A small group of Shakers arrived in the colonies shortly before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. They left England to escape religious persecution and to find greater opportunities to spread their faith doctrine. The Shakers were a group with the formal nomenclature of The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing. The group reached its pinnacle of popularity in the mid-1850s. At that time, membership reached 5000 persons. There were many drawbacks to the Shaker lifestyle. It meant communal living. Believers had to give up all material possessions and earthly goods. They had to agree to adhere to a strict work regimen of hard backbreaking work and most importantly, the members had to adhere to a strict commitment to remain celibate. The latter requirement did not deter new believers but because there was no real way to increase the number of the church's flock other than through attracting new adult members, the sect seemed doomed almost from its beginning. In the late 1850s, the sect began adopting orphans to increase their fold but it was too late by then.
Despite the fact that the sect never approached the size and outreach of other religious sects in the United States, the Shakers were famous for many things which have withstood the test of time. The Shakers were an interesting group of people who strove for perfection and their long hours of toil and aspirations for simplicity left a legacy that is widely emulated today in the furniture, gardening and horticultural industries. The sect's doctrine strictly stipulated that Shakers live separate from the world; this segregation however, did not extend to economic matters. Novel in their thinking as well as diligent in their efforts, the Shakers had a mindset for business. Many of their trades initially began in order to meet each communities needs, these were tied to everyday life such as the earth's soil. They constantly tried to experiment and improve upon perfection in their farming methods and came up with many labor saving devices and hardy resistant seeds and herbs.
Shakers began to sell garden seed in the late 1700s. By the mid-1800s, simple wooden Shaker boxes filled the counters of hardware and general stores from large eastern cities to remote western towns. The name of the Shakers and the honesty and integrity that the sect's quality products carried with it made the purchase of the seeds worth any cost including the escalating and often high price of around five cents per packet in 1870. Competition became fierce after the Civil War when new road construction and the transcontinental railway made other companies' wares readily available and more cost friendly.
Along with seeds, the Shakers became famous for cultivating and selling herbs, roots and bark along with vegetable extracts on a major scale to physicians and druggists. In 1820, the Shakers formally started selling herbs and roots for medicinal uses. Many drugs on the market during this time were of questionable quality and charlatans abounded selling harsh and/or poisonous herbs. The reputation of the Shaker herbs, however, spread and orders came in from locales as far away as Russia. Many of the Shaker communities developed medicinal preparations for marketing by outside companies.
Some of these included Tincture of Veratrum Viride, Corbett's Wild Cherry Pectoral Syrup (today's modern Vick's Formula 44 is based on this syrup and the company paid a large fee to the Shakers at the turn of the century for the formula), Sanford's Radical Cure, Shaker's Aromatic Elixir of Malt, and Shaker Syrup of Sarsaparilla. All of these were known and advertised that they could provide relief from asthma, to dyspepsia, to bad breath, etc., these preparations were widely touted to solve female functional problems. Because these preparations often contained a higher concentration of alcohol than spirits one would drink from a bottle, it is thought more often that not that the woman taking such a remedy would just forget the pain when she drank one of the elixirs.
During the Civil War, the Shakers produced most of the medical opium derivatives made in the United States and provided it at little cost to Union troops. The Shakers would not support, aid or abet as they wrote in correspondence to the Confederacy; a country or group of rebelling states who supported in any way the selling and owning of human beings as property. Before and during the Civil War, the Shakers were a direct, honest and fair group of moral folks who helped assist slaves arriving via the Underground Railroad with money, food, clothing and startup jobs within their ranks without ever pressuring these people to join their sect.
After the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution was well underway in the United States. The country's interests turned from agriculture to commercial concerns. Many male Shakers left the sect to work in the big cities or to move out west. This left a lack of manpower to operate the Shaker labor intensive industries of farming and seed and herb harvesting. This made it harder to be competitive in pricing which in a short time brought the end to these Shaker industries. By the late 1880s, the Shaker seed, herb and medicinal markets were gone but the good name of the products lived on and lives on still today as many companies try to emulate both the packaging and advertising methods of the original Shaker products. A man or a woman in the west during the 1870s would buy Shaker seeds and herbs and medicines if they could afford them knowing that they were getting quality merchandise guaranteed to work its magic.
Today, the handful of remaining Shakers at the sole surviving community in Maine have once again started to reap the rewards found in working the land, while producing an assortment of herbs. These herbs are once again in great demand by the very rich and famous who are more than willing to pay the exorbitant prices the Shakers need to command to turn a profit.
The legacy and reputation of the Shakers sect has remained within our culture for over 200 years. Their simple and natural odes to life lived at its most basic and simplest continues to teach searchers for a better life that abundance can be found in the most meager of surroundings. This is because the greatest harvests one can make in life is through unearthing one's own inner rewards and locating those mechanisms within our souls which cause us to want a richer more creative life that is worth working hard for.
The primary source for this information came from the book "Wisdom from a Shaker Garden," by Kathleen Mahoney.
