The New Gloucester Society lies in Cumberland County, about twenty-five miles northwest of Portland. It consists of two families, having together about seventy members, of whom one third are men. In 1823 it had three families, the third being gathered in 1820, and broken up in 1831. The society had in 1823 one hundred and fifty members.
It was "gathered" in 1794; its members are now all Americans except two, who are Scotch. Among them are persons who were farmers, merchants, printers, wool-weavers, and Some mechanics.
The Church Family lives in a valley, the Gathering Family on a high ridge, about a mile off, and overlooking an extensive tract of country. The society has two thousand acres of land, and owns a saw-mill, grist-mill, and a very complete machine shop. The people raise garden seeds, make brooms, dry measures, wire sieves, and the old-fashioned spinning-wheel, which, it seems, is still used in Maine and New Hampshire by country-women to make stocking yarn. But its most profitable industry is the manufacture of oak staves for molasses hogsheads, which are exported to the West Indies. One of the elders of this society, Hewitt Chandler, a man of uncommon mechanical ingenuity, and the inventor of a mowing-machine which was made here for some years, has contrived a way of bending staves without setting them up in the cask, which saves much time and labor, and makes this part of their business additionally profitable. They made last year also a thousand dollars' worth of pickles; and the women make fancy articles in their spare time.
They employ from fifteen to twenty laborers in their mills and other works, most of whom are boarded and lodged on the place.
The meeting-house at this place was built in 1794, and the dwelling of the Church Family in the following year. Both are of wood, are still in good order, and have never been re-shingled.
The second family at this place was "gathered" in 1808, at Gorham, in Maine, and removed to its present location in 1819. It had then twenty brethren and thirty-two sisters; and has now only twenty members in all.
Very few of the people here eat meat. Some drink tea, but coffee is not used. They have flower gardens, and would have an organ or melodeon if they could afford it. The young people promise well; and they have lately received several young men as members, sons of neighboring farmers, who had worked for them as hired people for a number of years.
This society is less prosperous than most of the others. It has met with several severe losses by unfaithful and imprudent agents and trustees, who in one case ran up large debts for several years, contrary to the wise rule of the Shakers to "owe no man any thing," and in another case brought loss by defalcation. The hill family have built a large stone house, but owing to losses have not been able to complete it. The buildings at New Gloucester show signs of neglect; but the people are very industrious, and have in the last three years paid off a large sum which they owed through the default of their agents; and they will work their way out in the next two years. To prevent their being entirely crippled, the other societies helped them with a subscription.
At New Gloucester, also, the people are long-lived, some having died at the age of eighty-six; and very many living beyond seventy.
The societies at Alfred and New Gloucester were founded after a "revival" among the Free-will Baptists; and of the present members who came in later, there were Universalists, Baptists, Methodists, and Adventists or Millerites.