Should a file of Clough Bulletins be reviewed, in the contents of each issue will be found an article that is intended to describe an historical landmark or to emphasize the achievements of a member of our family. In this Bulletin attention is called to the town of Canterbury, New Hampshire and its colony of Shakers.
In 1736, Jeremiah and Thomas Clough, great-grandsons of John-1, were the first pioneers of our family to venture into the Merrimack Valley while French and Indian raids threatened their homes. Today, a dozen specimens of colonial architectural beauty are scattered throughout the town that prove that the descendants of these two men cleared their farms and erected Clough homesteads, although no person who bears the the name now is a resident of Canterbury.
Among the eleven children of Jeremiah was his fourth son, Henry, born on February 8, 1754 and died at the age of forty-four after a somewhat unusual career. Evidently, he was a religious leader, known as “Elder Clough” in the Free-Will Baptist Church in East Canterbury. He owned a beautiful farm of many acres of cleared fields and woodlands, known today as the Shaker Settlement.
When Henry was about twenty years of age, a wave of emotional religious revival meetings flooded the Colonies. At this period, 1774, a sect that called themselves “United Believers” arrived from England who were named Shakers because of a peculiar dance that they practiced that was supposed to shake away their sins. Confession of their sins, celibacy and common ownership of property were demanded for their members. They forsook all worldly desires and lived as the Divine Spirit revealed.
Henry Clough became a Shaker. He assembled a colony of more than forty believers at his farm. Later he went to Gorham and Alfred, Maine to organize a group there. The original settlement was at New Lebanon, New York, seven miles from Albany. Henry was called to become the leader at New Lebanon and died there in 1798.
By the year of 1792 the Canterbury farm was occupied by nearly 300 Shakers in substantial houses for men and for women. They erected a gambrel roofed church and a barn that is 200 feet long and 45 wide, the walls and ceilings covered with sheathing, that housed a herd of 100 prized cattle. To obtain an adequate supply of water, they constructed eight reservoirs, one below another, furnishing power for their mills and through an aqueduct they carried water over a mile to their houses. Washing machines and wood-stoves were manufactured.
Work, early and late, was demanded of every man and woman. Their dairy products were famous. They made and sold hundreds of gallons of maple syrup and thousands of pounds of sugar. Crops of broom corn permitted Shaker brooms and brushes to be in demand in the markets of Boston. The women raised medicinal herbs, wove cloth from the wool of their herds of sheep, and sold a famous apple sauce of sweet apples and cider that their orchards of Pippins, Greenings and Quince apples supplied.
Prosperous colonies flourished in Maine, Connecticut and New York during a hundred years. Today, only four survive. At Canterbury, the long barn is vacant, the fertile fields are uncultivated. About a dozen women carry on their herb gardens, sell baked beans and brown bread to stores in Concord, and maintain an antique shop at the farm where scores of summer visitors drive up the hill road to walk through the long barn that still smells of hay, sit in the quaint church and enjoy the delicious products of the kitchen ovens.
Mr. Charles Thompson, author and lecturer, now occupies one of the houses while he does research for a book about the Shakers. His lecture, illustrated by slides in color, is most educational. Soon the Shaker settlements will be extinct, old age will carry the few living members to the spirit world. These survivors still hope for a future revival that will save the world by the power of the Spirit. Henry Clough is forgotten in Canterbury.