NEW GLOUCESTER – A member of the Shaker Village talked about the historic relationship between the society and Sabbathday Lake to members of the lake association Wednesday night.
For more than 200 years the Sabbathday Lake Shakers have farmed the sweeping landscape of orchards, fields and woodlands, while worshipping and working in their hilltop village.
Brother Arnold Hadd, a member of the Shaker community for 30 years, said the village on Route 26 was founded in 1783.
The 1,700-acre property has 19 buildings and 5,000 feet of undeveloped shoreline on the lake.
The village was planned ingeniously as a whole, he said, and reflects a unique combination of self-sufficiency, spirituality, communal life and practicality.
Hadd said chimneys used in the construction of early buildings and the historic Meeting House were made from clay extracted from an area at the outlet of the lake.
The bricks were fired there in kilns.
A mill pond with earthen dams became 200-acre Shaker Bog, which was used to power a giant sawmill in 1877, he said.
The dairy herd traveled on an old county road to the lake’s edge to drink. Ice was harvested on the lake during the winter.
In 1929, the Shakers entered into a lease arrangement for a concession stand at the outlet of the lake that is now Barefoot Beach.
Thirty lots were leased to private individuals along Outlet Road and Westshore Drive, where cottages exist today on Shaker land.
Hadd said a nationwide campaign is under way to raise $3.6 million by February to finance preservation of the last working Shaker community in America. So far, about $1.5 million in public and private money has been raised.
The Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village is a National Historic Landmark.
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