"Vessels of Honor". This community lived in Enfield, on one of the shores of a beautiful lake then called Shaker Pond, now known as Mascoma Lake.
There were three families "The North Family", which was the smallest and poorest. The Church Family", which was the largest and richest, and the South or "Barker family", at one time they were a large and flourishing Community. One of their rules was that if a man with a family joined them he would have to disassociate himself from his family, the man and boys would live and sleep by themelves, the women and girls by themselves. No male was allowed to even touch the hand of a female. The property was all owned in common, no one owned anything. Each family was governed by their elders. They all dressed alike. The youngest boy, called the head elder by his first name. They painted their wagons and sleighs green. They were all called in the morning by a bell in the boarding house of each family, and to their meals and to their beds. They have now entirely run out.
I was over there in 1926. The property was in the hands of a man and wife who looked after it and kept people from running over it. I and my wife were over there with my son-in law and his wife. We were going to drive in but the care-taker told us we could not. We asked him if we could walk in and eat our lunch. They had no objection to that so we went down near the lake and had our lunch. Then we went down to the shore and Lyndon our son-in-law, took some snapshots. When we got back to the care takers we stopped and had quite a chat with him and his wife. We then started on our way going across "ShakerBridge" to North Enfield where I worked one winter in the Tannery.
I must tell one more story, about this locality. The Reverend Hugh Montgomery was much given in exchanging. One Saturday in early March he had me take him to North Enfield where we had dinner at the Ministers. After dinner Rev. Montgomery took the train for Canaan and where a train coming from Canaan brought the Exchange Minister, I took him in the sleigh and started back for North Granthan. It was cold and awful windy on the way over. After passing Shaker Village there came a powerful gust that blew my cap off my head and way out onto the lake. I went bare headed the rest of the way over. I had to get another cap at North Enfield. When we came back the wind had gone down and as we went along I happened to look out on the lake and saw something black that I thought might be my cap. I got out of the sleigh and waded out through the snow and found it was my old cap. So, I had two caps.
The Shakers used to get their fire wood up on the mountain. They would get the tops of two or theee large trees on to a bob sled hitch two or three yokes of oxen to the sled and drag it down the mountain. This day it had drifted so that they couldn't get through so, they unchained the log and went home with the sled and oxen leaving the logs in the road where they were soon buried by the drifting snow. When I and the Canaan Minister left the main road and started on the mountain road we both got out and while I lead the horse, he took hold of the sleigh and kept the blankets in. Pretty soon we came to the logs which the Shakers had left. They were entirely buried by the drifting snow. The minister & I then had to trample a road round the buried logs and so got by. We soon entered the woods where it was not drifted. When we reached the top of the mountain it was cleared land.
We saw a horse and sleigh coming, towards us and then it stopped the man got out and looked at the hard, smooth deep drift ahead of him, he concluded there was no use so, he managed to turn his team around and back. We couldn't do that we were bound for North Grantham which was six miles beyond. I had one of Buswells horses that was used to working in the snow, so we again got out and tramped the hard snow so that the horse was able to get through. There were no more such drifts and we arrived safely before dark.
I must tell about a horse the most intelligent and the moat viscious beast I ever saw. He was fat, never was fed but twice a day. One man managed him. He never was handled by bit and bridle but by word, his boss had a fearful time "breaking" him. He pounded and thrashed him so that one day in back of the tannery the girls working in the shaker woolen mill came out and stopped him. He was just about broken when I worked there but he had a few tricks. Bill, his boss, would go up to the barn where he was kept in a box and harness him, open the door and give him a smart slap and tell him to go down to the Dump cart, which was used to draw the bark from the pile to the grinder where it was put through a machine which ground it into small particles and carried up into a room over the leaches. The horse would run down to the cart and back in between the shafts waiting for Bill to pick up the shafts and fasten him in. Some times when Bill was just ready, to pick up the shafts the horse would jump in and Hill would hit him another slap and tell him to go down to a pile of bark. He would go down through around and back up ready to be loaded. He had one trick which Bill never tried to break him of. After the cart was loaded Bill would --- him to the grinder where he would go and back his load to the proper place. When Bill would tip the cart the horse would jump. This Bill was William Leviston the head of the firm of Leviston Bros. and Young. They had another tannery down the state twenty miles or more which Bill visited once a month or so.
When he went he never had lines but guided the horse by words, he said we could. I must tell one thing more about tide remarkible horse.
When the hides were tanned they were tied in bundles and hoisted to the second or third floors by means of a long rope fastened to the whippel tree and at the other to the bundle of tanned leather in conjunction with blocks to raise it to the second or third floor. The horse would start near the tannery and when Bill ordered him he would start on the run and go just far enough to raise the bundle to the floor where it was to go. Bill would yell "whoa" and he would turn and run back to be right on hand to pull the leather in and unfasten the rope and lift it down for another load. Bill wouldn't have to give the horse any other instructions or attention until another floor was required.
When I lived at Mr. Emerson's they made a medicine called Shaker Syrup, which was made of roots and herbs which the sisters gathered.
They also made and sold Maple syrup from their large sugar orchards they also make and sold shaker pails, Shaker buckets for catching maple sap in, and they had a factory at North Enfield where they made Shaker Flannel. Every thing they made and sold was scrupilously neat and just as it was represented. I presume if it hadn't been for their strange idea about Vessels of Honor and Vessels or Dishonor they might have continued to this day. But married people with families finally ceased to join them and they then took children, but when these grew up and notice how the World's people dressed and looked, some of them from time to tin. would run away. Perhaps what got the worlds people down on them was at the time of the of the Rebellion.
A man named Thomas Dwyer gave his children to the Shakers and enlisted. He came back and went to the Shakers and demanded his children. They refused to give them up as he had given them to the Shakers. He then drew his pistol and shot the head Elder. I think it was the South or Barker Family. Dwyer was arrested tried and sentenced to life imprisonment, he was a model prisoner and died in the State prison at Concord.
Mr. Emerson was queer in some ways. If he had any thing good he would have it every day while it lasted. He had no sugar place but, his brother-in-law had a small one which Mr. Emerson carried on. Mrs. Emerson was a splendid cook and we lived high. Mr. Emerson had several swarms or bees and in July he would take up a swarm and have honey every day till it was gone. He had a large flock of sheep and he would kill a fat lamb and have it every day till it was gone. But it was a hard place for me. He and his wife used to fight with words, any thing he wanted to do she didn't, for instance he wanted to go to bed early and get up early, she wanted to sit up late and get up late, I have thought perhaps if she hadn't opposed him he would have been a hard master. I slept soundly but was wide awake in an instant. In haying time he would call me at four o'clock no sooner did he call than my feet were on the floor. I would dress and he would send me out to mowing. When she got ready Mrs. Emerson would get up and get breakfast at eight o'clock, you perhaps can imagine how hungry I was, just beginning to grow. I lost five pounds that summer.
One day in Sept. Mr. Emerson sent me out to the Post Office for the mail. It was a rainy day and there was nothing in particular to do. When I got over to the Sawmill my brother Orville was there sawing lath, finally he asked us if I wouldn't like to put through a few. I would, but the second lath I sawed put my hand onto the saw and sawed every thumb and every finger on my left hand half off. Surgery was not as well known as it now is.
My hand was a long time in healing. That winter I started in my uncles saw mill. One day I heard him say Albert is so tempery, I have to handle him as you would eggs. I said to myself if thats the case I will control my temper, and from that day a stranger would think I had no temper, but I have and can control it.
I must tell of a funeral I attended up on the mountain. The first settlers always had the first road on a mountain; I presume so they could see any signs of hostile Indians below them. I remember when there was a church and several houses up there not one now occupied.
There was a funeral up there that I attended. The man had died of what was called Acute rhumatisim, now known as arthritis an extremely painful disease of the joints of the hands and fingers, as I said I was there to attend the funeral of George Chase who had died of Acute Rheumatisim. There were several people there from down on a road below. The people always used to attend a funeral. This time I remember of only myself and Charles Newell, a hard working farmer. He was sitting in an old fashioned kitchen chair tipped back against the wall with his heels on the bottom front round. He got to sleep and some way, his chair started down. I was watching him and supposed he would wake up when the chair came down flat on the floor but, no, with his arms still folded the chair and he, Newell went on till he was awakened by coming down on his face and the chair on top of him. I must confess I laughed out loud as he woke and picked himself and chair up. Just think a young fellow laughing out loud at a funeral.
There was a man living on the mountain named John Fisher. He had a son named Samuell. Sam was a married man at the time and he went to a circus on menagire. They had both gone to the show but, Uncle John as we all called him had lost track of Samuell. He started hunting for him, he would say to people he met. "Have you seen my son Samuell" He is pretty good looking, pretty well dressed. I don't know whether he found him but probably he did. I remember he always came down to meetings Sundays. He had married the Kimball widow. One time when he and his wife were at church he had a big boil on the end of his nose. I saw it of course as probably every one else did.