Shakers today are most known for their cultural contributions ( especially style of music and furniture ). The Shakers composed thousands of songs, and also created many dances ; both were an important part of the Shaker worship services.

Among the best-known of these utopian societies were the Shakers, which originated in England in the 18th century but moved to America shortly afterward.

The Shakers were one of a few religious groups that formed in eighteenth-century England.

Her small community was soon known for its enthusiastic worship given to “ singing and dancing, shaking and shouting, speaking with new tongues and prophesying, with all those various gifts of the Holy Ghost known in the primitive church .” The Shakers, as they were called, saw themselves as the avant garde of the kingdom of God, preparing the way for the new era when God ’ s will was done on earth.

The Shakers were, in fact, pacifists during and after the American War of Independence.

In several localities, mobs attacked them, and the Shakers were whipped, beaten, and assaulted.

When Shaker youngsters, girls and boys, reached the age of twenty-one, they were free to leave or to remain with the Shakers.

Shakers worshipped in meetinghouses painted white and unadorned ; pulpits and decorations were eschewed as worldly things.

Shaker chairs were usually mass-produced because a great number of them were needed to seat all the Shakers in a community.

Shakers were the first large producers of medicinal herbs in the United States, and pioneers in the sale of seeds in paper packets.

Shakers had a reputation for honesty and their products were the best of their kind.

The Shakers composed thousands of songs, and also created many dances ; both were an important part of the Shaker worship services.

Shakers ' earliest hymns were shared by word of mouth and letters circulated among their villages.

Two widely distributed commercial recordings by The Boston Camerata, " Simple Gifts " ( 1995 ) and " The Golden Harvest " ( 2000 ), were recorded at the Shaker community of Sabbathday Lake, Maine, with active cooperation from the surviving Shakers, whose singing can be heard at several points on both recordings.

Membership in the Shakers dwindled in the late 19th century for several reasons: people were attracted to cities and away from the farms ; Shaker products could not compete with mass-produced products that became available at a much lower cost ; and Shakers could not have children, so adoption was a major source of new members.

Shakers are no longer allowed to adopt orphans after new laws were passed in 1960 denying adoption to religious groups, but adults who wish to embrace Shaker life are welcome.

Aside from the Shakers, there were the Amanna, the Anabaptists et al.

The Shakers were a religious order which believed in pacifism, celibacy and communal living.

Worship could take the form of singing and ecstatic dance, which is why they were called the " Shaking Quakers ," or " Shakers.

Shakers ' Dwelling c. 1920As of the census of 2000, there were 1, 979 people, 749 households, and 590 families residing in the town.

* The Shakers were very active in the area, with their first communal farm establishing in central New York.

Groups such as the Shakers, the Oneida Community, and the Latter-day Saints were wary of the social notion of marriage.

The Society also had visitors from another communal religious society, the Shakers.

New Shaker communities formed in the 1780s and 1790s included Hancock and West Pittsfield, Massachusetts ; Harvard, Massachusetts ; East Canterbury, New Hampshire ( or Shaker Village ); Shirley, Massachusetts ; Enfield, Connecticut ( then also known as Shaker Station ); Enfield, New Hampshire ; (" Chosen Vale "), at Tyringham, Massachusetts ; New Gloucester, Maine ( since 1890: " Sabbathday Lake "); and Alfred, Maine, where, more than anywhere else among the Shakers, spiritualistic healing of the sick was practiced.

The female vocalist in the chorus was session singer Jody Pijper and later recordings also featured uncredited vocals by Dutch 1970s star Albert West and Arnie Treffers of rock revival band Long Tall Ernie and the Shakers.

Harris was also briefly intrigued by the " Roll and Book ," a supernatural scripture delivered to the Shakers.

The Pleasant Hill Shakers were also known for their labor-saving engineering accomplishments.

The Shakers also played a role in the Great Awakening, and their music, which included both hymns and songs, began diversifying greatly during this period ( 1837 – 1848 ).

‘“ Tho ’ of the Weaker Sex :’ A Reassessment of Gender Equality among the Shakers .” Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society 17 ( spring 1992 ): 609 – 35.

": Gender, Family, and Community among the Harvard and Shirley Shakers, 1781 – 1918.

America is portrayed through Wilhelm Weitling's travels among the Shakers, Joseph Smith and the Mormons, and the Oneida colony, among others, as she surveys the full range of utopian communities throughout the country.

Players on the album include members of The Trews, Plastic Heroes, Rick Andrew ( The Shakers ), Sonic Blue Sound Review, Mark McCarron, The Maddhatters, Gary Pig Gold and the debut of vocalist Kate MacDonald on “ Silver Lines ” among many other great musicians.

Shakers were among the earliest commercial producers of garden seeds ; the first seeds sold in paper packets were produced by the Watervliet Shakers.

Although one can note similarities among these groups, the Amish, Mennonites and Shakers are separate and different from Friends.

This began in the 1860s as toward the end of her life Mary Dyer had difficulty making friends among apostate Shakers.

In the 1960s, a break occurred among Indian Shakers in which one " conservative " faction continued to reject written religious material while another " progressive " faction was more tolerant of the use of the Bible and other written material.

Thriving on the religious enthusiasm of the first and second Great Awakenings, the Shakers declared their messianic, communitarian message with significant response.

In 1821, soon after Lucy Wright died, the Shakers codified their rules for the first time as the Millennial Laws of 1821.

In addition, the first American Shakers appreciated the revival tradition, and brought those practices into Shaker worship.

Shakers believed that Jesus, born of a woman, the son of a Jewish carpenter, was the male manifestation of Christ and the first Christian Church ; and that Mother Ann, daughter of an English blacksmith, was the female manifestation of Christ and the second Christian Church ( which the Shakers believed themselves to be ).

Mother Ann Day is celebrated on the first Sunday of August to commemorate the arrival of the English Shakers in America in 1774.

The county's first settlement occurred between 1808 and 1812, by a religious society of celibates known as Shakers.

On its first day of release, the album entered Amazon ’ s Movers And Shakers index, nestling at No. 12 at the end of the day.

Other major orchestra works during this period include the Rhapsody for Violin and Orchestra, Third Piano Concerto written for pianist Garrick Ohlsson ; Movers and Shakers the first work commissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra for music director Christoph von Dohnányi, Bamboula Squared for computer generated sound and orchestra ( inspired by his work at Bell Labs ), and The Golden Dance.

His first match in charge resulted in a cup upset, the Shakers knocking Norwich City out of the FA Cup in the third round.

The tune was written by Joseph Brackett ( 1797 – 1882 ) who first joined the Shakers at Gorham, Maine, when his father's farm helped to form the nucleus of a new Shaker settlement.

They were not written at first, but eventually the Shakers created their own form of musical notation, and composers like Issachar Bates became renowned.