Only four Shakers are left in the world (Maine)

These are the last Shakers, living in the world's last active Shaker community, which has survived for 223 years in this idyllic and isolated hilltop village 35 miles northwest of Portland. Here, the four faithful live a life of ascetic simplicity and abide by the three C's: celibacy, confession of sin, and communalism. "The real misconception about the Shakers is that we're all dead," says one of the four, Brother Arnold Hadd, only half-jokingly.

The 49-year-old Hadd, a Springfield native who became a Shaker at age 21, is joined by Brother Wayne Smith, 43, raised in nearby South Portland, Maine, who joined six months after his high school graduation at age 18; Sister June Carpenter, 67, a former Brookline librarian who converted at age 49; and Sister Frances Carr, 79, who has been at Sabbathday since she, at age 10, and her siblings were sent to live with the Shakers by their widowed mother, who died shortly thereafter.

Because they are celibate, the Shakers rely on converts to keep their community going and say they receive up to 70 inquiries a year. To those interested, they send out literature and correspondence. Many inquirers are attracted to the romantic notion of the simple life espoused in chic, urban publications like Martha Stewart Living and Real Simple. "We're looking for people . . . who feel that they are being called by God to a higher life," Hadd says. "Most of these people we never hear back from."

They did invite one candidate who seemed seriously interested to visit this spring. But if converts don't materialize and the day comes when all the world's Shakers have met their Maker, there is a plan.

While they pray for more converts, the Sabbathday Shakers - as pragmatic as they are pious - have been working to ensure that their legacy and their land will outlive them, should Shakerism die off. They're well aware that several dismantled New England Shaker villages were long ago subdivided into housing lots or turned into prisons. "We'd been very concerned," Hadd admits, "because our neighborhood has changed so radically in just a short period of time." The Shakers worry not only about encroaching suburban sprawl but rising costs like heat and their property taxes, which hit $24,432 this fiscal year. (The Shakers have never sought tax-exempt status as a religious group.)

So, five years ago, the Protestant monastic sect initiated a plan, put together by the national nonprofit Trust for Public Land, to sell preservation and conservation easements to two nonprofits, Maine Preservation and the New England Forestry Foundation. These two groups, along with eight other nonprofits and public agencies, are behind the national campaign to raise money to buy the restrictions ....