All of the people shown above visited the Hopedale Community. Some, though not all, are mentioned in the article below. To find out more about them, click on the pictures. You'll see that there is a good deal of information on some of them, and very little on others. |
March 15, 2012 No. 200 Visitors to the Community Well, here it is, No. 200. When I started doing this in 2003 I had no idea that I’d still be at it this long. However, there seems to be no shortage of material, so I’ll keep on doing them. The first one was titled Community Affairs. It was a short article from the June 11, 1842 edition of the Hopedale Community newspaper, the Practical Christian. I sent it to about a dozen people. Now I send them twice a month to over 200 people, and perhaps as many as 100 actually read them. Having said all this, I’ll now admit that this isn’t really the 200th. Somehow I messed up with my numbering and there never was a 95, so 201 will be the real 200th. Hopedale in March Now and Then – The Lake Street Area Iceout – The ice on Hopedale Pond has come and gone again. Blue Hill Observatory weather data, including freeze/thaw dates for Houghton’s Pond since 1886. Thanks for sending, DJ. The February 1 issue was titled Library Reports. That might be considered a short history of the Hopedale library. Here’s a much more complete version I recently put online. Peter Metze sent a page about Webster Lake that includes a translation of its more famous name, Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg (Copy and paste – what a great feature). No, they say it’s not, “You fish on your side, etc.” The Aaron Cook house, Mendon Mendon baseball teams of 1935 and the 1940s. Recent deaths A couple of weeks ago when I saw mention the 50th anniversary of Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game, it reminded me of how the Milford News used to have a 25 Years Ago Today and 50 Years Ago Today section in the paper. I decided to start doing something similar – except by the month. Fifty years ago - March 1962 –Tax rate of $63 Predicted – High School Washington Trips to be Discontinued After 1963 - C. Victor Pepper Re-elected Chairman of Selectmen – Edward Malloy Re- elected Chairman of Housing Authority – Hopedale Community Historical Society Elects Mortimer Dennett President - Largest Ticker-Tape Parade Ever Honors John Glenn. Twenty-five years ago – March 1987 – Goss Beats Noferi in School Committee Race – Fire Chief Moore Ends 27-Year Career – Hopedale May Establish a Girl Scout Program – President Reagan Addresses Nation on Iran-Contra Affair. <><><><><><><><><><> Visitors to the Community The paragraphs below are from an article written by Lewis G. Wilson and printed in New England Magazine in 1891, a year after the death of Adin Ballou. Rev. Wilson was pastor of the Unitarian Church in Hopedale. (According to Rachel Day, it was Wilson who, several years earlier, had put Ballou and Tolstoy in touch with each other.) There was only one thing in which the community had implicit confidence – the efficacy of discussion. No question regarding political economy, religion, morals, socialism , hygiene, education, or reform was excluded from its platform; and at times there came up for mutual consideration unmentionable questions of a domestic nature. The hobby-rider found here an open court for his gymnastics; and probably the patience of a long-suffering people was never more thoroughly tried than by those of every ism and fancy under the sun, who came to Hopedale to ventilate themselves. The Abolitionist was always welcome; and from him all the way down to the two men who believed that nourishing food could be made of peat and molasses, the community was victimized. (The only reference I’ve seen to a diet of “peat and molasses” was written by Nellie Gifford in Hopedale Reminiscences, who wrote, “One family advocated such an extremely plain diet, that it was rumored theirs consisted chiefly of "peat and molasses." That would seem to suggest that it was a joke, or at least quite an exaggeration.) Many of these self-styled “reformers” were bent on reforming, as such men generally are, everybody in the world except themselves. They professed to come to study the Community and express their own great ideas, but it generally resulted in their beating the Community out of several weeks’ board, and then going away without returning so much as “thank you.” They believed in the practice of all the Christian virtues, but themselves claimed the privilege of being practiced upon; and as is often the case with the well-meaning and industrious, the earnest and honest leaders of this social movement were more or less compromised before the world, on account of these itinerant “moralists.” They were a class of metaphysical tramps. They would not work. They would do little but theorize and write bombastic tirades against existing institutions, and champion all sorts of wild and senseless schemes for the professed advancement of mankind. They were flatulent and lazy, and often most interested in what was decidedly noisome. Occasionally, however, the Community received real help and encouragement from genuine and powerful philanthropists. Among the latter, Dr. William E. Channing wrote to Mr. Ballou many words of sympathy and wisdom, and Theodore Parker added expressions of friendship and esteem. Visits were enjoyed from a long list of eminent men and women, including Robert Dale Owen, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Henry C. Wright, Stephen Symonds Foster, Edmund Quincy, Frederick Douglass, Samuel J. May, Samuel May, Anna E. Dickenson, Abby Kelley Foster, Oliver Johnson, the Alcotts, Margaret Fuller, eminent representatives from the Shakers, and one prominent elder from the Mormons. Pleasant excursions were enjoyed mutually between the Hopedale Community and the Brook Farm Association. Lewis G. Wilson, Hopedale and its Founder, New England Magazine, April 1891. 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