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Shaker Museum

haker Museum, located in Mount collection. Williams continued to add to the
Lebanon, NY, was lauded by The New York collection, donated the land for the Old
STimes as being, “Widely considered the Chatham campus, and was closely involved in
country’s most significant collection of Shaker the Museum’s operations for decades.
furniture, objects, and archival materials.” And
if you want to immerse yourself in this religious Gathering the Collection
and production leader of all the Shaker sects, The first benefactress for the Museum was
you will be glad to know at beginning in August Sister Emma J. Neale. Sister Emma came to live
of 2023, a new location and building for this at the East Family of Mount Lebanon in 1855
important Museum breaks ground in the at the age of eight, and then moved to the
Hudson Valley village of Chatham, New York. Church Family where she lived for the next
This forthcoming $18 million structure will be seventy years. In 1901, she became a trustee of
the permanent home for the Museum, and will the Mount Lebanon community and inherited
house the immense and diverse collection Eldress Emma B. King shown with Shaker responsibility for the community’s declining
dedicated to the Shakers which is currently in Museum Founder John S. Williams, Sr., at the financial fortunes. She also managed the
official opening of the library in 1962.
storage and has been physically out of public production of fancy goods made by the sisters
view for over a decade, but is available to view online at and, in 1901, formed E. J. Neale & Co. which produced the popular
https://www.shakermuseum.us/collection. The Mount Lebanon Shaker cloaks. (Grover Cleveland’s wife wore a gray Shaker cloak at
Village is open and is a thriving living museum. his second inauguration in 1893.) In 1930, she oversaw the sale of the
church and Center Family properties,
Lessons to be Learned but still had the buildings’ contents to
The overall mission of Shaker Museum is to elevate “Shaker dispose of. Though the Shakers badly
material culture to animate Shaker values and beliefs and inspire needed the funds realized from the sale
individuals and communities to deepen bonds and seek meaningful of their possessions, John Williams was
approaches to social, economic, environmental, and spiritual issues.” making a transition from collector to a
By sharing not only the material culture of Shakerism but also its kind of curator; he later stated that on
teachings, Shaker Museum gives visitors the opportunity to immerse
themselves into the what’s, how’s, and why’s of the lifestyle the Below: Shaker sisters manufactured various
Shakers chose to manifest. styles of cloaks at villages in New York, New
Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts.
Founder John Stanton Williams Modeled on traditional Shaker style, the cloaks
Shaker Museum founder John became popular and stylish among non-Shaker
Stanton Williams (1902-1982) women. First Lady Frances Cleveland is said to
began collecting items directly have worn a Shaker cloak to her husband’s
from the Shakers in the 1920s second presidential inauguration. The sale of
and 30s. He quickly realized the cloaks at Mount Lebanon earned the Shakers
Shakers represented an important $144,700 between 1881 and 1929, over
facet of American history and, as $3 million in today’s dollars. At Canterbury
their societies were in decline, Sister Emma J. Neale posing and Enfield in New Hampshire, the sisters ran
a successful business manufacturing knit
that crucial story was in danger of in a Shaker cloak. This and a sweaters, which were often sold to colleges
photo taken from the back
disappearing. were used on labels and such as Yale and Dartmouth as “letter
Williams embraced an almost marketing materials. sweaters” in the school’s color.
Shaker Museum Founder John “anthropological” mission to
Williams mans the entrance booth preserve what he could, traveling
with its 75-cent admission fee.
around New England to extant
communities and forming lasting relationships with the Shakers.
They came to trust him, not only to pay a fair price but to be the
custodian of their story. Many collectors and dealers sought spectacular
show pieces that could be resold, some of which are now on display in
places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but Williams also
wanted evidence of daily Shaker life, how they lived, how they
worked. The Shakers gave him important religious relics, such as a
piece of Founder Mother Ann Lee’s apron, because they believed in
his mission to start a museum and allow the Shaker story to live on.
Stanton built the museum in the dairy barn and farm buildings on
his property in Old Chatham, New York. Before the Museum
opened to the public, he’d acquired more than 4,000 artifacts. In
1948, he hired the Museum’s first curator and director, H. Phelps
Clawson, who worked on installing displays and cataloging the

40 Journal of Antiques and Collectibles