Hopedale Community, Massachusetts
The Hopedale Community was intended to combine the precepts of a utopian community with a modern factory town, a concept which its founder called Practical Christianity. Unlike most utopian communities it was conceived as being connected to rather than being isolated away from the outside world. Hopedale was a community which supported women’s equality, temperance, and abolitionism. Members ceded their property to the community when they joined. If they left they got most of it back.
Hopedale was founded by Adin Ballou, a then Universalist and later Unitarian minister who was also a pacifist. He established community rules based upon his own Christian beliefs and required compliance with his Principles of Theological Faith; Principles of Personal Righteousness; and his Principles of Social Order, all of which were part of the community’s bylaws. Equality, the sharing of Christian love, and the sharing of worldly goods were all part his rules.
Ballou believed that men and women were equal, but that they had been assigned societal roles by virtue of their gender. Women were therefore assigned domestic roles and the community was led and administered by men, although women were allowed to vote on community issues. They were not allowed to debate them or initiate them. Some exceptions were made for certain women, allowing them to act to insure that women were paid fairly and equally.
The land upon which Hopedale was built was purchased in 1842. By 1856 the utopian community was bankrupt. Two supporters, Ebenezer Draper and George Draper, withdrew their shares of the community stock, which came to nearly 75% of the total, and created the Hopedale Manufacturing Company, which eventually became the Draper Corporation, a manufacturer of looms for the textile industry.
The remnants of the Hopedale Community operated as a religious group through the Civil War and was absorbed into the Unitarian Church as Hopedale Parish in 1867. Ballou remained as the Parish Pastor until he retired in 1880.