Watervliet - the first of the villages

Watervliet Center, North Albany, Albany and Schenectady Counties, 

New York, published by Stone & Stewart, 1866

Recently, I had a day to spend in Albany and decided to finally see the first of the Shaker communities - Watervliet. The area was known as Niskayuna by the natives and Watervliet by the Dutch settlers. Today, what remains of the Shaker village is within the Town of Colonie, adjacent to the Albany International Airport.


At its peak in 1839, Watervliet had 350 members and 2,500 acres of land. Sadly, in the 1920s, a fire destroyed all of the North Family buildings.  The South and West Family buildings were sold off to private hands;some are still standing. A handful of the Church Family buildings remain. I happened upon the village during an annual craft show in the meeting house and picked up some lovely Christmas gifts.

Thanks to a reworking of the east-west road that runs through the community, drivers cannot easily cut-through the village and this effectively slows the pace, enabling one to envision life here in the late 18th century and 19th century, before flight and automobiles. Inviting trails surround the old mill pond just south of the church family cluster.

Beautifully-drawn plans of the Shaker community at Watervliet, as it was in the 1930s, as the county was taking over the property, are here

Watervliet community showing locations of Church, North, West, and South Family plus Cemetery (north to the left)

Detail of South Family shows Shaker precision, order and practicality 

This 1813 poem about Watervliet was written at the Hancock, Massachusetts community and republished in Landmarks of American women's history by Page Putnam Miller :

Mother

Near Albany they settled

And waited for a while

Until a mighty shaking

Made all the desert smile

At length a gentle whisper

The tidings did convey

And many flocked to Mother

To learn the living Way

It's just a short walk from the Church family buildings to the cemetery where I visited Ann Lee's grave. Her brother William rests beside her on one side in the quiet, orderly burial ground. On her other side is the grave of Mother Lucy Wright, who ran the New York communities after Ann's death. As with the Runyon family, Lucy and her husband Elizur Goodrich joined the Shakers with many of their extended family members.

What impressed me most about Watervliet was how little remains. Of 778 original acres, most is now taken up by the airport, surrounding business complexes, the country club, the county jail. It makes me realize how lucky we are to have Pleasant Hill in its present condition.