Shakers lived communally in "families" of up to one hundred unrelated people. The North Union Shaker community's Center Family formed in 1923 and settled along the west side of Lee Road south of its intersection with Shaker Boulevard. The Center Family governed the entire colony (which at its peak consisted of three families and nearly 300 people), managed farming operations, and operated the woolen mill near Horseshoe Lake upon its construction in the 1850s. In this image from 1930, former North Union Shakers Joseph and Alma McGill Stoll and a group of teachers from Fernway School study one of the Center Family's stone gateposts at the southwest corner of Lee Road and Shaker Boulevard. In the background is the first Shaker Heights City Hall, located on Lee Road at the site where the Shaker meeting house used to be. | Source: Shaker Historical SocietyDownload Original File
Source
Shaker Historical Society
"Center Family Gate Posts, 1930" appears in: Horseshoe Lake
