Restoring Shakertown: The Struggle to Save the Historic Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill

VI. “The Beginning Year”

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CHAPTER VI “The Beginning Year” O n Wednesday evening, August 9, 1961, in a meeting of the Blue Grass Trust at the Hunt-Morgan House, Bob Jewell announced the formation of a nonprofit corporation to preserve, restore, and use the village of Pleasant Hill. The group would acquire the buildings and land and would “maintain the property in such a manner as to reveal the original beauty, utility, and strength of the structures, and the simplicity of the life lived by the Shakers.” The group would also, he said—faithfully reporting the McLain-influenced decisions of the Shakertown committee—“utilize the property and facilities in such a manner as to improve the quality of contemporary life.” More specifically, it would restore the village so that it represented Shaker life and culture of a century earlier, and it would institute a varied program of cultural, educational, and recreational activities, with seminars, conferences, festivals, and tours.This child of the Blue Grass Trust, now striking out on its own, would be called Shakertown at Pleasant Hill, Inc.; the members of the Shakertown committee became the organizing board of the new corporation. (The double name, combining the familiar designation of the village with the traditional Shaker name for it, was suggested by McLain.)The incorporators were Hilary Boone, Juliette Brewer, Dorothy Clay, Charles Graves, Lucy Graves, Bob Houlihan, Bob Jewell, Harry Tucker, Earl D. Wallace, and Retta Wright. The plan won enthusiastic endorsements on all sides. Governor Bert Combs, who generally supported educational and cultural activities and 51 “The Beginning Year” sometimes had funds to contribute to them, declared that he had “complete and unqualified” enthusiasm for the idea of preserving this “priceless historical entity.” The area’s newspapers loved it. The Lexington Herald said editorially that “no project that has been suggested in recent years could be of greater value to Central Kentucky than the proposal to restore historic Shakertown”; it could be a “tourist attraction that, properly developed, will return millions of dollars to Kentucky in the years ahead.” It could even mean that “Kentucky would have a tourist attraction second only to restored Williamsburg, Va., one of the nation’s outstanding attractions of a bygone era.” The Lexington Leader, the Herald’s Republican afternoon sister , though a bit less rhapsodic, endorsed McLain’s ideas about the constructive use of Shakertown as a justification for the expenditure of time and money that would be required to preserve it, and considered the plan an opportunity for Kentucky to acquire “a tremendous asset to the Blue Grass and the whole state, and a place of interest to the entire nation.” Jane Bird Hutton of the Harrodsburg Herald of course gave the project complete editorial support, expressing special approval for the aim of restoring Shakertown as a “living village,” which, she said, had some years ago been the thought of a local citizen, the late Colonel James L. Isenberg. Striking her familiar theme of the job opportunities the restoration would offer, she declared: “We have a gold mine in our county. Let us not fail to see that everything is done by us to assure the program.” No one will be surprised to learn that the Courier-Journal applauded Governor Combs’s complete and unqualified enthusiasm. “To this,” the paper said, “we add an amen.” The editorial offered specific congratulations to Bob Jewell and Hilary Boone, as the leaders of the group of Central Kentuckians who were proposing the restoration. Few newspaper readers could know what thought and labor and what endless meetings lay behind Bob Jewell’s announcement. Few could realize what an act of faith it still represented. Several months earlier, though poor in both cash and property, the Shakertown committee had decided on another act of faith. To keep things moving in coordination, the members of the group agreed, the developing project must find an executive director. Though anybody who 52 RESTORING SHAKERTOWN accepted the job would indeed have to be a person of remarkable optimism and faith, the committee at least had front money to offer: the members and a number of close friends had proved their dedication to Shakertown by putting up the needed cash themselves; in the last three months of 1960, five persons had contributed a total of $10,849, headed by $5,000 from Dorothy Clay and $3,000 from Lucy Graves. The committee also proposed to seek “Founding Sponsors...