Amos Bronson Alcott's Fruitland
The town of Harvard, Massachusetts has a history of idealized agrarian colonies. A number of Shakers settled here in the 18th century, following Mother Ann who had seen the area in a vision. In the 19th century the Shakers had began creating seed-sharing systems in the region. In the 1840s, the Alcotts heard of this town, and relocated here to establish a vegetarian utopia in 1843.
Amos Bronson Alcott was the father of Louisa May Alcott, the famous author, and cousin to Dr. William Alcott, a prominent vegetarian physician. Alcott had created a partnership with Charles Lane, of Hackney, England, in 1842 while soliciting the English for investment in his idea for a transcendental colony. When the plans came through, the founders purchased 90-acres in Massachusetts and hope that the fruits of their labor would be realized in this new Fruitland. Trouble was, the founders put in very little labor and had next-to-no experience farming; nor was there much fruit on the land except perhaps a dozen apple trees. On top of this, the founders had strict rules for anyone living at the colony:
"they should not use sugar or cotton clothing because both these came from slave labor. No milk or butter or cheese, because they felt the milk rightfully belonged to the cow. No woolen stockings, for that would be robbing sheep of their fleece. No lamps at night, because lamps burned whale oil in those days. And candles would deprive the bees of their wax."
This was not Amos Alcott's first attempt at Utopia, and it would not be his last. As a transcendentalist and practitioner of a vegetarian diet, Alcott embraced a number of other radical ideas--a number of which would later become a part of the Republican Platform in the 1850s. Alcott did not believe in slave labor, thought that alcohol should be banned, and that cold water had special healing properties (hydropathy).
All told there were no more than twenty people living in Fruitlands during the 1843 season. Alcott and Lane spent most of their time traveling to New York and Pennsylvania to meet and support fellow vegetarians, transcendentalists, and abolitionists, leaving little time for them to do any work at the farm. The children toiled, and eventually Alcott became dispossessed with the colony as Charles Lane pushed him to separate from his family to become truly transcendental.
In less than a year's time, Fruitlands had failed. Louisa May Alcott wrote of the failure in her later years in a book called Transcendental Wild Oats. She and the rest of the family had the feeling of being dragged around by Amos, who was full of ideas but not action. Young Louisa's diaries begin in September with enthusiasm about the healing power of cold water!...and in December she is expressing serious anger toward her family and the suffering she has been put through as a result of the experiment. The family, including the young children, were required to labor in the gardens to produce a crop. When the flax harvest failed, the colony struggled as they had hoped to make money off of hand-spun linens. The need for money was fierce, as Amos Alcott still owed hundreds on the investment of Charles Lane.
Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed interest in the experiment, and when he visited said they appeared to be doing all right. However, by winter they were not doing well. The community was forced in early winter to succumb to their passions and eat the farm animals, as there were no vegetables or fruits to be had. Charles Lane left, frustrated, and with his son moved to the local Shaker colony. With hardly any firewood or clothes, Mrs. Abby May Alcott took her daughters to a place in town to stay with money she had borrowed from her family. Amos stayed the winter at Fruitlands in depression, eventually conceding defeat.
Though the Alcott's moved on to the Orchard House in Concord, Mass. in the 1850s, the failure at Fruitlands has been interpreted by some to be the shift of power in the Alcott's family from father Amos to mother Abby May. This change may have inspired Louisa May Alcott's later writings, such as Little Women which is based off of Concord, and the Alcott's later focus on issues dealing with gender equality.
The failure of this colony can be traced to a stubbornness of ideals, an authoritarian form of communal labor and living, and the inexperience of the founders. Some of the ideas beyond vegetarianism demanded too much of practitioners and isolated families. Despite these things, Amos Bronson Alcott remained, with his cousin William, an important speaker for the vegetarian movement, and their work was valued when the American Vegetarian Society was formed in 1850.
