Photograph, Cabinet

Description

Group of twenty-two Shaker Brothers, Sisters, and young girls posed in front of the Arbor on the west side of Mount Lebanon's North Family Sisters' Workshop. One of the images attached to this file has the names of these Shakers overlaid. This image was created by James E. West probably around 1902. Victoria and Helen Park, pictured in the photograph, came to live at the North Family in 1901 and Sister Ruth Barry, also pictured, died in 1903. Stephen Paterwic in an article titled "From Individual to Community: Becoming a Shaker at New Lebanon 1780-1947," published in Communal Societies 11 (1991): p. 32, used a copy of this photograph from a private collection that was accompanied by the following information: "Almost the entire North Family, "kodaked" in the summer of 1902 by a Mrs. Sharp of New York City." It is unlikely that West, a perfectly competent photographer working on a series of photographs using a large format view camera, would have "borrowed" a photograph from an apparently (by the use of the term "kodaked") amateur photographer for his series and then published it under his name. From the series: Views of the North Family Shakers at Mt. Lebanon, New York. No. 19.