Recently the Shaker Museum presented an online talk illustrating the history of the Great Stone Barn built in 1859 by the North Family Shakers at Mount Lebanon. The barn was the last in a series of very large dairy barns built by the Shakers in the 19th century. The barn...

The size of wood-framed Shaker buildings made the threat of fire and the challenge of effectively fighting fires a great and constant concern to the Shakers. It led them to a large extent to abandon the use of fireplaces in favor of safer cast-iron wood stoves, to replace...