HUSBAND NOTES:
On June 1, 1843, Bronson Alcott moved his young and growing family into the Fruitlands farmhouse in the town of Harvard, Massachusetts. The Fruitlands experience was an experiment by Bronson Alcott to put his philosophical beliefs regarding community, family, and the individual into action. This was a test of the practical implications of Transcendentalism. Alcott’s main partner was a man named Charles Lane, an admirer of Alcott’s who left England to form the commune. In total, there were about 20 people living in this utopian community, which was dedicated to shared labor, the prohibition of animal products (and labor), and abolitionism. At its height, the consociate family (the term its members applied to themselves) received visits from such notables as Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was a close friend of the Alcotts and George Ripley, one of the participants of the Brook Farm community.
http://www.literarytraveler.com/special/alcott.htm
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