This is the story, as currently known, about the North Family of the WaterVliet Shaker
Community, which was located on the site of the present Shaker Ridge Golf Club. In fact, their
bell or dwelling house was located on the same spot as the current clubhouse. A listing of what
other buildings there might have been has not been found or how many there were. Photographs
taken by James Irving ofTroy about 1870, one of which was used as the poster and catalog cover
for the New York State Museum Shaker exhibition, indicate there were quite a few of substantial
size. '*

The Shakers were "gathered" or organized into families in 1787 and a record book of
the South Family, now in possession of the New York State Library, records that the firstdwelling
of that family was erected in 1800 and the first dwelling at the West Family in 1810, so we would
assume the North Family buildings were begun at about the same time. As you know, there were
four families here at one time - Church, North, South and West.

According to the original Shaker organizational system, a FirstOrder was to contain all
members who had been leaders in setting up the Society and in it "was preserved the strictest discipline,,
They were to reside near the community Meeting House and have the care of itand, therefore, natu-
rally became known as the Church Family. Other distinctions set this family apart, such as that never,
except on rare occasions, did they meet with any other except the 2nd Order; and when members of
the Church Family walked withfhose from other orders, they always walked on the right.

The 2nd Order was a branch of the 1stOrder, but managed the secular concerns of both,
containing the office of the FirstDeacon of the whole Society who dispensed alms and provisions to
the needy. This was what laterbecame known here as the North Family.

A community would also have a Young Believers order where the newcomers lived while
they determined if the Shaker life was for them and the Shakers decided if they were Shaker material
At Watervliet, this became the South Family and, when many converts were coming in and the South
Family could not handle them all, the 2nd Family was built, later being called the West Family. Some
Shaker communities also had an Old Believers Order which contained those who had helped set up the
Society but whose circumstances would not permit them to be in the 1st Order - that is, they might
have a l.iving spouse outside the Shakers (among the "world's people), or they might still retain title
to property. Some Shaker communities also had a Backsliders or Back Order, so named because its
members had left the Shakers and then returned, but always perhaps considered suspect by the Shakers
because their faith had not been unwavering. WaterVliet did not have either of these latter two
orders.

WaterVliet continued to call two of its families the1st and 2nd Orders with the affairs
of the 2nd Order being regulated by the Church Family, until 1860. The 2nd Order, or North Family,
then split off and continued as a separate entity until 1892 when, as you will see, its declining num-
bers forced it to close. It then became the new home of members of the Shaker community near
Rochester called Groveland, formerly Sonyea, which had closed. Numbers continued to decline and
the North Family of WaterVliet ceased to exist in 1919.

Most of the information given here has been pieced together from reading journals kept
at the various WaterVliet families. On microfilm at the NY State Library are the Journals of David
Austin Buckingham, a very prominent member of the Church Family, thatcover thirty years from 1854
to 1884. (The originalsof these are in the Western Reserve University Library in Ohio0) In theactual
possession of the NY State Library are journals called the Ann Buckingham Journals which date from