Shirley Shaker Village

Shirley Shaker Village occupies land on both sides of Harvard Road in Shirley and northern Lancaster, Massachusetts. The Shaker community began there in 1793 on land given by four local citizens. Forty-four adult members signed the Shirley Covenant in 1797, and by 1853 about 150 people lived in the village, organized into North, Church and South Families. Applesauce was the main industry, alongside broom-making, mops, jellies, herbs and garden seed. The society dissolved in 1908, and the Commonwealth bought the property for an Industrial School for Boys, which moved and altered several buildings. Nineteen buildings remain in the district, fourteen from the original village of twenty-six structures. They include brick and clapboard buildings, among them the Administration Building, the North Family Office and the North Family Farmhouse. The village is valued as a surviving example of New England Shaker settlement, and it is now part of a state correctional complex.