§ 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.
