Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village outside New Gloucester, Maine, as of mid-2006, was home to the world's four surviving Shakers, members of a Protestant monastic sect properly called the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing.

What is now mankind's last active Shaker community has survived for 223 years in this isolated village, the remaining four today living an ascetic life of celibacy, confession and communalism.

Sister Frances Carr, 79, Sister June Carpenter, 67, Brother Arnold Hadd, 49, and Brother Wayne Smith, 43, told the Boston Globe in July 2006 that they continue to hope new converts will come along to keep the community going, but of the several dozen inquiries they currently receive each year, no one has taken them up on their invitation to join the faith. See the Globe's article here.

Failing that, they are selling conservation easements to two non-profit organisations, the Maine Preservation and the New England Forestry Foundation. These and affiliated groups have raised $2.8 million in government grants and private donations in the past five years, and another $900,000 is being sought to secure the future of the pristine village and its surrounding 1,643 acres against development.

Among the 18 historic structures in the village are a 1794 Meetinghouse, a 1910 garage and an 1883 Dwelling House. Nearby are forests, farmland and apple orchards and the 340-acre Sabbathday Lake, with 5,000 feet of undeveloped shoreline and public beach.

The Shakers currently pay the bills by leasing lakeside cottages, farmland and orchards, and a huge gravel pit, managing everything with the help of six volunteer Friends of the Shakers.

The Globe noted that Sabbathday Lake "is not unlike the Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield or the Canterbury Shaker Village in Canterbury, New Hampshire. All are tourist attractions, though the latter are mere emblems of what they were. The Maine hamlet, with real adherents going about their business, has its soul intact, and it draws about 10,000 visitors a year."

The sect was founded in Manchester, England, in 1747, its early devotees dancing wildly at gatherings and speaking in tongues, thus earning the derogatory nickname "Shaking Quakers". A member in the 1770s, Ann Lee, known as Mother Ann, was jailed for preaching sexual and racial equality and pacifism, and that God possesses both masculine and feminine traits. In 1774 she and eight of her followers immigrated to Watervliet, New York. By the time of the Civil War, there were 5,000 adherents from Indiana to Florida.
Sabbathday Lake was founded in 1783 and peaked at 187 members.

The Shakers here have phones, television, Internet access and a police scanner in the Dwelling House, the Globe reported, "but most activities, from borrowing one of the vehicles to buying a new pair of pants, must be sanctioned by the group, which calls itself a family".

The music ensemble Boston Camerata has made two CDs of Shaker chants and spirituals with the local members, but the sect is best known for its simple yet iconic ladder-back chairs, oval boxes and other utilitarian objects, which have inspired modern American designers. "What other religious sect," the Globe noted, "has its knockoffs sold at Bernie & Phyl's and Ethan Allen? And antique pieces with the right provenance can fetch tens of thousands of dollars."

Items such as cupboards from the 1860s, like the one pictured here, can sell for up to $75,000.

"Maine's four Shakers no longer make furniture, but Brother Wayne Smith and some non-Shaker employees produce and sell about 200 oval boxes a year."

LINKS: More on the Shakers here.
Website of New Gloucester, "Home of the Shaker Community", here.