Shakers had unique cemetery traditions
Editor's note: This is the last in a summer-long series in which Advocate writer Judith Fairweather visits old cemeteries to try to dig up interesting tidbits of local history. Read all of her columns online at blogtheberkshires.com.
By JUDITH FAIRWEATHER
NEW LEBANON, N.Y. - In Berkshire County, when the term Shakers is used, I would say it was a safe bet that most people would picture Hancock Shaker Village.
But Hancock was not the only local Shaker community. In fact, the Mount Lebanon home of the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing was the largest and most successful communal utopian society for 160 years, from 1787 to 1947. As with other Shaker communities, the village was divided into several unique "family" groupings, variously named the Church Family, the North Family, the South Family and so on.
Currently, Darrow School is housed on the Church and Center family properties; the North Family acreage, however, was purchased by the Shaker Museum and Library in 2004 as the future home of the museum.
The museum is being relocated there from its current Old Chatham site bit by bit, according to Jerry Grant, the museum's director of research and library services. In order to give the public a glimpse into the life of the Mount Lebanon Shakers, this summer the museum held a series of "Talk and Walk" lecture tours. The last in the series will be held Saturday, Oct. 17, at 10 a.m.
Grant generously braved the cold October wind on Columbus Day weekend to give me a sneak peek of what tour-goers can expect at the "Hidden Treasures of Mount Lebanon: The Cemeteries" event for this column, my last "Grave Matters." It is not yet set in stone - pun intended - but will depend on the weather and the group size. It will, however, start with a half-hour presentation on Shaker dying and death and burial customs, Grant said, addressing the ongoing debates the Shakers had about cemeteries and graveyards.
One option, Grant said, is to then walk up to the North and Church families' burial site, where there is one communal marker. He may then possibly take the group to the old cemetery, where there is one main marker as well as some individual markers. The site, however, is badly overgrown, and it is hard to see much there. If the group is small enough, he added, he might encourage a road trip to the Canaan Shaker burial site, which has individual stones.
Grant started my tour in the North Family's granary building so that he could give me a summary of Shaker beliefs out of the reach of the chilly wind. Before heading off to the burial site, it was important that I understand what I was about to see, and why. "There are two main points," he said. "The Shakers don't believe in the resurrection of the body, so when you don't need the body, what do you do with the body?
"The ongoing argument for them was if you bury it with some procedure and dignity, the issue is, do you mark the spot, or leave it unmarked, as you would the place where you would bury a dead horse?"
The Ministry - the decision-making body of the Shakers - finally decided in the 1870s that it should be marked, but in synch with Shaker beliefs, meaning that the marking should be simple and communal.
"The second dilemma, in a society of declining numbers, is how do you maintain them?" he said. Native stone degrades quickly. Writing also degrades, so how much should be written on the stones? "In the 1870s, the decision was made that you could use stone or cast iron markers. Here - at the North and Church families - and Harvard were the only ones to use cast iron," he said.
Requirements also were passed that detailed how high a stone could project above and below the ground and what could be written on it. At Mount Lebanon, that meant only the name, age at death and date of death. There would be no epitaphs for these stones.
But once those questions had been settled, the question still remained, given the ever-accelerating decline in membership, of how to maintain them. "They were encouraged to pull up individual markers and install single markers," he said.
And what happened to those individual markers? They ended up as convenient pieces of stone, used for basement floors, walkways and the like. Some were just stacked up behind cemetery walls; those in Enfield, Conn., were crushed and made into the single marker that now exists, he said.
But not all Shaker communities removed the individual stones. Some communities brokered deals with their various surrounding communities to care for the graveyards, he added.
Before heading out to see the single monument marking the third graveyard of the North and Church families, reached by following a short trail in the woods - it's a bit of a hike, even in good shoes - Grant wanted to show me something in the Brethren's Workshop and Wash House. There, scrawled on the wall, was a drawing of a coffin, Dracula-shaped. Grant pointed out the rectangle drawn inside the coffin shape. That, he said, was most likely a window of glass, so that viewers could look into the coffin to see the face of the deceased.
The graveyard is very peaceful, although somewhat disconcerting without individual stones. The individual graves were recorded, however, Grant said.
"They measured out and staked out where the graves were," he said. "There is a plot plan. I have one on a piece of paper, and one scrawled on the back of a seed box."
But even though I was unable in this last column to make my connections with the long-departed in the way I usually do, I was able to solve a mystery after all. I inquired whether Grant knew of a grave on Lebanon Mountain, a grave that people have told me belonged to someone on the Titanic or the S.S. Lusitania. Turns out it's the latter, and turns out that Grant was able to give me explicit directions to finally find it.
The small burial site, located in a stand of pine trees on the left as one heads toward New York over the mountain, belongs to the Bates family. Lindon and Josephine Bates purchased 500 acres to 600 acres from the Mount Lebanon Shakers, intending to build a home there. However, after their son, Lindon Jr., was killed May 7, 1915 - along with 127 additional Americans and 1,070 others, including children, when the Cunard passenger liner was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland - they abandoned the building project. The small family graveyard surrounded by a black fence bears a monument to their fallen son. It is unlikely that Lindon Jr. actually rests there, as fewer than 300 bodies were recovered, some of which never were identified.
And thus a mystery that has plagued me for some time finally has been put to rest, much like this column for the season. Thank you for keeping me company on this adventure. I certainly hope to revive it next year so that together we can unearth some more interesting tales of our Berkshire County ancestors. So pack away your detective hats and notebooks, but keep them handy. I'll be counting the days until we can get back to our investigations.
"Hidden Treasures of Mount Lebanon: The Cemeteries" will take place Saturday, Oct. 17, at 10 a.m. at Mount Lebanon Shaker Village in New Lebanon, N.Y. The cost is $15, or $10 for museum members. Reservations are recommended. Info: 518-794-9100, ext. 220, or miller@shakermuseumandlibrary.org.
Advocate writer Judith Fairweather can be reached at jfairweather@advocateweekly.com.