HILLTOWN HISTORY The Tyringham Shakers. In 1792 several families here united all their farmland to form the Tyringham Shaker settlement. It was the 4th Shaker settlement in Massachusetts. They clustered along Jerusalem Rd., between Hop Brook and Beartown, in an area the AT goes through. Only a few Shaker houses remain standing today, and none are open to the public. However, elegantly crafted stone walls, a sure sign of the Shakers’ well- deserved reputation for attention to the marriage of form and function, cut through the surrounding woods.

In their heyday (the early 1800s), the Tyringham Shakers numbered over a hundred souls. Their landholdings were extensive, nearly 1500 acres, and they prospered, much like their Shaker brethren at the larger settlements at nearby Hancock, Massachusetts, and Mt. Lebanon, New York. At Tyringham the specialty was seeds, hundreds of varieties packaged in envelopes with eye-catching colorful labels that won them a large market throughout the East. The seed house was the biggest Shaker building in Tyringham with a freight elevator.

There were two large Shaker families here. Mother Ann Lee, the Shakers’ founder, never visited Tyringham, and an unexplained upheaval in the community in 1858 began its disintegration. By 1874 the Tyringham Shakers were all but gone.

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