The Shaker Quarterly
academic journal and magazine about the Shakers, founded by the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village
The Shaker Quarterly was a periodical published by the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village from 1961 to 1996. It served as a journal and newsletter about the Shakers, and at times also doubled as a mail order catalog advertising products created by the Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake. It was the first regular Shaker publication since the Manifesto ceased publication in 1899.
The Quarterly was launched in 1961 by Theodore E. Johnson and Mildred Barker. An attempt to keep Shaker doctrine alive, its founding marked the beginning of a renewed interest in the Shakers during the 1960s. Several Shaker industries were revived, including the Shaker herb industry, at Sabbathday Lake. In 1971, the Shaker community began stocking herbal products in the village store, and advertising herbal products in the Quarterly. For instance, the Winter 1971 issue listed eighteen culinary herbs and eleven herbal teas for sale.
The publication emphasized the history of the Shakers, but also published, and republished, articles discussing their religion and theology. It featured devotionals and various theological and historical works written by the Shakers themselves, but also included book reviews and scholarly research from other contributors.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Shaker Quarterly” is academic journal and magazine about the Shakers, founded by the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Shaker, Quarterly and academic, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “academic journal and magazine about the Shakers, founded by the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q28001780. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1961, 1996, 1899 and 1971.
Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “The Shaker Quarterly”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow The Shaker Quarterly primary sources, The Shaker Quarterly archive and Shaker research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “The Shaker Quarterly” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.