A Shaker Village Finds Enterprise Is Not So Simple

Hancock Shaker Village, a cluster of historic houses, barns and shops set here amid gardens and cow pastures, has long sought to preserve the culture and traditions of the Shakers, the small but influential religious sect that became as well known for its minimalist furniture as for its social tenets of egalitarianism and pacifism.

Since the 1960s visitors have come to this living history museum to see life as the Shakers experienced it, in structured and disciplined communities that embraced a practice of celibacy that ultimately hindered their growth.

From a peak of approximately 5,000 in the mid-19th century, practicing Shakers now number just three at the last active settlement, in New Gloucester, Me. The village here, among the largest of roughly a dozen sites in the Northeast that promote Shaker culture, is struggling financially.