Enfield
This was the end of the Shaker society in Enfield. The year was 1923, and those two photographs still hang in the Great Stone Dwelling today, testament to a community that once thrived at the epicenter of Enfield.
The Great Stone Dwelling, built in 1837, is still standing, six stories tall. And for the last three weeks, an archeological dig has been underway across the road.
David Starbuck, an anthropology professor at Plymouth State University, is leading a small team of students, independent archeologists and Enfield Shaker Museum staff in a dig to expose what they believe to be the remains of a blacksmith shop used by the Enfield Shaker community.
“The museum has been interested in collaborating for a long time, and two years ago, they gave us so many good reasons to come here, we just couldn’t resist it any longer,” Starbuck said last week.
Last year Starbuck’s team worked to unearth the remnants of the Shaker Community Trustee’s Office. This year’s project, the blacksmith shop, affords new opportunities and some workers already have come across artifacts that surprise them.
Manufacturing tools display the Shakers’ technological advancement and their self-sufficiency. These are known commodities. Another consensus about the Shakers is that they were pacifists. And yet, in the checkered pit where the blacksmith shop used to stand, Starbuck’s team has unearthed the trigger guard for a gun.
“You would think the Shakers wouldn’t have guns, but they had a lot of their own animals,” said Brittany Faulkner, a recent Plymouth State graduate from Rumney, N.H. “Being in the woods, you would imagine they would need one for protecting against pests.”
Faulkner is a former student of Starbuck’s. This is her first dig, and although she majored in business, a few archeology courses at the end of her college experience convinced her that she had found a new career.
“Each pit you open can add another piece to the story,” Faulkner said. “And sometimes, just by looking at artifacts, you can tell a story that’s hundreds of years old.”
It is a little strange to think that a community that was active as recently as 1923 would need an archeological dig to document any of its activities. The Shakers, however, were a bit of an anomaly.
They practiced celibacy, and now only a handful of Shakers are left in the country. In the late 1850s, there were 6,000. At its height, 300 Shakers belonged to this community in Enfield alone.
Michael O’Connor is the curator of the Enfield Shaker Museum, and for the second year in a row, he is out digging for artifacts with the rest of the crew. O’Connor said that while there were other factors, the monastic lifestyle played a role in the decline of the religion.
Shakers rely entirely on converts for their population. The conversion of entire families was not uncommon, but once a member of the community, a Shaker must remain celibate.
“There’s a whole variety of changing American cultural trends,” O’Connor said, “and the fact is, the Shakers are less likely to get converts. But I don’t think it would be fair to blame it purely on celibacy, because then you can’t explain why they grew so quickly for so long.”
Work was holy. The Shakers owned some of the largest distributors of packaged seeds in America. The Shakers owned the Great Stone Dwelling.
“For the longest time, it was described as the largest building north of Boston,” Starbuck said.
Now, the Shaker site offers its history. “The blacksmith shop is a hotbed of activity,” Starbuck said. “It’s the activities that you want to document, not so much the passive stuff.”
“Every weekday, every time we dig, we invite people to come,” Faulkner said.
The public is invited not just to watch, but to dig as well. The Archeological Field School will continue until Friday, with lectures given every day at 12:30 p.m.
For more information on volunteering, or for a schedule of lectures, contact info@shakermuseum.org.