Union Village: Shaker Ghost Town

By Randy McNutt

(For additional information, please read Finding Utopia: Another Journey Into Lost Ohio, published by Black Squirrel Books.)

Near Monroe, Ohio, lies a ghost town named Union Village, once the largest Shaker community in the early west. It population reached hundreds of residents in a time when small towns had few people. Founded in 1805, when Ohio was only two years old, Union Village--also called Wisdom's Paradise by its residents--continued to grow into a leading area producer of brooms, chairs, and various other products.

           I came searching for the Warren County town to include it in my new book, Finding Utopia: Another Journey Into Lost Ohio. I was looking for interesting ghost towns, and this one seemed appropriate. It was once a bustling center of commerce, religion, and agriculture. Nowadays cars go past it on State Route 63, and drivers don't even know they have passed something that once attracted sightseers and curious travelers.

The Shakers—formally known as the United Society of Christ’s Second Appearing— were a persecuted religious sect founded in England in the late 1700s by Ann Lee, the wife of a blacksmith. She and her small group left for America and built villages in New York and other eastern states. Eventually their representatives came to southwest Ohio and found fertile ground. A main tenant of their faith was celibacy, although the group accepted women and minorities and offered them positions of leadership.

The Shakers got their name from the way some of their early converts shook while praying. The name stuck. Nowadays, the early Shakers are known mostly for their fine craftsmanship and woodworking. Only a handful of Shakers remain, and they live in New England.

In time, the Shakers built 24 communities in the United States, including Union Village. The self-sufficient town became the leading Shaker community in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. The  village helped create a number of other villages in neighboring Ohio counties and in Indiana. In 1818, Union Village's population peaked at 634 people. Early on, the town even featured its own printing plant and newspaper, the Day-Star.

            In 1861 the Civil War started a swift downward spiral for the community, draining it of potential new converts and business markets. By the early 1900s, Union Village had dwindled to only 44 residents. In 1912, the community was sold to the United Brethren Church, which used the village as a home for the elderly. Today, the site is the home of Otterbein-Lebanon Retirement Community on Ohio 741.

Starting in the second decade of the 1800s, Union Village became a center of Merino sheep and Poland-China hogs. Meanwhile, the community began to package and sell garden seeds. “The Shakers,” Cheryl Bauer and Rob Portman wrote in Wisdom’s Paradise, “were always successful merchandisers, even in the early nineteenth century, whether they were selling seeds in Ohio or chairs in New York.”

            Today, Otterbein-Lebanon features a few remnants of the old Shaker community, including Marble Hall, built in 1810. Most of the original structures have been torn down. The most eye-catching building is called Marble Hall, built in 1891-1892 when the Shakers renovated it in the Victorian style. They added marble floors (hence the name), modern fireplaces, fancy woodwork, and porches. Other impressive remnants that remain include a 10,000-gallon (21 feet deep and 9 feet wide) reservoir that caught rain, various Shaker cupboards, and other historical items.

In 1909, just before Union Village was sold, a reporter visited and wrote: “The past quarter century especially has brought about great changes, especially one, the mode of worship. Whereas years ago, marching, whirling, shaking and exhortations of a pronounced nature was indulged in, today a more intelligent spirit is manifested in forms of singing, reading, and remarks, heralding the essentials of life and duties that tend toward the bettering of selfhood, home and humanity . . .”

Nowadays, the site is busy as a retirement center. One of the site's few remaining larger Shaker buildings was torn down in 2010. A small group of residents opposed the demolition, but with no success. The center wanted the property for a new, modern project. Next door, the Victorian Marble Hall still stands, but it looks nothing like its original design in the early 1800s. Most of the center's residents are vaguely aware of what happened at this place, but they are living here because of the services provided, not for the history.

            Unfortunately, the Shaker town was doomed once the Civil War broke out and Southern markets collapsed. Its membership further declined to only 24 members in 1910. Finally, the end had come to one of Ohio’s more interesting independent religious communities.


Randy McNutt is the author Lost Ohio:  More Travels into Haunted Landscapes, Ghost Towns, and Forgotten Places. Read more about Union Village in his new history and travel narrative, Finding Utopia: Another Journey Into Lost Ohio. It will be published in October 2012 by Black Squirrel Books, an imprint of the Kent State University Press.