Joseph Demakis's Blog

The Trysting Tree

The Trysting Tree
I cut your name, long years ago,Upon our favorite tree,When we were young and all alone,I carved your name above my own,Where all the world might see.
The day was just a bit of May,A tang was in the air,The gulls were mating on the sea,The robins nesting in our tree,While you and I were there.
As on that day I see you now,With sun-gold in your hair,With eyes that shine like sparkling wine,With lips that fondly turn to mine-To me divinely fair!
The ancient tree still guards our namesAs in the olden time,And, year by year in sun and rain,I trace the letters with my caneAcross the moss and rime.
And yet, you never seek the spotAnd may not know the truth-Perhaps you have no cause to care-But long ago was buried thereThe first love of my youth.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness
It is no little thing to askThat one forgive;It is, in truth, no simple taskTo toil and live;But life presents no charm for himWho merely moves to shun the illsBeneath its crumbling archways dimNor looks for dawn along the hills.
As to the crushed and withered roseIt perfumes cling,So life lacks love unless it showsIn suffering.Love has no meed unless it beThe kind that holds whenever tried,That love that bides unselfishlyUntil the future shall decide.
The broken heart is watched of God-He notes it tearsWho brings the blossom from the sodAnd fills the years.Divinity is in that soulThat careth though it oft reproves,For the Creator of us allLoves and forgives, forgives and loves.

Enough For Two

  Enough For Two
There is a charming garden plot,Not very far away,Where it is nice to pass the time Before the close of day;Within that garden is a walkAlmost concealed from view,Too wide for one, too straight for three,But just enough for two.
Beside that pleasant garden path
The choicest flowers blowAnd, here and there, a spreading treeExtends its shade below;Within the shade there is a seat,Oft measured by a few,Too long for one, too short for three,But just enough for two.
Upon that seat a couple sat,Not very long ago,And what was said while sitting thereThe birds alone can know;But in that hour a word was dropped,To which we have a clue,Too sweet for one, too sad for three,But just enough for two.
That fateful word may well be guessed,Without a shade of doubt,For, like the hardest riddle, solved,Its secret all is out;There is a little cottage now,Beneath the heavenly blue,Too large for one and, as for three,It might hold more than two. 

The Dawn of American Freedom

Ere farmer fought at Concord,On a world-wide field of fame,Ere the call of independenceMade America a name,There were patriots in New HampshireAnd in Maine who had the willAnd the foresight that providedPowder burned at Bunker Hill.
Men of Berwick,, men of Durham,In those days of long ago,Drifted down the tide at moonlightOn a river gundalow,Past the ancient port of PortsmouthWith its harbor lights aglow,Past the gun of Fort McClaryAnd its sentinels below;
Stormed the fort across the harbor,Hauled the flag and spiked the guns-"Dogs of War might bark for England,But no more should harm her sons;"Took all arms and ammunition-Arms that borne on every fieldOf the later RevolutionMade opponents die or yield.
These were men whom some called traitors,In the days of doubt and fear,And upon the rolls of honorNames of few may now appear;Some were with Paul Jones in actionOn the distant Irish sea;Some were in the ranks at MonmouthAnd at Yorktown under Lee.  Men of eloquence and courage,Guards and friends of Washington,Who could rally the despondent Till the weary war was won;Some were lost in flush of battle,Others died in prison ships,But their words and deeds awakenedValiant hearts and loyal lips.
Men they were whose aims were peaceful,Men who knew and dreaded was,But the services they rendered,In a cause worth fighting for,Taught the world a thrilling lessonWhich the ancients had not known:That, in every plea for justice,One can win and stand alone.
Men of Portsmouth, men of Berwick,Men of Durham and unnamed!They are gone, and their achievementsNever yet have been acclaimed;Many of their resting placesAre unmarked, but their idealOf a universal freedomMakes a monument more real.

Bashaba

The King Of The Moassons

T he Indian Monarch Bashaba, called Bessabes by Lescarbot, was born near the middle of the sixteenth century in the heart of the great Maine wilderness.  His countrymen were known as Etechemins.  The name of his empire has been variously transcribed by different writers as Moasson, Moashan and Mawooshen, and was bounded on the east by the Saint Croix, on the west by Saco River and on the south by the sea.  Beyond the latter stream lay the territories of the warlike Tarratines, while between the kingdom and Massachusetts lay the district of Epistoman.  The only persons mentioned as relatives of the king were his son Amniquin, who ruled on the Sagadahoc with Sabenaw, and a brother Sasanoa whose name is perpetuated in that of a river on the southern boundary of Woolrich.            Bashaba had a great many subjects, as well as allies in time of war, and some of his lords could muster at leas 1500 bowmen.  He also had many enemies, especially the bloodthirsty Tarratines, who were also styled Souriquois by the French and lived in western Nova Scotia.  On the other side he was often harassed by the Sockhigones, or Sokokis, who later leaders were the Higons of Saco.  The southern Mohawks sometimes penetrated into the district.  The country was a difficult one to defend against invasion on account of its many rivers and the sea, all of which afforded avenues for sudden approach and speedy retreat.  The nation was accredited by Gorges with more intelligence than any of the other northern continent.  Such superior development might have resulted from their dangerous environment which kept them constantly alert.              Bashaba was first mentioned by David Ingram, a sailor who claimed to have been marooned on the Atlantic coast in 1568.  The narrator was put ashore in the Gulf of Mexico, with fifty-two companions in a starving condition.  He and a few associates became separated from the others and traveled north.  The story, reduced to writing in 1583 and mentioned by Hakluyt the next year, must have been his own or derived from some ancient mariner who had had actual contact with the geography of Sagadahoc.  At any rate, Ingram reported that while on his way from "Sabino" to "Pemaquit" he observed a conspicuous island lying to seaward which he was told by a native boatman was inhabited by subjects of Bashaba.  The isolated colony appears to have consisted of Indian fishermen on Monhegan.              June 8, 1605, Captain George Waymouth, who had anchored his ship Archangel in Saint George's River, was approached by seven Indians from the east, only one of whom his party had ever seen.  These strangers were messengers from Bashaba, who had learned of his advent and desired to meet and trade with him in person.  The savages pointed eastward to indicate the king's residence and signified in other ways that their chief had a large stock of furs and tobaccos for exchange.  Since Waymouth was then holding some of their tribe under the hatches as captives he declines to have any interviews with their chief.            During that same year Champlain was conducted to the "rapids of Norumbega" in Penobscot River and remained there while some of his guides advanced several miles to notify Bashaba of his approach.  Later a meeting was arranged at the metropolis which was situated opposite the mouth of the Kenduskeag River, in Brewer.  In the presence of native nobility, comprising about thirty sagamores, the Frenchmen were feasted upon venison and other wild game, while the dignitaries sang, danced and smoked tobacco all of that day and the ensuing night.  When the conference was finally terminated, the visitors had become greatly impressed with the importance of "the new nation," and both parties expressed satisfaction with their mutual understandings.            In 1607 Bashaba and his sylvan domain were again mentioned by Gorges in his brief account of the adventures of the Popham colony at Sagadahoc.  In that connection it was stated that President George Popham, as soon as the site for a plantation had been selected at the mouth of the river, dispatched Captain Gilbert, in company with Skidwaros as guide, to make a "thorough discovery of the rivers and habitations of the natives."  On that occasion the exploring party was importuned by Sasanoa, Abermot and other influential sachems, to pay its respects to Bashaba who as royal host expected friendly overtures to be made by the strangers rather than himself.  After the president had failed to reach Penobscot, on account of unfavorable weather and cross winds at sea, the king sent his son to trade with the new colony for furs.
            Four years later Bashaba was once mentioned by Biard, a French missionary, who was urged by natives to settle at Kenduskeag and did examine the location at the confluence of the two rivers.  He then described the gathering of natives as "the finest assemblage" of savages he had yet seen.  At that time there were in the city about three hundred inhabitants, living in eighteen wigwams and employing eighty canoes and a boat.  He described the most prominent Sagamore as "Betsabes, a man of great discretion and prudence."  According to the account of the affair, the natives danced, sang and harangued, but evinced many nobler traits and more refinement of character than a majority of his own countrymen, with whom these savages afterward intermarried.              Early accounts of a large city at Kedesquit, the French rendering of Kenduskeag, are hardly confirmed by later writers and description of the place, first called Norumbega by the Spaniards, was much exaggerated, as were the power and affluence, as were the power and affluence of contemporary monarchs.  In the census figures, furnished by Purchase and based upon returns from the voyages covering the period from Gosnold to the abandonment of Sagadahoc colony, Bashaba's capitol contained sixty wigwams and two hundred and fifty warriors at the later date.  Evidently, the metropolis the contained about one thousand persons.  When Biard was present in 1611 the population had dwindled, probably on account of tribal wars, disease and the somewhat nomadic habits of the inhabitants.            Gorges asserted that a great war had prevailed for some years between the king and the Etechemins and the hostile Tarratines of Nova Scotia, who were jealous of their French trade, and that, in 1616, the latter surprised and killed old Bashaba.  They also carried away his women and much property of value.  The French, on the other hand, maintained that the Indian monarch was murdered by the English, who were in the country that summer, and that the decedent was succeeded by Asticou.            The nation's business, however, became disrupted for want of capable management and civil war ensued among the great sachems, who destroyed each other and ruined the estates.  About a dozen dukedoms were thereby annihilated.              In 1617famine prevailed in the empire, followed by a mysterious fatigue that persisted for three years and resulted in great mortality.  Captain John Smith, whose informant was Thomas Dermer, reported that less than twenty persons had survived in the country between Casco and Penobscot bays and that the same ratios prevailed to the east and west of that region.

Americanism

Behold the flags of the thousandsThat led in defense of the right,But where are the heroes who bore them?Why come they no more to our sight?
Their arms are stacked at the border,Old battlefields rustle with grain,But longing for them is unanswered,And no one may greet them again.
They listen not to the roll call,They will not return from the strife-The cause they pursue in the futureIs higher and dearer than life.
All rolls of honor my perish,The sun may burn out in the sky,All traces of culture may vanish,But patriots never shall die.
Behold the holiest sanctumWhere races of men yet have trod,Where flags are the pledge of a nationWhose dead have kept faith with their God!

Jacob Abbott

Pioneer In Juvenile Literature
J acob, son of Jacob and Elizabeth (Abbott) Abbot, was born in Hallowell November 14, 1803.  After preparing for college at Hallowell Academy, he matriculated in the sophomore class at Bowdoin, where he graduated in 1820.  All of his four brothers, including John Stevens Cabot, the historian, who was almost as widely known as himself, were graduated subsequently at Bowdoin and became noted as divines and educators.            After teaching a year in Portland and completing a three years' course at Andover Theological Seminary, the young divinity student accepted the position of professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Amherst College in 1825 but vacated the chair a few months after his marriage to Harriet Vaughan on the eighteenth day of May 1828.  Later, he assumed his first pastorate at Roxbury, Massachusetts.In 1832 the appearance of the first volume of the Young Christian Series marked a new and distinct era in religious literature, but it met with an immediate and enthusiastic reception.  Nine thousand copies were sold during the first year and its popularity soon became equally pronounced in England, France, Germany, and other foreign countries, where translations of the text were necessary.  In after years many of the adult readers of that series publicly admitted that their fundamental or clarified conceptions of Christian character and conduct were derived from the Abbot theory of religion.              After an interval of two years, the first of the Rollo Books followed and it was hailed with much popular acclaim.  The style adopted in the new series was informative rather than moral or didactic.              Removing to a small tract in Farmington in 1837, the Hallowell author erected a frame cottage at "Little Blue Hill," as its site was christened by the owner, and devoted six years of constant attention to the evolution of the Rollo, Lucy, and Jonas series.  His wife died on September 11, 1843, and after a visit to Europe, he changed his residence to New York City, where he was associated with his brothers in educational work at the Abbot schools.  Even the vacated dwelling at Farmington was remodeled into one of their private institutions for boys.  In 1851 he resumed his literary pursuits and continued the publication of juvenile stories.  He had made several supplementary trips to the Old World in the interim, when the death of his second wife, Mary Dana Woodbury, in 1866, after thirteen years of conjugal felicity, soon impaired his health and undermined the sources of inspiration.              Having formed a previous habit of spending his summer seasons in Farmington, Abbot gradually transferred his permanent residence to that town, where he discontinued writing in 1872.  During an exceedingly active life, the voluminous author had written and published, individually, one hundred and eighty books and had participated in the joint authorship and issuance of at least thirty-one more.  That record has never been exceeded by any Maine, nor probably by an American author.  His books dealt with a wide range of religious, literary, educational and historical subjects.  The Rollo Books, comprising twenty-eight volumes, and the Franconia and Young America series present, by themselves, a formidable array.              After ten years of continuous residence at Farmington, during which his time was engrossed mainly with domestic pursuits, the distinguished clergyman, educator and author succumbed to the fatal ravages of a painful illness October 18, 1879.  Among his five surviving children was Lyman Abbot, the well-known clergyman.              While the life story of this popular juvenile writer presents no marked individual traits, no memoir can do adequate justice to his exemplary and uncompromising character as a Christian gentleman.  Accustomed to giving full credence to the ingenuous statements of children, he relied explicitly upon their strong intuitive deductions as a constituent part of the divine emanations of truth.  He was a sincere friend of all humanity, encouraging the intimacy of his neighbors, both youthful and adult, but especially the former, from whom he secured the primitive ideas that could be converted into magic pages through the medium of a facile pen.  In his personal interviews, he appeared to be unprejudiced and always refrained from adverse comment.            While many of his books are classed as moral, they are not dogmatic and the main thread running through them all is informative to the extent of attracting and retaining the interest of varied classes of readers.  It has been claimed by the author's most severe but friendly critic that his historical conclusions were not dependable since they were sometimes derived from doubtful sources and elaborated without suspicion of falsity.  But such defects in the compilation are inherent in every history and the underlying purpose of juvenile literature is amply served when it fulfills an existing demand and meets a constructive need.  That he wrote so much in an entertaining if superficial, manner stamps his unusual record of achievement as the natural consequence of a strong coercive stimulus operating upon a highly imaginative nature.            Abbot is regarded as supreme in his own literary sphere in that his humor is clearly apparent though generally suppressed.  Mark Twain, with lasting credit to himself as a humorist, has since become famous for his ability to present the opposite extreme in wholesome portrayal of youthful fancies and foibles, but with no more permanent influence for good, and no more graceful tribute has ever been paid to any writer of juvenile books than that of the unknown boy who left two matchless pinks upon the Maine author's bier.  As for the permanency of the latter in literacy achievement, it is well to remember that even obsolete factors of civilization must be reckoned with in summing up the final accomplishments of the race.

Written in 1934 by W.D. Spencer

Maine History

J acob, son of Jacob and Elizabeth (Abbott) Abbot, was born in Hallowell November 14, 1803.  After preparing for college at Hallowell Academy, he matriculated in the sophomore class at Bowdoin, where he graduated in 1820.  All of his four brothers, including John Stevens Cabot, the historian, who was almost as widely known as himself, were graduated subsequently at Bowdoin and became noted as divines and educators.            After teaching a year in Portland and completing a three years' course at Andover Theological Seminary, the young divinity student accepted the position of professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Amherst College in 1825 but vacated the chair a few months after his marriage to Harriet Vaughan on the eighteenth day of May 1828.  Later, he assumed his first pastorate at Roxbury, Massachusetts.In 1832 the appearance of the first volume of the Young Christian Series marked a new and distinct era in religious literature, but it met with an immediate and enthusiastic reception.  Nine thousand copies were sold during the first year and its popularity soon became equally pronounced in England, France, Germany, and other foreign countries, where translations of the text were necessary.  In after years many of the adult readers of that series publicly admitted that their fundamental or clarified conceptions of Christian character and conduct were derived from the Abbot theory of religion.              After an interval of two years, the first of the Rollo Books followed and it was hailed with much popular acclaim.  The style adopted in the new series was informative rather than moral or didactic.              Removing to a small tract in Farmington in 1837, the Hallowell author erected a frame cottage at "Little Blue Hill," as its site was christened by the owner, and devoted six years of constant attention to the evolution of the Rollo, Lucy, and Jonas series.  His wife died on September 11, 1843, and after a visit to Europe, he changed his residence to New York City, where he was associated with his brothers in educational work at the Abbot schools.  Even the vacated dwelling at Farmington was remodeled into one of their private institutions for boys.  In 1851 he resumed his literary pursuits and continued the publication of juvenile stories.  He had made several supplementary trips to the Old World in the interim, when the death of his second wife, Mary Dana Woodbury, in 1866, after thirteen years of conjugal felicity, soon impaired his health and undermined the sources of inspiration.              Having formed a previous habit of spending his summer seasons in Farmington, Abbot gradually transferred his permanent residence to that town, where he discontinued writing in 1872.  During an exceedingly active life, the voluminous author had written and published, individually, one hundred and eighty books and had participated in the joint authorship and issuance of at least thirty-one more.  That record has never been exceeded by any Maine, nor probably by an American author.  His books dealt with a wide range of religious, literary, educational and historical subjects.  The Rollo Books, comprising twenty-eight volumes, and the Franconia and Young America series present, by themselves, a formidable array.              After ten years of continuous residence at Farmington, during which his time was engrossed mainly with domestic pursuits, the distinguished clergyman, educator and author succumbed to the fatal ravages of a painful illness October 18, 1879.  Among his five surviving children was Lyman Abbot, the well-known clergyman.              While the life story of this popular juvenile writer presents no marked individual traits, no memoir can do adequate justice to his exemplary and uncompromising character as a Christian gentleman.  Accustomed to giving full credence to the ingenuous statements of children, he relied explicitly upon their strong intuitive deductions as a constituent part of the divine emanations of truth.  He was a sincere friend of all humanity, encouraging the intimacy of his neighbors, both youthful and adult, but especially the former, from whom he secured the primitive ideas that could be converted into magic pages through the medium of a facile pen.  In his personal interviews, he appeared to be unprejudiced and always refrained from adverse comment.            While many of his books are classed as moral, they are not dogmatic and the main thread running through them all is informative to the extent of attracting and retaining the interest of varied classes of readers.  It has been claimed by the author's most severe but friendly critic that his historical conclusions were not dependable since they were sometimes derived from doubtful sources and elaborated without suspicion of falsity.  But such defects in the compilation are inherent in every history and the underlying purpose of juvenile literature is amply served when it fulfills an existing demand and meets a constructive need.  That he wrote so much in an entertaining if superficial, manner stamps his unusual record of achievement as the natural consequence of a strong coercive stimulus operating upon a highly imaginative nature.            Abbot is regarded as supreme in his own literary sphere in that his humor is clearly apparent though generally suppressed.  Mark Twain, with lasting credit to himself as a humorist, has since become famous for his ability to present the opposite extreme in wholesome portrayal of youthful fancies and foibles, but with no more permanent influence for good, and no more graceful tribute has ever been paid to any writer of juvenile books than that of the unknown boy who left two matchless pinks upon the Maine author's bier.  As for the permanency of the latter in literacy achievement, it is well to remember that even obsolete factors of civilization must be reckoned with in summing up the final accomplishments of the race.

Written in 1934 by W.D. Spencer

Bygones

Let bygones be!The heritage of ancient sins,That lies so heavy on us now,Will leave us when the life beginsWhich takes the curse from every browAnd makes us free.
Let bygones be!With all their bitterness and loss,With all their lure for gold and fame,With all their horror of a cross,And all their fear of guilt and shameAnd cruelty.
Let bygones be!The hours of toil and years of painWill never come to mar againOr make us sad with their refrain,Or taunt us that we once were menOf memory.
Let bygones be!Not so!  Association delvesAmong the ruins of the past,Or we should never know ourselvesOr feel awakening at last-So dumb are we.
Let bygones be!We could not, would not, let them go,For all their treachery and strife,For all their wretchedness and woe,They are the surety of life-It's victory.
Let bygones be!Let hopes of future pass for aya!And what, indeed, must Heaven mean!One thrill of joy can far outweighAll trouble that we may have seen,Or yet may see.
Let bygones be!Ah, no!  But let us ponder o'erOur former error or success,That triumphs may be more and moreAnd failures may grow less and less, Eternally.

The Shakers Utopia

           
The “United Society of Believers in Christ Seconds Appearing” trace their beginnings to Manchester, England in 1747.  This group is best known as the “Shakers” because of the trembling, whirling, and shaking that they engaged in during religious services.  They believed that Christ’s second coming was realized in their leader Ann Lee, who was also referred to as Mother Ann by the followers of the Shaker religion.  The “United Society of Believers in Christ Second Appearing” was misunderstood and often prosecuted in their native country of England and in 1774, their leader Mother Ann Lee led eight Shakers to America seeking the freedom to live, work and worship according to their religious beliefs.  The Shakers arrived in New York Harbor on the ship Mariah in 1774 and soon purchased land in Watervliet New York setting up their first utopian society.  This society embraced their main religious tenet of celibacy, communal life, and confession of sin.  They also believed in racial and gender equality, simplicity, and pacifism.  The Shakers looked to create a working “Heaven on Earth” in their utopian society that was set apart from the “Outside World”.  The Shakers soon established new communities in New York, New England, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana between the years 1783 and 1836.  The “United Society of Believers in Christ Second Appearing” grew in influence and numbers in the 19th century.  They challenged the norms of social and religious structures and economic order by developing an alternative lifestyle based on their religious beliefs.  The Shakers population by the mid-19th century reached its peak with over 6000 followers.  They also made important contributions to American culture in their innovation and intriguing social and religious practices.  Their utopian society is by far one of the longest-lived and considered by many to be the most successful of the hundreds of community groups that were in America before the Revolutionary War.The Shakers were a prestigious religious group that branched off the Quaker religion and believed in hard work with separation from “The World”.  There societies goal was to be free of politics and wealth.  They lived a life that was simple and free from vanity, but also believed in the quality of races and genders.  This made the Shakers a very close-knit community that embraced equal rights for everyone within their utopian society. To achieve this ideal utopia new converts had to give up all their relative material possessions, wealth, and land to the community.  Families would be separated and rearranged into new family units. And last but not least, the new converts had to confess all of their sins from their entire life to a witness of God.  The Shakers believed that Christians should live in the present and not hope for something better in the future.  The Shakers achieved this by living a simple lifestyle that embraced shared responsibility among the members of the community and embraced a lack of individual material possessions.  They separated genders and practice celibacy but also gave leadership roles within the religious section of their society to women.  This is because they believed that God was a pure spirit without body or gender and that God is beyond human perception.  They also believe that God was both mother and father and that the masculine side of God was shown through Jesus Christ and the feminine side was through Ann Lee their leader. “Mother Ann Lee, the Bride of Christ is not Christ, nor did she claim to be. She is simply the helpmate, Second Eve and first of many Believers wholly imbued by His Spirit and wholly consumed by His love.” (Hadd and Carpenter). Yet the Shakers utopian society still emphasized gender-based norms within the daily chores and jobs of their community.  Women often took care all household work such as sewing, cooking, and weaving.  While men, on the contrary, were given duties of harvesting crops, tending to the animals, building tools and furniture in the workshops and selling and trading the materials that the community created with the outside world.The Shaker men were extremely talented in building furniture with simple yet sturdy designs, that were built to last a lifetime of daily use.  This was because Shakers believed that making something with their hands, that was well-crafted was in itself “an act of prayer”.  Their simple furniture designs were functional and lacked embroidered details or carvings that were common during the 19th century.  The woods they would use in making their furniture were inexpensive and light in color. Usually, pine was a stable of their craftsmanship and favored wood species.  The women of the community also contributed to the Shaker's reputation with fine sewing and weaving.  They created quality scars, sweaters, handkerchiefs, and wool cloaks that would be sold to the outside world.  The Shaker's attention to detail was emphasized by a common phrase within their utopia, “Do your work as though you had 1000 years to live, and as if you were to die tomorrow.”  This saying demonstrates the communities ambition to create a utopian society that emulates heaven on earth through their collective work.The Shaker communities were also known for their simple yet creative inventions.  Brother Theodore Bates of Watervliet created the first flat broom after realizing that the common round broom was inefficient and slow in sweeping up dust and debris.  This invention was so successful that it actually led to a trade embargo by Great Britain to stop American broom manufacturers from sending flat brooms to the United Kingdom.  Shakers also gained respect for many more inventions, but they never patented a single one of them.  The Shakers are also credited with inventing package seeds for gardening and herbal medicines that were of remarkable quality. Shakers lived very modestly, they valued simplicity and looked-for harmony in all things.  They were also hard-working people that followed an extreme form of Christianity.  These values led to the increase in Shaker followers before the Civil War because of their increased communal wealth and stability that appealed to new followers.  But the same policies that seemed to bring the Shaker's prosperity are also the same reasons for the demise of this utopian community.The population of Shaker communities slowly started to decline in the 1860s.  One reason for this decline was the Shakers inability to meet the demands of the new and improved technology of the industrial revolution.  The changing economy of mass-production drove the pricing down on handmade goods.  This resulted in less communal prosperity because of new economics after the Civil War and made it hard to recruit new followers.  The Shakers strict rules on celibacy were because of their extreme belief that Adams originals sin in Genesis, was understood to be sex and the act of sexual relationships between a man and a woman was considered an act of impurity. “In addition, Shakers maintained that sexual intercourse, even when sanctified by marriage, was the main root of evil.  Mother Ann's heavenly inspired instructions on how to avoid this primal sin were to abolish traditional marriage and deny “any sexual congress.” (Campbell 25).  This dystopian aspect of the Shaker communal society made it extremely hard in recruiting new followers.  The members of the Shaker community were forbidden to procreate after joining the utopian society. So, they had to rely on adoptions, orphans, and indenture to recruit children into their society.  Another reason for the demise of the Shakers utopian society was the rise of the Second Great Awakening.  The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant revival that took place during the 19th century in the United States.  This caused increased membership with rival religious groups of the Baptists and Methodists conjugations.  New Christian denominations also grew during this time to include: The Churches of Christ, The Christian Church, The Seventh-day Adventist Church, and The Evangelical Christian Church. “The most striking and consistent characteristic of the second Great Awakening was the youthfulness of its participants. Again and again, ministers noted that religious concern and conversion occurred first and most frequently among youths” (Cott 16).  The Second Great Awakening made it extremely hard for the Shakers to recruit new youthful followers and this was also compounded by the Shakers strict religious policies of celibacy.By the 1900s a changing economy with new and improved technology, that also saw the rise of opposing religious views led to the demise of the Shakers.  Though this great utopian society has fallen, its impacts are not forgotten and can be seen in the legacy of their simple inventions and furniture.  Works CitedCampbell, D'Ann. "Women's Life in Utopia: The Shaker Experiment in Sexual Equality Reappraised — 1810 to." The New England Quarterly 51.1 (1978): 23-38. Online Article.Cott, Nancy F. "Young Women in the Second Great Awakening in New England." Feminist Studies (1975): 15-29. Online Article.Hadd, Arnold and June Carpenter. Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village: Principles and Beliefs. 7 December 2017. Online. <http://maineshakers.com/beliefs/>...., Park Service. The Shaker Historical Trail: The Shakers. 5 December 2017. Online Essay. <https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/shaker/....—. The Shaker Historical Trail: Utopias. 5 December 2017. Online Essay. <https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/shaker/....—. The Shaker Historical Trial: Shaker Style. 6 December 2017. Online Essay. <https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/shaker/....
The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God. Dir. PBS. Perf. Ken Burns. December 23, 2002. Digital Video.