History Alive Program for Fourth Grade Students

Enfield Shaker Museum invites your fourth grade classes for an experiential visit to the museum as participants in our May-June “History Alive” program. This is the 15th year we have offered this exciting opportunity to bring Shaker history alive to students in the Upper Valley and beyond.

About the Shakers

Founded in 1793, the Shaker village in Enfield, New Hampshire was the ninth Shaker community established in the United States. At its peak in the mid-19th century, the community was home to three “Families” of Shakers. Here, Brothers, Sisters, and children lived, worked, and worshiped. Striving to create a heaven on earth, the Enfield Shakers built more than 100 buildings and farmed over 3,000 acres of fertile land, and educated children in model schools. In 1923, after 130 years of farming, manufacturing, and productive existence, declining membership forced the Shakers to close their community and put it up for sale.

The Shakers played an important role in American history. They were models in their time for fine craftsmanship and creative inventions. They were known for their integrity in business, stewardship of their land, equality of the sexes, and, perhaps most important, their dedication to working cooperatively for the benefit of the group, values still important today.

About the History Alive Program

Since 1986, Enfield Shaker Museum has fulfilled its mission by actively preserving its buildings, educating visitors about the history of the Shakers in America, and by acquiring and exhibiting the nation’s largest collection of Enfield Shaker material culture.

Your students will step off the bus as new “members” of a Shaker village and experience what it was like to live in a Shaker community by learning Shaker songs, attending school in an 1850’s classroom, and participate in hands-on work activities to understand how people’s specific jobs supported the entire community. Students will prepare food in the Shaker kitchen to augment bag lunches and will eat in the restored Shaker dining room in the Great Stone Dwelling, observing some of the formalities of 19th century Shaker life. In their final activity, students will make a journal of their experience at the Museum.