The Mount Lebanon Society lies in Columbia County, two miles from New Lebanon. It is the parent society among the Shakers, and its ministry has a general oversight over all the societies. It is also the most numerous.
The Mount Lebanon Society was founded in 1787. In 1823 it numbered between five hundred and six hundred persons; at this time it has three hundred and eighty-three, including forty-seven children and youth under fifteen. This society is divided into seven families; and its membership has one hundred and thirty-six males and two hundred and forty-seven females, including children and youth.
It owns about three thousand acres of land within the State of New York, besides some farms in other states; and several of its farms in its own neighborhood are in charge of tenants. The different families employ a considerable number of hired laborers. They raise and put up garden seeds, make brooms, dry medicinal herbs and make extracts, dry sweet corn, and make chairs and mops. The women in all the families also make mats, fans, dusters, and other fancy articles for sale; and one of the families keep some sheep.
In a previous chapter I have given so many details concerning the Mount Lebanon Society that I need here say nothing further about it, except that it is in a highly prosperous condition.
Watervliet.
The society at Watervliet lies seven miles northwest from Albany, and upon the ground where Ann Lee and her followers first settled when they came to America. Her body lies in the grave-yard at Watervliet. No monument is built over it.
The society there has now four families, containing two hundred and thirty-five persons, of whom sixty are children and youth under twenty-one. Of the adult members, seventy-five are men and one hundred women. In 1823 it had over two hundred members; between 1837 and 1850 it had three hundred and fifty.
It has in its home estate twenty-five hundred acres of land, and owns besides about two thousand acres in the same state, and thirty thousand acres in Kentucky. Its chief industry is farming, and the families keep a large number of sheep and cattle. They shear wool enough to supply all their own needs in cloth and flannel, but have these woven by an outside mill; they raise large crops of broom-corn and sweet corn: the first they make into brooms, and the other they put up dry in barrels for sale; they put up fruits and vegetables in tin cans, and also sell garden seeds. They have given up their tan-yard, which was once a source of income. Finally, they make in their own shops, for the use of the society, shoes, carpets, clothing, furniture, and almost all the articles of household use they require.
They hire about seventy-five laborers.
Most of the members are Americans, and three quarters of them grew up from childhood in the society. Among the membership are some Germans, English, Irish, Swedes, Scotch, and two or three French people. Some among them were originally clergymen, others lawyers, mechanics, and gardeners; but the greater number are farmers by occupation. Some of those who came in as adults had been "Infidels," some Adventists, others Methodists. The society at this time contains more young than old people.