From the very first time the Shakers were gathered at Canterbury in 1792, stone walls were on their “to do” list. As Brother Henry C. Blinn observed, “The f[e]lling of trees, the clearing of the land, the building of stone walls, and the multiplied laborious duties of the farm, as well as the burden of obtaining suitable dwellings, called into active service every able bodied man.”
Such a list tells us that the Canterbury Shakers followed longstanding English patterns of claiming both property and propriety. Possessing land was not only a legal matter. For the British colonists-turned-Americans, one proved their right to property through three acts: building a dwelling, fixing a boundary by erecting a wall or fence, and improving the land through grazing animals and/or planting, requiring even more internal boundaries based on use. Houses have a cultural significance in Anglo-American culture. Those who built houses intended to stay. Houses symbolize stability and even permanence. Indeed, in English law, a house—more than other claims, such as written deeds—established the right to the land on which the house stood. (This is echoed in legislation such as the 1862 Homestead Act, in which Americans were given property deeds in western territories once they had “proved up” the acreage offered by the federal government by building a house and cultivating the land.)
The Canterbury Shakers’ order of construction—first of the Meeting House and then of the Dwelling House—symbolizes the collective vision of the sect. To be sure, the Shakers lived separately before being called to order. Constructing the Dwelling House first may have asserted their right to occupy the land but raising the Meeting House asserted their right to worship as it symbolized their community.
But all those stone walls! On the weekend of October 19-20, stone mason extraordinaire Kevin J. Fife led a dry laid stonewall workshop at the Village. He and workshop participants restored the road-facing west stone wall north of the Village’s parking lot entrance. This traditional work recalls the Shakers’ work to construct and repair the Village’s various enclosure walls. In 1798, as Blinn recorded, “The Brethren also found time, this season, to build a wall around the piece of land set apart for a ‘grave yard.’ Without the aid of hired help the Brethren were able to lay some 300 rods [4,950 feet] of stone wall around the fields and orchards, and this same amount was accomplished for several successive years.” Many hands make light work—even in the construction of stone walls!
The wall building continued. In 1799, Brother Henry reports, “a wall was built around the Meeting House field except on the west side,” noting that “the wall by the highway” had been built in 1793. In 1800, another 300 rods of stone wall were erected. In 1807, that number increased to 610. More hands, of course.
The wear of weather and gravity require care, and the Shakers’ record shows stone wall work. In 1834, the stone wall “on the east side of the highway” between the Meeting House and the Second Dwelling was re-laid. That work continued southward in 1851, when “the stone wall on the east side of the road from the Meeting House lane to the stone watering trough” was re-laid—as was “the wall between the horse barn and the wall between the horse barn and the cemetery.”
And where did the Brethren get these stones? An 1857 notation offers the answer:
December 28th for the better tillage of the South Barn field, the farmers have been busy for some time during the fall in blasting the large boulders and in bringing many smaller ones to the surface, so that they are now at work with four two horse teams and one ox team, and have hauled from the field sixty loads of stones and deposited them by the wall on the east side of the field. The snow is about two feet deep.
There seemed no shortage of stones in New Hampshire’s rocky soil.
There is no shortage of the Village’s friends. To rephrase a well-known line, “good neighbors make good fences!” We gladly incur a debt a gratitude to Kevin Fife, the workshop participants, and the many volunteers who provide the knowledge and labor to ensure the Village’s historic and beautiful stone walls stand true and remain safe.