User:EdwinSawmill/sandbox

= Elijah Myrick =

Elijah Myrick (February 18, 1824-February 9, 1890) Shaker furniture maker and inventor, was among the most important brethren in the Harvard, Massachusetts Shaker Society. During his sixty years with the Harvard Shakers he served as a carpenter, joiner (furniture maker), mechanic, inventor, trustee and elder.

Early Life
Myrick was one of eleven children born to Elizabeth and Jesse Myrick Sr. in Eastham, Barnstable, Massachusetts. The entire Myrick family was admitted to the Harvard Shakers in 1827. While several eventually left the Society, Elijah Myrick remained until his death in 1890. Like many young Shakers, Myrick was trained to do a wide number of tasks. As a youth, he worked in the Shaker sawmill with his brother Daniel, as a carpenter, made a sink for the washhouse, and with his brother Elisha Myrick and Thomas Holden, built the fence for the Harvard Shaker's outdoor worship space, the "Holy Hill of Zion." In the early 1840s, as a mechanic, he repaired a shingle machine and made a pump for the hog house. In 1845, he served as foreman in the framing of a new farm shed.

Adulthood
In 1847, Myrick was named a Trustee of the Church family, working closely with Simon Atherton. His duties as Trustee in the 1840s and 1850s engaged him in travel throughout New England either selling products of the Harvard Society (garden seeds, brooms, etc.) or purchasing (livestock, molasses, or fresh fish). In the 1860s he made furniture including a well-known cupboard in the collection of the Fruitlands Museum. As an inventor, Myrick developed and patented an improved iron chimney cap (U.S. Patent 90,380), and an "ingenious device" for keeping carriage curtains rolled up, By the time Myrick became an Elder in 1883, the Harvard community was losing members at an alarming rate, especially brethren. Myrick, working with Elder Andrew Barrett of the New Lebanon Shakers, who had been brought in to assist, made a valiant effort to modernize the deteriorating church family structures, but ran into significant resistance from older members of the community.