Brook Farm

After Brook Farm

A man named John Plummer purchased the land that was Brook Farm in 1849 before selling it six years later to James Freeman Clarke, who intended to establish another community there. Instead, Clarke offered it to President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War and the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry Regiment used it for training as Camp Andrew.

Clarke sold the property in 1868 to two brothers, who used it as a summer boarding house. In 1870, Gottlieb F. Burckhardt purchased the property, after which he formed the Association of the Evangelical Lutheran Church for Works of Mercy to operate an orphanage in The Hive, as the property's main house. The orphanage opened in 1872 and operated until 1943. In 1948 the Lutherans converted it into a treatment center and school, which closed in 1977. Parts of the farm were separated in 1873 for use as a cemetery, a use that continues today as a non-denominational cemetery known as the Gardens of Gethsemene (as part of St. Joseph's Cemetery and the Baker Street Jewish Cemeteries). During the period of Lutheran ownership the only now extant building, a c. 1890 print shop, was built on the land; the buildings associated with the Transcendentalists, most recently the Margaret Fuller Cottage, had burned down by the 1980s.

In 1988, the Metropolitan District Commission (since merged with the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, or DCR) purchased 148 acres (0.60 km²) of the original land. The farm was declared a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1965, a Boston Landmark in 1977, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The DCR now operate the state-owned portion as a historic site; the West Roxbury Historical Society periodically offers tours.

Landscape and facilities

Brook Farm was named for the brook that ran near the roadside and eventually went to the Charles River. It was surrounded by low hills and its meadows and sunny slopes were diversified by orchard, quiet groves and denser pine woods. But the land turned out to be difficult to farm.

The land on the Keith lot that was purchased along with the Ellis farm included a functional farmhouse, which Brook Farmers called "The Hive". The Hive became the center for social activities and was where community members went for three meals a day. The Hive's dining room held 50 people and its library was stocked with Ripley's personal book collection, which was made available to all members.

As the community grew, it became necessary to add more buildings for lodgings and various activities. The first building constructed was "The Nest", where school lessons took place and where guests of the farm would stay. Mr. and Mrs. Ripley's house, later called the Eyrie, was built during the second year. The next building to be built was the Margaret Fuller Cottage; though named after Fuller, she never spent a night there. A Brook Farm participant named Ichabod Morton built the Pilgrim House, named in honor of his home town of Plymouth, Massachusetts. The 2+1⁄2-story building was the third structure built that year, at a cost of nearly $5,000. Morton stayed there only two weeks before moving out, after which the building was used for general lodging and also held laundry facilities. The many constructions, including greenhouses and small craft shops, quickly reduced the treasury.

Community life

Work and finances

Participants at Brook Farm were also shareholders and were promised 5% of the annual profits or free tuition for one student. In exchange for 300 days of work per year, they were granted free room and board. Members performed whatever work most appealed to them and all, including women, were paid equal wages. The philosophy of labor, according to Ripley, was "to insure a more natural union between intellectual and manual labor than now exists; to combine the thinker and the worker, as far as possible, in the same individual."

The organization of work in Brook Farm changed over time because of both financial troubles and changes in ideology. Members of Brook Farm initially participated in an "attractive industry" system where each could pick work assignments based on personal preferences. This method had no specific authority to ensure that essential tasks were done. After initial leniency, some sensed that not all members were doing their fair share of the labor, so in 1841 the community adopted standards for work: ten hours of work were required per day during the summer and eight hours during winter. When Brook Farm first adopted Fourierist notions, it created a more structured work environment with a system that consisted of three series of industry: agriculture, mechanical, and domestic. Within each series were a number of groups that handled more specific tasks. Each group had a chief who kept a record of the work done. While this system created a new work hierarchy, the members still had the flexibility to move between groups easily. These new measures caused Brook Farm to make a profit in 1844, a feat it had not accomplished in its first few years of existence.

Typical work duties at Brook Farm included chopping wood, bringing in firewood, milking cows, turning a grindstone, and other farming chores. Not all were farmers, however. Some worked in the trades, including making shoes, and others were teachers. Regardless of the job, all were considered equal and because of the job distribution, as Elizabeth Peabody wrote, "no one has any great weight in any one thing". In exchange for their work, participants were granted several "guarantees", including "medical attendance, nursing, education in all departments, amusements". There were some occasional conflicts between different workers, partly because those who were educators believed themselves more aristocratic; overall, however, as historian Charles Crowe wrote, "indeed all aspects of communal life operated with surprisingly little friction" in general.

People visited Brook Farm frequently, totaling an estimated 1,150 each year, and each was charged for their visit. Between November 1844 and October 1845, surviving records show that $425 was collected from visitor fees. The list of visitors included theologian Henry James, Sr., sculptor William Wetmore Story, artist John Sartain, and British social reformer Robert Owen.

Despite multiple sources of income, the community was in constant debt almost immediately after it began. The community, including Ripley, had difficulty with farming, in particular because of poor soil and not enough labor. The major crop was hay, which was sold at low-grade prices; vegetables, milk, and fruit were not produced in sufficient numbers to be profitable. The property was mortgaged four times between 1841 and 1845. Brook Farm got into the habit of spending money before it had been raised. One Brook Farmer wrote, "I think here lies the difficulty,—we have not had business men to conduct our affairs ... those among us who have some business talents, see this error".

Education

On September 29, 1841, the "Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education" was organized. The school was Brook Farm's most immediate (and at times only) source of income and attracted students from as far away as Cuba and the Philippines. Children under 12 were charged $3.50 per week and, at first, boys over 12 were charged $4 a week and girls were charged $5; by August 1842, the rates were made identical. Adult education was also available in the evenings. The schedule for adults included courses on moral philosophy, German language, and modern European history.

Within the school there was an infant school for children under six, a primary school for children under ten, and a preparatory school that prepared children for college in six years. When entering the school, each pupil under high-school age was assigned a woman of the community who was in charge of his/her wardrobe, personal habits, and exercise. The teachers included three graduates of Harvard Divinity School (George Ripley, George Partridge Bradford, and John Sullivan Dwight) and several women (Ripley's wife Sophia, his sister Marianne, and his cousin Hannah, Georgianna Bruce, and Abby Morton). Ripley was in charge of teaching English and was known to be relaxed in his class. Dana taught languages, speaking ten himself. Dwight taught music and Latin. Students studied European languages and literature and, at no extra cost, pupils could also indulge in the fine arts. The primary school was overseen by Sophia and Marianne Ripley, using a progressive child-centered pedagogy that has been compared to John Dewey's later reforms. Sophia Ripley's dedication to the school was remarked upon by many; she missed only two classes in six years.

Leisure

The people of Brook Farm spent most of their time either studying or working the farm, but they always set aside time for play. In their free time, they enjoyed music, dancing, card games, drama, costume parties, sledding, and skating. Every week, the community would gather at The Hive for a dance by the young ladies of the community. They wore wreaths of wild daisies on their heads, and each week a special wreath, bought from a florist, was given to the best-dressed girl. At the end of every day, many performed a "symbol of Universal Unity", in which they stood in a circle and joined hands and vowed for "truth to the cause of God and Humanity".

Spirits remained high throughout the experiment, regardless of the community's financial standing. The social structure demanded selflessness and people rarely failed to fulfill their duties, a requirement to earn leisure time. Leisure time was important to Brook Farm's philosophy. As Elizabeth Palmer Peabody wrote for The Dial in January 1842, "none will be engaged merely in bodily labor ... This community aims to be rich, not in the metallic representative of wealth, but in ... leisure to live in all the faculties of the soul".

Role of women

At Brook Farm, women could go beyond their typical sphere of tasks and their labor was highly valued. They did have tasks typical of other women at the time, such as simple food preparation, and shared housekeeping. But during harvest time, women were allowed to work in the fields and men even helped out with laundry during the cold weather. Because no single religion could impose its beliefs on the community, women were safe from the typical patriarchy associated with religion at the time. Because of the community's focus on individual freedom, women were autonomous from their husbands and allowed to become stockholders. Women also played an important role in providing sources of income. Many devoted time to making, in Brook Farmer Marianne Dwight's words, "elegant and tasteful caps, capes, collars, undersleeves, etc., etc.," for sale at Boston shops. Others painted screens and lampshades for sale. Women were allowed to go to school and, because of the well-known education of women at Brook Farm, many female writers and performers visited. Sophia Ripley, who had written an outspoken feminist essay for The Dial on "Woman" before moving to Brook Farm, was very educated and taught history and foreign languages at the farm.

Criticism

Many people in the community wrote of how much they enjoyed their experience and the lighthearted atmosphere. One participant, John Codman, joined the community at age 27 in 1843. He wrote, "It was for the meanest a life above humdrum, and for the greatest something far, infinitely far beyond. They looked into the gates of life and saw beyond charming visions, and hopes springing up for all". But the community's idealism was sometimes not lived up to. Because the community was officially secular, a variety of religions were represented, though not always amicably. When Isaac Hecker and, later, Sophia Ripley converted to Catholicism, a Protestant Brook Farmer complained, "We are beginning to see wooden crosses around and pictures of saints ... and I suspect that rosaries are rattling under aprons."

Nathaniel Hawthorne, eventually elected treasurer of the community, did not enjoy his experience. Initially, he praised the work he was doing, boasting of "what a great, broad-shouldered, elephantine personage I shall become by and by!" Later, he wrote to his wife-to-be Sophia Peabody, "labor is the curse of the world, and nobody can meddle with it without becoming proportionately brutified". After dissociating with the community, Hawthorne demanded the return of his initial investment, though he never held any ill will toward Ripley, to whom he wrote he would "heartily rejoice at your success—of which I can see no reasonable doubt".

Many outside Brook Farm were critical of it, especially in the press. The New York Observer, for example, wrote, "The Associationists, under the pretense of a desire to promote order and morals, design to overthrow the marriage institution, and in the place of the divine law, to substitute the 'passions' as the proper regulator of the intercourse of the sexes", concluding that they were "secretly and industriously aiming to destroy the foundation of society". Edgar Allan Poe expressed his opinions on the community in an article titled "Brook Farm" in the December 13, 1845, issue of the Broadway Journal. He wrote that he had "sincere respect" for the group and that its journal, The Harbinger, was "conducted by an assemblage of well-read persons who mean no harm—and who, perhaps, can do no less". Despite many critics, none suggested George Ripley be replaced as Brook Farm's leader.

Ralph Waldo Emerson never joined the Brook Farm community, despite several invitations. He wrote to Ripley on December 15, 1840, of his "conviction that the Community is not good for me". He also questioned the community's idealism, particularly its optimism that all members would share responsibility and workload equally. As he wrote, "The country members naturally were surprised to observe that one man ploughed all day and one looked out of a window all day ... and both received at night the same wages". Twenty years later, Emerson publicly denounced the experiment in his essay collection The Conduct of Life. Charles Lane, one of the founders of another community called Fruitlands, thought the Brook Farmers' lifestyle did not sacrifice enough. He said they were "playing away their youth and day-time in a miserably joyous frivolous manner". Like other communities, Brook Farm was criticized for its potential to break up the nuclear family because of its focus on working as a larger community. After its conversion to Fourierism, the Transcendentalists showed less support for it. Henry David Thoreau questioned the community members' idealism and wrote in his journal, "As for these communities, I think I had rather keep bachelor's hall in hell than go to board in heaven". Even Sophia Ripley later questioned their original optimism, calling it "childish, empty, & sad".

In fiction

Though a founding member, Hawthorne was unhappy during his tenure as a Brook Farmer, partly because he was unable to write while living there. "I have no quiet at all", he complained, and his hands were covered "with a new crop of blisters—the effect of raking hay". He presented a fictionalized portrait of his experience in his 1852 novel The Blithedale Romance. He acknowledged the resemblance in his introduction, saying "in the 'Blithedale' of this volume, many readers will probably suspect a faint and not very faithful shadowing of Brook Farm, in West Roxbury, which (now a little more than ten years ago) was occupied and cultivated by a company of socialists." The chapter called "The Masqueraders", for example, was based on a picnic held one September to celebrate the harvest season. George Ripley, who reviewed the book for the New York Tribune, said that former Brook Farmers would only notice the resemblance in the humorous parts of the story. Some have also seen a resemblance between Margaret Fuller and Hawthorne's fictional character Zenobia. In the novel, a visitor—a writer like Hawthorne—finds that hard farm labor is not conducive to intellectual creativity. In his introduction, Hawthorne insisted that, although his experience with Brook Farm undoubtedly influenced his concept of a utopian community, the characters in his novel did not represent any specific Brook Farmers.