The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, is what they called themselves, but because of their ecstatic dancing, the world called them Shakers, kind of like Quakers. Most people today, if they've heard of them at all, think of their furniture, which is very valuable on the antiques market, and quite simple and elegant. (They would have had very little of it in their how residential housing, which was more like dorms with separation of males and females.) They founded a Utopian Community that had several properties or locations in the United States.
Using diaries, interviews, archival phones, music, and so on, Ken Burns' video is wonderful to watch. Shaker life was industrious and inventive, but men and women did not mix and lived celibate lives, so their numbers did not increase. They adopted some children. Some people left to marry and live a more normal lifestyle. Today there are a few Shakers still living and a few properties that they still own.
I've never met anyone through the years working on their genealogy project who found family in a Shaker Community.
