -73.3806583Coordinates: 42°27′9.18″N 73°22′50.37″W / 42.4525500°N 73.3806583°W / 42.4525500; -73.3806583
Built 1785
NRHP Reference # 66000511
Significant dates
Added to NRHP October 15, 1966[1]
Designated NHL June 23, 1965[2]

Mount Lebanon Shaker Society, also known as Old Lebanon Shaker Society, was a communal settlement of Shakers in New Lebanon, New York. The early Shaker Ministry, including Joseph Meacham and Lucy Wright, the architects of Shakers' gender-balanced government, lived there.[3]

Isaac N. Youngs, the society's scribe, chronicled the life of that Shaker village for almost half a century. Youngs also designed the schoolhouse built there in 1839.[4]

In the 1940s, due to declining membership, the Shakers sold the site to Darrow School. Throughout the subsequent years, the site has been managed by several different owners. Darrow owns what remains of the Church and Center Families, while the Shaker Museum | Mount Lebanon manages preservation and operates tours of the North Family; the rest of the buildings of remaining Families are privately owned.

Holy Mount, where Shaker services were held, has a spur ridge which has been called Mount Lebanon.

Buildings

Mount Lebanon's main building became a National Historic Landmark in 1965.[2][5]

Although the first of the Shaker settlements in the U.S. was in the Watervliet Shaker Historic District, Mount Lebanon became the leading Shaker society, and was the first to have a building used exclusively for religious purposes. Benson Lossing documented that meetinghouse and a few other buildings when he visited the Shakers in 1856.[6]

Mount Lebanon is located where Shaker Rd. merges with Darrow Rd. off US 20 in New Lebanon, New York. The North Family buildings are preserved as the Shaker Museum.

See also

References

  1. ↑ National Park Service (2007-01-23). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
  2. 1 2 "Mount Lebanon Shaker Society". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. 2007-09-15.
  3. ↑ Stephen J. Stein, The Shaker Experience in America: A History of the United Society of Believers (New Haven: Yale, 1992).
  4. ↑ Glendyne R. Wergland, One Shaker Life: Isaac Newton Youngs, 1793-1865 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006).
  5. ↑ Richard Greenwood (December 10, 1975). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Mount Lebanon Shaker Society" (pdf). National Park Service. and Accompanying photos, from 1975 and 1967. (4.21 MB)
  6. ↑ Benson J. Lossing, "The Shakers," Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 15, no. 86 (July 1857).

Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mount Lebanon Shaker Society.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/25/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.