This work brings together 98 accounts recorded by visitors to four Shaker villages. These accounts, originally written between 1778 and 1849, reflect a wide spectrum of views and range from short diary accounts to lengthy periodical articles. Most of these accounts have not been seen in print for over 150 years, and some have never been published, existing only in manuscript form. This work is the inaugural volume of the American Communal Societies Series by the Richard W. Couper Press of Hamilton College Library. The mission of the press is to make available to readers new scholarship pertaining to American intentional communities as well as critical introductions to important historical works which may be difficult to find or out of print. The press hopes to facilitate and encourage the study of American communal life, an alternative social arrangement chosen by individuals from the seventeenth century to the present day.