author
Bertha Lindsay
1897–1990
Raised in the Canterbury Shaker community from childhood, she became one of its best-known later members and helped preserve its music, foodways, and daily traditions through her writing. Her books offer a warm, firsthand glimpse of Shaker life in New Hampshire.
1 Audiobook
Industries and Inventions of the Shakers: Shaker Music, a Brief History
by Bertha Lindsay, Lillian Phelps
About the author
Born in 1897, Bertha Lindsay was brought to the Canterbury Shaker community in New Hampshire as a child and spent the rest of her life closely connected to its religious and communal world. She later became an eldress, a senior leadership role within the Shaker tradition, and was widely recognized as one of the last prominent voices of the Canterbury community.
Her writing helped keep that world vivid for later readers. She is associated with books including Seasoned with Grace: My Generation of Shaker Cooking and works on Shaker history and music, drawing on personal memory as well as community tradition. That firsthand perspective makes her especially valuable to readers interested in everyday Shaker life rather than only its public history.
Lindsay died in 1990. Today she is remembered not just as an author, but as a keeper of Canterbury Shaker memory whose life connected a disappearing religious community with modern readers.