Welcome to our Online Collections Database!

Objects

The object collection has approximately 4500 artifacts dating from the early 1800s to the present day. Most items are directly connected to the Pleasant Hill Shakers, but the collection also includes other Shaker objects (such as furniture from eastern Shaker communities) and general items related to nineteenth-century life in rural Kentucky (such as farm implements and tools). Pleasant Hill’s twentieth-century transition from Shaker community to museum is also documented through reproduction objects made by early museum employees and volunteers.

Photos

The photo collection has more than 2000 images documenting Pleasant Hill’s history. The earliest photographs include professional stereographs of the village and studio portraits of individual Shakers. Visitors to the community – friends of the last Shakers, neighbors, and early tourists – also photographed the community’s aging population and deteriorating building in the first half of the twentieth century. Beginning in the 1960s, as the museum took shape, staff members documented archaeological excavations, building restorations, and public events through extensive photography.