Chosen Vale Inc Enfield Shaker Museum

Preservation: The Museum is actively restoring, preserving, and maintaining the remaining built environment of the original Shaker village, established in 1793 along the shore of Mascoma Lake. This national historic site contains 14 extant Shaker buildings (the earliest dating to 1813 built by the Shakers of Enfield) after the purchase of an adjacent property in September 2023. TThe 60 acres also contain a mill pond and related water technology, two cemeteries, and a historic garden featuring Shaker heirloom plant varieties situated within a larger historic built environment surrounded by state-protected lands (on which is the unique Shaker Feast Ground atop of Mount Assurance, which the Museum also maintains). The Museum preserves its building collection through rigorous research and adherence to Secretary of the Interior's Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties. The site's domestic, agricultural, and industrial buildings document 150 years of the Shakers' creation and occupation of the site. All have been recorded through professional architectural renderings, archaeological excavations and surveys, and documentary historical research. These buildings not only tell the story of the Shakers who lived, worked, and worshipped here; these buildings also document the 130 years of American building technology.

Education: Education is the heart of Enfield Shaker Museum's mission. Through the Museum's historic buildings and built environment, artifactual collections, archaeological collections, archives, and library, professional staff members, skilled craftspeople, scholars, and volunteers provide to a diverse and growing public a variety of programs and exhibitions with which to learn about and learn from the Shakers of Enfield, New Hampshire. Trained interpreters and staff educators provide general and topical tours and site interpretation geared to visitor-initiated questions. Visitors may also take self-guided tours of the historic site. Throughout the year visitors may learn history, Shaker trades and industries, and sustainability through doing historic crafts, foodways, and activities provided through demonstrations and hands-on workshops (oval boxes, knives, brooms, spinning, weaving, textile dyeing, gardening, timber-framing, for example). Talks, lectures, and tours explore the Shakers within their historical context and raise questions about communalism, racial and gender equality, pacifism, and tolerance today. The Museum is dedicated to supporting local primary, secondary, and higher education. Our History Alive field trip program allows New Hampshire and Vermont students to explore local history and the Enfield Shakers' legacy through history-based hands-on activities. In fiscal year 2023, over 300 students and teachers participated in this program. As part of our ongoing commitment to making these field trips as accessible as possible, the Museum provides free admission to students in the Mascoma Valley Regional School District. We award transportation grants to several local schools that otherwise would not have been able to attend the program. Each summer junior and senior high school students enroll in our field ecology school, learning the history of the Shakers' land use and the interconnection between human activity and the environment. Funds were given to provide full scholarships to local students in need, to pay an instructor's salary, and for general supplies.