The Shakers are a small Christian religious group, formally known as the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, founded in mid‑18th century England and later centered in communal villages in the United States. They were nicknamed “Shaking Quakers” or “Shakers” because their worship once included ecstatic movement—shouting, dancing, and shaking—as a way of expressing spiritual fervor.

Origins and core identity

  • The movement began around 1747 in England among dissident Quakers influenced by charismatic worship styles.
  • A key early leader was Ann Lee (often called Mother Ann), a Manchester textile worker whose visions and teachings shaped Shaker doctrine and communal life.
  • In 1774, Ann Lee and a small band of followers emigrated to America, later establishing their first lasting community at Watervliet, near Albany, New York.

Beliefs and lifestyle

  • Shakers are millenarian Christians who believed Christ’s “Second Appearing” was already manifest spiritually, and that they were building a foretaste of the heavenly kingdom on earth.
  • They practiced strict celibacy, communal ownership of property, gender equality in leadership, pacifism, and a disciplined, orderly daily life centered on work and worship.
  • Members renounced “worldliness,” aiming to live simply, honestly, and in constant spiritual readiness for the end of the age.

Worship and the “shaking” nickname

  • Early Shaker meetings featured intense physical expressions—shaking, whirling, dancing, and shouting—seen as a way to “shake off” sin or evil and to respond bodily to the Holy Spirit.
  • Outsiders began calling them “Shaking Quakers,” which eventually shortened to “Shakers,” and the name stuck even after worship later became more orderly and restrained.

Communities, work, and inventions

  • At their height in the 19th century, Shakers ran a network of communal villages across the northeastern and midwestern United States, noted for neat architecture, careful farming, and high‑quality handcrafts.
  • They became renowned for simple, functional furniture, seeds sold in paper packets, and many practical innovations; sources credit Shaker ingenuity with popularizing or originating items like the circular saw, turbine waterwheel, clothespin, and various agricultural tools.

Decline and today

  • Because Shakers rejected marriage and child‑bearing, their survival depended entirely on conversion and adoption, which became harder as American society secularized and industrialized.
  • Over the 20th and 21st centuries, their numbers declined steeply; only a tiny number of Shakers remain in one active community in Maine, but Shaker sites now function mainly as historic museums preserving their buildings, music, crafts, and archives.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.