§ 202. Trusts for Shakers and Friends. All deeds or declarations of
trust of real or personal property, executed and delivered before
January first, eighteen hundred and thirty, or since May fifth, eighteen
hundred and thirty-nine, to any person in trust for any United Society
of Shakers, or heretofore executed and delivered to any person or
persons in trust for any meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, or
any of the purposes thereof, and the legal estates, interests and trusts
purported to be conveyed, created or declared thereby, shall be valid.
Trusts of real or personal property, for the benefit and use of the
members of any United Society of Shakers, or of any meeting of the
Religious Society of Friends, or any of the purposes thereof, may
hereafter be created, according to the religious constitution of such
society of Shakers, or the regulations and rules of discipline of such
Society of Friends. Such deeds or declarations of trust, heretofore or
hereafter executed and delivered, shall vest in the trustees the legal
estates and interests purported to be conveyed or declared thereby, to
and for the uses and purposes declared therein; and such legal estates
and trusts, and all legal authority with which the original trustees
were vested by virtue of their appointment and conferred powers, shall
descend to their successors in office or trust, who may be chosen in
conformity to the constitution of such society, or the directions of
such meeting. In case of the death of all the trustees of any trust for
the benefit of any meeting of the Religious Society of Friends or any of
the purposes thereof, heretofore appointed, or who may be hereafter
appointed by virtue of this section, any such meeting may appoint a
trustee or trustees in place of such person or persons, and the person
or persons thus appointed by such meeting shall succeed to, and be
invested with, all the powers, rights and duties conferred by this
section and the deed or declaration of trust upon the trustee or
trustees. In case of the consolidation of two or more meetings of the
Religious Society of Friends into one meeting, all real and personal
property held in trust for either or any of the meetings so
consolidated, or any of the purposes thereof, shall continue to be
vested in the trustees holding the same at the time of such
consolidation, until their successors shall be chosen as above provided.
Such consolidated meeting shall have the same rights, powers and duties
in respect to such property, estates and trusts and in respect to the
appointment of such trustees and their successors as the meetings so
consolidated or either of them previously had. This section does not
impair or diminish the rights of any person, meeting or association
claiming to be a meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, which such
person, meeting, or association claiming to be a meeting, had to any
real or personal property held in trust for the use and benefit of any
meeting of such society, before the division of such society which took
place at the annual meeting held in the city of New York in May,
eighteen hundred and twenty-eight. An incorporated or unincorporated
society or meeting of Shakers or the Religious Society of Friends may
take and hold property of the value or yearly income permitted by
statute to a corporation other than a stock corporation. No person shall
be a trustee at the same time of more than one society of Shakers or
meeting of Friends. A society of Shakers includes all persons of the
religious belief of the people called Shakers, resident within the same
county.