Hopedale Reminiscences

   Hopedale Reminiscences  

In 1910, ten people who spent their childhood in the Hopedale Community in the 1840s and 1850s were asked by the Hopedale Ladies’ Sewing Society and Branch Alliance to write their memories of those years.  The stories were published by The Hopedale School Press in a little booklet titled Hopedale Reminiscences.  Below are links to each of the chapters.

The Old House of Hopedale – Sarah Daniels  

The Post Office – Susan Thwing Whitney

Community Life as Seen by One of the “Young People“ -Sarah Bradbury

Anti-Slavery, and Other Visitors to the Community -Anna Thwing Field

Recollections of Hopedale – Ida Smith

Reminiscences of the “Home School” and the Village – Imogene Mascroft

The Burglary – Susan Thwing Whitney

Our Community School and its Teacher – Ellen Patrick

Christmas in the Old Days – Frank Dutcher

Childhood Days in the Hopedale Community, and Other Recollections – Nellie Gifford

Hopedale Community, Founded in 1841, in its Origin and Early History – Abbie Ballou Heywood

Auretta Roys Aldrich – Banned in Hopedale? This piece, like Hopedale Reminiscences, was written in 1910. My guess is that it was written to be included in Reminiscences, but was considered by the editors to be too harsh on the Drapers to use. (See the next-to-last paragraph.) Instead, it was printed in the Springfield Sunday Republican on October 30, 1910. The paper even refers to it as “Mrs Aldrich’s Reminiscences.” I found it in a scrapbook at the Bancroft Library.

General Draper: Boyhood in Hopedale – While not part of Hopedale Reminiscences, this chapter from the general’s autobiography was written in the same decade and about the same period as those stories

        Hopedale Community Menu – More stories from the Utopian Community.

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