Abstract
Built in by the Church Family in 1806 as a grist mill, the mill on Bennett’s Brook and its associated buildings supported the Harvard Shaker community’s industrial efforts for over one hundred years, almost until the community’s closing in 1918. The mill buildings no longer stand, and all that remains are the foundation structures, a reconstructed dam, and a magnificent granite tailrace. Fortunately, the mill buildings were photographed by a number of amateur and professional photographers and over a dozen images survive from the 1890s through 1925. Surviving documentary evidence about the mill and what went on inside it comes mostly from a dozen or so Shaker journals, diaries, and account books written between 1800 and 1900.
Date
4-1-2021
Volume
15
Number
2
First Page
79
Last Page
101
Journal Title
American Communal Societies Quarterly
ISSN
1939-473X
