Shaker Church Family (General Views), Shaker Road, New Lebanon, Columbia County, NY

Significance: The Shaker community near New Lebanon, New York has an unique and preeminent place in the Shaker world. It was the center from which the Shaker movement in the 19th century drew its inspiration, from which most of the Shaker missionaries left for the frontier lands of the West to proselytize with the truth that they thought was theirs. And it was from Mount Lebanon that binding rules and decrees were passed to other Shaker communities as far distant as Kentucky and Florida. It became the heart and mind of a theocracy that inevitably forged the chains that bound it to its own extinction...
Survey number: HABS NY-3291