Keepsake Quilting and Canterbury Shaker Village

On Wednesday the four of us ventured off to the south of Conway, down to Center Harbor, home of Keepsake Quilting, one of America's best loved quilting stores and mail order outfits. Clara and Sally spent an inordinate amount of time poking around at this and that before settling on buying this pattern or that piece of fabric.

Then we headed on down to Canterbury, NH to see the Canterbury Shaker Village, thinking that we would have lunch in their Shaker kitchen. Ooops, five buses had prior reservations so there was no room at the inn. After lunch up the road (at a decent enough place) we returned for a couple of presentations, the first one a rundown on Shaker history, beliefs and practices, the second one a closer look at some of their buildings and the hows and whys of them.

The speaker at the first one had come to the Village as a child (his father was an employee) and lived there full-time for nearly six years and part-time for another twenty-six (divorced parents and split custody . . . ) so he really knew his stuff.

The reason for the broom in the picture is that it was a Shaker who figured out how to make the broom flat – prior to that all brooms consisted of a round bundle of whatever it is that brooms are made of. Shakers were very inventive, especially for their small numbers (never more than a few thousand in a nation of several million), having made washing machines and ironing machines years ahead of anyone else. And on and on – Shakers are interesting (at least for a while) so it was past dark when we got back to North Conway.

The building with the bell tower was the living quarters, and the bell was used to announce the events of the day – when to get up, when to eat lunch, etc. The original bell tower was originally much higher but a higher muckety-muck of the Shakers felt it was too ostentatious up that high so it was lowered by five feet, five and a half inches – without taking the bell out of the tower – hmmmm, how'd they do that?

The other building is the meeting hall, which also functioned as the church of course. Note that the roof is unusual compared to other buildings in the village – don't know why.

At the present time there are only four Shakers (persons, not villages) in the U.S. since their beliefs include complete celibacy. They do accept converts and have cared for orphans, later adopting them if it worked out, so they do hope to make a comeback.