How 1840s American Women Lived in a Village With No Marriage | History for Sleep

Tonight we spend one whole winter day with a Shaker sister at Pleasant Hill, in the bluegrass hills of Kentucky, on a Wednesday at the end of January in the year eighteen forty. Rebecca lives with close to eighty brothers and sisters in a great house of limestone, and today is the last day of her month in the kitchen. A rising bell at five in the dark, bedclothes folded over two chairs set back to back, two front doors and two staircases, a cellar kitchen with spring water piped from the water house, bread for eighty rising slowly in the cold, apple sauce boiled down in cider, meals eaten in silence, wool and silk in the sisters' shop, a meeting house without a single pillar, and an evening hour of quiet talk and singing by a small iron stove. No ads in the first 30 minutes. After that, ads only fall between chapters. The narration slows down as the day ends, and the last half hour is the quietest. Chapters 00:00 The Lower Peg Rail 16:40 Two Doors, Two Stairs 32:26 The Cellar Kitchen 48:09 Breakfast Without a Word 1:04:10 Bread for Eighty 1:20:07 Snow on the Narrow Walk 1:36:05 Wool and Silk 1:52:16 Dinner at Noon 2:08:20 The House Without Pillars 2:24:09 The Last Loaves 2:40:43 Supper by Lamplight 2:57:40 The Union Meeting 3:14:59 Lights Out by Nine Sources Charles Nordhoff, The Communistic Societies of the United States (1875), chapters on the Shakers and on Pleasant Hill F. W. Evans, Shakers' Compendium (1859) Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, history pages and the Village@work blog (Centre Family Dwelling, Meeting House) National Park Service, "Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill" A. Lindsay & M. Phelps, Industries and Inventions of the Shakers Shaker Heritage Society, "Clothing Style in Shaker Communities" Rebecca and the sisters around her are imagined; the village, the house, the daily order, the work and the food are drawn from the sources above. Images are AI-generated. The narration is produced with AI assistance. Listening from somewhere tonight? Leave your town and the time in the comments. #HistoryForSleep #SleepDocumentary #Shakers #Kentucky #OrdinaryLives