A Shaker rocking chair in the doorway of the Meeting Room at Canterbury Shaker community, New Hampshire.. The Shakers were 19th century America's largest and best known communal utopian society, and by 1840 there were 18 communities from Maine to Kentucky. they were famous for their celibate and austere way of life, for the excellence and simplicity of their work, and for the dance worship that gave them their name.