Welcome back to another episode of Five Minutes in Church History on this episode.

We are talking about the shakers.

These days, the shakers are likely more known as a furniture style.

It's a style that has very clean lines and minimalist, very simple design.

And these shaker communities in the United States actually funded themselves by producing

this furniture, and so the legacy of the shakers has come down to us as a style of furniture.

But shaker furniture and design is not our subject on five minutes in church history.

So who were these shakers?

The official name was the United Society of Believers in Christ's second appearing,

or the Millennial Church.

They began in England as a splinter group within the Quakers.

And they very much struggled in those early years.

In the year 1774, Anne Lee, who would come to be known as Mother Anne Lee, and was sort

of considered the founder of the originator of the shakers.

She boarded a boat in Manchester, England, with eight others and crossed the Atlantic.

Using the sea and that era was a very difficult thing indeed.

It was rough waters and rather rudimentary sailing.

They were all shook up.

But eventually they arrived, and they landed and moved westward to a wilderness area around

Albany, New York, and there they carved out a new community.

It did not go well in those early years.

One historian has pointed out that these years, 1774 to 1776 coincided perfectly with

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