April 1–14:  Build fire in the kiln to dry horseradish ... go to the Corporation Paper Mills for paper ... Paper some horseradish ... Send the Radish Root to the mill to be ground and home again … Put up 560 cans of Horse Radish with the help of small boys.

May 24:  Cut 500 pounds of Sarsaparilla Root.

—Elisha Myrick, 1850

The herb-drying shed in Shaker Village. (Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz)

Hidden behind a Shaker residence and under a canopy of mature evergreens, the town-owned Shaker herb-drying house on Shaker Road first looks like an incongruous cross between a country cottage and a 19th-century town bank. The granite block inserted below the roof peak proudly announces “1848.” The drying house’s classically proportioned stonework exemplifies the Shaker ethic to build to last. From a distance, the expert masonry implies that it will. Closer inspection reveals a missing chimney, rotting fascia boards beneath the roof line, and other signs of its age that the Historical Commission is working to correct.

Jonathan Feist, chairman of the Historical Commission, offered a tour of the building on a recent snowy morning. Christian Goodwillie, curator of the Shaker Hancock Village, who was visiting the Feists, joined the conversation.

Jonathan Feist (left) and Christian Goodwillie talk about restoration of the building.

To Goodwillie’s knowledge, the Shaker herb-drying house is architecturally unique. Although an 1850 watercolor of the New Lebanon Shaker Village shows a similar one, it is now gone. No other small stone cottages? That seemed implausible, but the uniqueness became apparent when Feist opened the front door of the drying house into a brick-lined, brick-vaulted kiln-like room with a descending staircase on the left side. A small hall to the right that was converted to a bathroom years ago led to another, larger, vault-ceilinged brick room.

What appears as a single-story cottage in the front is actually a two-story building built into the dropping grade. The back of the building looks out on wet meadows that were once drained and planted. Shaker Holy Hill rises at the far end of the fields.

The ground-floor ceiling and second-story floor was made of sturdy, spaced slats that allowed warm, dry air from a wood stove to move upward to the second story. There the air was contained by the arched brick ceilings and used to dry roots, herbs, pumpkins, and possibly apples for the Shakers’ thriving agricultural business.

In his memoir of living in the Harvard Shaker village as a child, Harvard resident Arthur West recalled, “The stone dry-house was where the roots were dried by artificial heat. The herb shop was used for stripping, drying by air, and preserving and wrapping the great variety of herbs raised on the broad acres of their estate. There was also the still—no, not what you think, but where rose water was distilled. A very enchanting perfume was made from the real roses.”

A millstone built into the wall near the herb shed.

The quaintness of the stone herb-drying house is deceiving about the scale of the Shaker herb business, which was primarily housed in a massive three-story wood herb house constructed at the same time.

The Harvard village became an important center for the Shaker seed and herb businesses that flourished in the 19th century. What began as an effort to grow their own medicinal herbs culminated in an herb business so successful that Elisha Myrick could write in 1850 that they pressed 10,767 pounds of dried herbs and roots into brick-like blocks for sale. February 26, 1851, finds, “We worked till eleven o’clock in the evening putting up cans of horseradish to go to California.” November 1851 journal entries show 1,000 cans of summer savory and 200 cans of flour of pumpkin, as well as, “Pack a lot of orders to go to New York.” The business was still going in 1888 when the Deerfoot Farm Company placed an order for 668 pounds of sage for its sausage production.

Goodwillie emphasized the significance of the Harvard Shaker village. Begun by Mother Ann Lee, the Shakers’ spiritual founder, Harvard was the center of her religious mission to gain converts throughout New England. It later became a center of commerce.

The Harvard Shakers were united by their religious beliefs, but also by their practical and productive daily lives. Their endeavors were firmly grounded in the commercial world, as Henry Nourse observed in his History of the Town of Harvard Massachusetts, “Financially, the Society is very prosperous and has invested savings.” He goes on to say, “A boiler of ample capacity and a small engine furnish heat and power for the herb-packing department, laundry and dairy, all of which are provided with the most recent scientific and labor saving machinery and economic devices.”

Though the Harvard Shakers made the most of their poor, rocky soil in north Harvard and the acute business sense of Elijah Myrick and later Simon Atherton, the 6,000-acre New Lebanon Village in eastern New York state dwarfed the Harvard production. New Lebanon produced almost 75 tons of roots and herbs in 1855, many for medicinal use.

The magnificent Shaker barns are now gone. The large herb house burned down, as did the 300-foot-long animal barn that was once the largest in New England. The famous stone barn, whose ruins can be seen from South Shaker Road, was pulled down in the 1970s. Only the small stone herb-drying house remains. Goodwillie summarized, “This public-owned building encapsulates the story of religion, industry, and health care in the 19th century for the town of Harvard.”

Dec 31 We have had usual prosperity in all our labors and undertakings ... crops of all kinds have repaid toil & gratitude is due to the bountiful giver from the cultivation of the soil. Let the past year retain in its embrace all that is not productive of good peace and happiness, while the new born year takes the sweets of the past to invite and encourage onward. The past year has bleached many hairs on the head of youth & the coming year will surely pull them out. Let us look back with satisfaction and forward with hope. (Elisha Myrick, 1855)

Shaker herb history and quotes for this article came from Shaker Medicinal Herbs by Amy Bess Miller and from Harvard resident Roben Campbell, who has transcribed many Harvard Shaker journals.