The Shakers of Enfield
Near Woodstock, New Hampshire
From the seventeen ninety-three through nineteen twenty-three, a Shaker community called the Chosen Vale flourished on the western shore of Mascoma Lake here in Enfield. At its peak the community numbered around three hundred members and operated farms, workshops, and industries that made the Enfield Shakers famous across New England for the quality of their goods and the orderliness of their lives.
The Shakers were a celibate, communal religious sect whose beliefs held that work itself was worship. They designed furniture and tools with a simplicity and functional beauty that later generations came to recognize as genuinely ahead of its time. Enfield's community produced seeds, brooms, wooden boxes, and medicinal herbs.
The centerpiece of the village is the Great Stone Dwelling, completed in eighteen forty-one. Standing six stories, it was the largest Shaker building ever constructed. Members ate, slept, and gathered there in carefully ordered separation by gender. When the last Enfield Shakers departed in nineteen twenty-three, the village later passed to the La Salette Fathers, a Catholic order, who bought it in nineteen twenty-seven. Today it operates as a museum and inn where visitors sleep in the rooms the Shakers built.
