Shaker Trustees' Building – Second Chance at Life

A small Shaker community, founded in 1826 in Sodus, New York, relocated a decade later to western New York’s Genesee Valley. The land there was part of the hamlet of Sonyea, in the southwest corner of the Town of Groveland in Livingston County (New York counties are divided up into smaller divisions called towns). 

1852 Smith & Gillett map of Livingston County showing Town of Groveland 

By mid-1838 the move was complete and the Shakers settled as East and West families, building shops, barns, residences, a gristmill and three-story sawmill, and, circa 1839, a new office building at Groveland for the Trustees of the East family. This Trustees' building was also known, not by the Shakers but later by the Board of Managers of the institution that acquired the property, as the "Chestnut." 

As was the case in all Shaker communities, Trustees were the men and women of the community who managed the economic affairs on behalf of the community. Their building often served multiple uses but primarily as an office where business with the outside world was conducted. Trustees' buildings often reflected the Shaker commitment to simplicity and practicality in architecture.

Article from 1987 shows the Trustee's building at its new site in Mumford, New York

By 1892, the Groveland community, once populated by as many as 150 individuals, had been reduced to just 34 and had to close its doors. Shaker brother Hamilton DeGraw wrote in the Mount Morris Union newspaper on Thursday, October 20, 1892 an article "intended as a farewell greeting to dear friends and neighbors." He said: "The final and crucial test of any organization whether religious, societal or political, lies not in its popularity but in the amount of actual work done for human development." He went on to acknowledge "deep feelings of gratitude that we all feel for the kindly manifestations of sympathy and love that have been expressed by the community since the knowledge of our removal was made public. We have many attachments that endear us to the people of the Genesee Valley and Western New York, and tho' removed in body our prayers and sympathy will be with the people here."

DeGraw and the remaining members moved to the Watervliet, NY community (aka Niskayuna). The Groveland property was sold, for charitable use, to New York State and from 1894 to the 1980s the land and buildings housed an institution for people with epilepsy. 

In 1984, Genesee Country Village & Museum, an educational institution established in 1966 with the goal of preserving the architecture of the Genesee Valley region in a recreated historic village, acquired the Trustee’s building and moved it about 24 miles north to their property at Mumford, Wayne County.  

The colonial style timber frame with wood clapboard siding had a symmetrical façade, with evenly spaced windows, chimneys at either end, and a central hallway with staircase. The building housed a kitchen, dining room, office, and store. The top floor attic space was reportedly used as an infirmary. The meetinghouse at Groveland, built in 1842 and destroyed by fire in the first half of the 20th century, was reportedly painted a light blue, deviating from the traditional white reserved for Shaker houses of worship. Instead, it seems, the Shakers at Groveland painted their Trustee's building white.

Groveland Shaker Trustee’s building, restored and painted white 

Since 1982, the New York State Department of Corrections has operated Groveland Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison for males, at the site of the old Shaker community.