Abstract
This chapter focuses on the reformers who participated in the communal experiment known as the Northampton Association of Education and Industry in Massachusetts, where abolition lay at the center of social reform priorities. As a profit-sharing community that mimicked the organizational structure of Fourierist communities but insisted on identifying themselves as distinct, Northampton Association presents an example of anti-racist policies enacted within a communal setting. Northampton Association was one of the only intentional communities of the era to invite African American members to participate in the community as social equals to white members. Female members were seen as valuable contributors to the social and political operations of the Northampton Association, including African American women. Abolitionist Sojourner Truth launched her career as a traveling lecturer and social reformer while living at the community. Northampton Association members also introduced Truth to Olive Gilbert, the abolitionist who would transcribe Truth’s slave narrative, thus greatly influencing the abolition movement and the course of both of their lives.
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Notes
- 1.
Truth was illiterate throughout her life, thus any records left by her were transcribed by the various “readers” and “writers” who assisted her.
- 2.
Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society differentiated itself from other abolitionist organizations of the period largely due to its promotion of women as organizational leaders. See Aptheker, Woman’s Legacy, 16–17.
- 3.
The founders of both the Northampton Association and Brook Farm were heavily influenced by social movements and ideas beyond Fourier’s writings, with Brook Farm dedicated to Transcendentalism and various social reform efforts, and the Northampton Association dedicated primarily to radical abolitionism. Both communities thus represent hybrid communal models. However, the community members’ participation in Fourierist networks (common meetings of Fourierist community leaders, attendance at inter-community conventions, written communications, publications in common journals) makes the Northampton Association and Brook Farm appropriate case studies for this book. Many of the members in both communities also became active in the abolitionist movement afterwards, a common movement joined by other Fourierist community members across the country.
- 4.
“Constitution and Bylaws of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry,” as reprinted in Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 240.
- 5.
Garrison supported the community’s abolitionist goals, but did not favor its Fourierist leanings, and especially objected to the common comparison Fourierists made between “wage slavery” in the North and chattel slavery in the South. Southern defenders of slavery compared Northern labor conditions to those of slavery, arguing that “wage slavery” of the North did not offer a better or more enlightened approach to labor as Northerners contended. Some Northern labor rights activists, including Fourierists, adopted a similar critique of Northern wage labor, arguing that the Northern factory labor system needed reform, as did slavery in the South. However, Garrison and other radical abolitionists argued that the evils of slavery in the South far outweighed those of the wage labor system, and that slavery must be abolished before Northern labor issues could be addressed. For more on Garrison’s support of Northampton as an abolitionist community, see Manisha Sinha’s The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 354–356.
- 6.
In The Utopian Alternative, Carl Guarneri excludes Northampton from his list of Fourierist communities, referring to it as an independent experiment. The Utopian Alternative, 83.
- 7.
On participation in the convention of Associationists, see “Convention at Boston of the Friends of Association, Dec. 1843,” Microfilm Reel 5, Macdonald Collection, Wisconsin Phalanx Microfilm Records, Wisconsin Historical Society. Northampton Association member Dolly Stetson wrote to her husband about the close vote over whether to adopt Fourierist organizational principles at one such meeting. Garrison was against this adoption, arguing that it would redirect the focus of Northampton Association members on the “wage slavery” of the North, distracting them from the cause of abolition of the slaves in the South. Letter, Dolly Stetson to James Stetson, June 16, 1844, as reprinted in Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 40.
- 8.
Scholars have debated the relationship of the Northampton Association and Fourierism. Alice McBee refers to the Northampton Association members as “warming themselves at the fires of transcendentalism and Fourierism” in “From Utopia to Florence: The Story of a Transcendentalist Community in Northampton, Mass. 1830–1852,” Smith College Studies in History Volume XXXII, edited by Vera Brown Holmes and Hans Kohn, (Northampton, 1947), Preface; Arthur Bestor adamantly rejects any analysis of Northampton as a Fourierist community in “Fourierism in Northampton: A Critical Note,” The New England Quarterly Vol. 13, No. 1 (Mar., 1940): 110–122; George K. Smart offers a rejoinder to Bestor’s analysis, arguing that the spirit of Northampton’s constitution reveals influence by Fourier in “The Approach to Utopian Socialism: A Brief Rejoinder,” The New England Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Jun., 1940): 322–323; Most recently, Christopher Clark noted the distinctions between the general outlook of Fourierists and that of Northampton members. While Fourierists argued for a change in the material conditions of the laborer which would help transform society, Northampton members combined morality and material reality, arguing that a moral regeneration of individuals was necessary to transform society, just as much as a material change. See Christopher Clark, The Communitarian Moment: The Radical Challenge of the Northampton Association (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 11. However, the extent of “material” vs. “moral” concerns differed among Fourierist communities. For example, at Trumbull Phalanx, moral imperatives were mentioned in their list of resolutions explaining why the creation of a community was necessary. Thus, in this book I argue that Northampton exhibits many similarities in organizational structure and stated mission to other Fourierist communities of the period.
- 9.
This wage system would change to an allotment system in 1843, but remained equal for men and women members. Clark, The Communitarian Moment, 106–107.
- 10.
See, for example, Meeting Notes on June 30, 1844, in Microfilm Vol. 2, Northampton Association of Education and Industry Records (NAEI), American Antiquarian Society; Women and men also served together on committees. See pg. 69, Microfilm Vol. 2, NAEI records, American Antiquarian Society.
- 11.
On Sojourner Truth participating in meetings, see, for example, Meeting Minutes on June 30, 1844, Microfilm Vol. 2, NAEI Records, American Antiquarian Society; See also Clark, The Communitarian Moment, 94.
- 12.
Marjorie Senechal explores in detail the process of silk production at Northampton, from the growing and hatching of silk worms to distribution through regional markets. See “The Camel and The Needle: Silk and the Stetson Letters,” In Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 199–238.
- 13.
See Christopher Clark “We Might be Happyer Here,” in Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, esp. 177–179.
- 14.
In one letter from Dolly Stetson to her husband she complains: “I cannot take care of children and go to meeting at the same time” and in another letter she describes the period just after the birth of her son as a lonely period in which “opportunities for observing the works of nature and art, are limited to the brick walls of my room or at most the prospect from windows.” Letter, Dolly Stetson to James Stetson, Sept. 1, 1844, in Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 62–63; Letter, Dolly Stetson to James Stetson, “Sunday Afternoon” [May 1844], in Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 32.
- 15.
Letter, Dolly Stetson to James Stetson, April 21, 1844, in Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 30.
- 16.
Letter, Dolly Stetson to James Stetson, May 26, 1844, in Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 33.
- 17.
See Carol Kolmerten, Women in Utopia: The Ideology of Gender in the American Owenite Communities (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990), esp. 172–174.
- 18.
Christopher Clark analyzes the various responses to communal living environments among male and female Northampton members in The Communitarian Moment, 122–126.
- 19.
Dolly Stetson’s parents owned a farm in Brooklyn, Connecticut, to which the Stetsons would move after their departure from Northampton. See Clark, “We Might Be Happyer Here,” in The Communitarian Moment, 186–187.
- 20.
The Martins owned their own farm in Marietta, indicating a higher level of wealth than that of the Stetson family, who relied on a family farm to house multiple generations of their family.
- 21.
“Letter from a Member of an Association to a Friend,” Feb. 8, 1844, in Charles Fourier’s The Phalanx, or Journal of Social Science, Issues 1–23 (New York: Burt Franklin, 1843–1845 [reprinted 1967]), 318.
- 22.
Clark also comes to this conclusion, at least in the case of Dolly and James Stetson, in his article “A Mother and Her Daughters at the Northampton Community: New Evidence on Women in Utopia,” 592–621.
- 23.
In a letter to her husband, Dolly Stetson describes Truth as director of the laundry department. Letter from Dolly Stetson to James Stetson, March 6, 1845, In Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 93.
- 24.
Christopher Clark, “We Might be Happyer Here,” in, Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia 182–183.
- 25.
Christopher Clark, “We Might be Happyer Here,” in Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 183.
- 26.
On Garrison and Truth’s own submission to Ruggles’s water-cure regimen, see Graham Russell Gao Hodges, David Ruggles : A Radical Black Abolitionist and the Underground Railroad in New York City (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 179, 190–192.
- 27.
Hodges, David Ruggles , 184.
- 28.
Records are not clear on the status of Sullivan as an escaped slave, though the cryptic letters from Northampton Association members seem to indicate this status. See Paul Gaffney’s commentary on the underground railroad at Northampton in “Coloring Utopia,” in Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 248–249.
- 29.
Hodges, David Ruggles , 184. Gaffney argues that Dorsey likely stayed only in the nearby town, not in the Northampton Association itself, though the evidence remains unclear. See Gaffney, “Coloring Utopia,” in Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 242 and 270, footnote 10.
- 30.
Gaffney, “Coloring Utopia,” in Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 257. See also Douglass’s reference to Ruggles as an “officer of the underground railroad” in Eric Foner, Gateway o Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad (New York: W.W. Norton, 2015), 6.
- 31.
Hodges, David Ruggles , 133.
- 32.
Hodges, David Ruggles , 152–153. Ruggles’s involvement in the underground railroad, as well as in abolitionist causes in New York, were interrupted when he became embroiled in a scandal in which fellow abolitionists accused him of squandering and pocketing abolitionist organization money. See Hodges, David Ruggles , 150–152.
- 33.
Clark, The Communitarian Moment, 91–93.
- 34.
For example, at one such meeting the health reformer Sylvester Graham spoke to the community. On Graham’s lecture at the Northampton Association, see Clark, The Communitarian Moment, 113.
- 35.
Christopher Clark discusses the conscious rejection of clerical authority within the community, to the chagrin of religious residents in the surrounding region. Community-wide events held at the Northampton Association also indicated the rejection of Christian clergy as authorities of ritual. Marriages and funerals held at the community were purposefully held without a minister, in simple settings, often outdoors. Holding these rituals without clergy was meant to challenge clerical authority and particularly expose church ineffectiveness in condemning slavery. See Clark, The Communitarian Moment, 112–114.
- 36.
Christopher Clark describes the debates surrounding this change in detail in The Communitarian Ideal, 98–108.
- 37.
The timetable of Truth’s emancipation is described by Painter in Sojourner Truth, 21–25. Truth was likely in slavery for thirty years of her life. Slavery was gradually abolished in New York between 1799 and 1827.
- 38.
Painter describes her initial visions following emancipation in Sojourner Truth.
- 39.
Matthias had grown out his hair and beard, making him resemble common portrayals of Jesus.
- 40.
Members of the Kingdom of Matthias lived communally in that they shared financial resources and housing, though different members seem to have been given different statuses by Matthias. While the white members intermarried and directed affairs at the community, Truth and another female black member were relegated to domestic service for the other members. See Wendy E. Chmielewski, “Sojourner Truth: Utopian Vision and Search for Community, 1797–1883,” in Women in Spiritual and Communitarian Societies in the United States, eds. Wendy Chmielewski, Louis J. Kern, and Marlyn Klee-Hartzell, (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1993), esp. 27–28.
- 41.
Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz, The Kingdom of Matthias (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 93.
- 42.
Painter analyzes Truth’s attachment to Matthias as offering a familiar, if abusive, patriarchal family relationship. See Painter, Sojourner Truth, 59–61.
- 43.
The most complete historical account of the Kingdom of Matthias is Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz, The Kingdom of Matthias. The two most thorough accounts from the period are written by William Leete Stone and Gilbert Vale. Stone depicted Isabella Van Wagenen as a deceitful woman who helped Matthias poison Pierson, while Vale portrayed Van Wagenen as an honest, and innocent, witness to the sexual licentiousness occurring in the Kingdom. See William L. Stone, Matthias and his Impostures: or, the Progress of Fanaticism. Illustrated in the Extraordinary Case of Robert Matthews, and Some of His Forerunners and Disciples (New York, 1835); Gilbert Vale, Fanaticism; Its Source and Influence, Illustrated by the Simple Narrative of Isabella, in the Case of Matthias, Mr. and Mrs. Folger, Mr. Pierson, Mr. Mills, Catherine, Isabella, &c. &c. (2 vols.; New York: 1835). Matthew’s Wife, Margaret, also wrote an account of Matthew’s life before becoming the Prophet Matthias titled Matthias. By His Wife (New York, 1835).
- 44.
While applying the term “feminist” to Truth is arguably applying a more contemporary term than Truth herself would have recognized, Truth’s actions and self-identity in many ways embody later understandings of feminism. Painter also argues that Truth can be understood as a feminist. See Painter, Sojourner Truth, 3–4. Margaret Washington adds that “antebellum womanist consciousness was not modern feminist consciousness, but nonetheless struggled against white patriarchy. See Margaret Washington, Sojourner Truth’s America (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 92.
- 45.
See Gilbert Vale, Fanaticism; Its Source and Influence, Illustrated by the Simple Narrative of Isabella, in the Case of Matthias, Mr. and Mrs. Folger, Mr. Pierson, Mr. Mills, Catherine, Isabella, &c. &c., 4–5. At the end of Truth’s later book compiled with Olive Gilbert, an appendix of “Certificates of Character” is included, through which Truth’s acquaintances attest to her trustworthiness and good character. These certificates originally appeared in Vale’s book Fanaticism, 10–12. See Sojourner Truth, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, edited by Olive Gilbert; (Boston: The Author, 1850). The testaments of white abolitionists who assured readers of the authenticity of a black authors’ words can also be found across the slave narratives of the antebellum period, including Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
- 46.
Hodges, David Ruggles , 183–184.
- 47.
Painter, Sojourner Truth, 114; Hodges, David Ruggles , 184.
- 48.
The identity transformations that Truth experienced as a slave, then free woman, then abolitionist and women’s rights advocate are difficult for historians to measure. Her group identity seems to have remained tied to the anti-slavery cause along with fellow freed slaves of the abolitionist movement, though the intersectionality of Truth’s gender and racial identities may have impacted her association with both the women’s rights movement and abolitionist movements, particularly as those white women who initiated splits in those movements did not consider the complex identities of being both African American and female. For more on group identity among African Americans in recent studies, see Gabriel R. Sanchez and Edward D. Vargas, “Taking a Closer Look at Group Identity: The Link between Theory and Measurement of Group Consciousness and Linked Fate,” Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 69, No. 1 (March 2016): 160–174. Margaret Washington analyzes the struggle among African American women reformers to choose sides during debates over the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. See Washington, Sojourner Truth’s America, 346–348.
- 49.
Painter analyzes Truth’s utilization of material culture to create a reproducible image of herself that is still prevalent in popular culture today. See “Representing Truth: Sojourner Truth’’s Knowing and Becoming Known,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 81, No. 2 (Sep., 1994): 461–492.
- 50.
Jonathan Walker, letter to Sojourner Truth, Muskegon, Michigan, Jan. 1, 1869, as printed in Truth, Narrative of Sojourner Truth; a Bondswoman of Olden Time, Emancipated by the New York Legislature in the Early Part of the Present Century; with a History of Her Labors and Correspondence Drawn from Her ““Book of Life”.” Also, a Memorial Chapter, Giving the Particulars of Her Last Sickness and Death (Battle Creek, Mich.: Review and Herald Office, 1884), 305–306. The letter from Walker printed in this edition of Truth’s Narrative includes a postscript in which Walker purportedly adds: “P. S. I am not sure, but I think I met you twenty-five years ago at Bronsonville, North Hanston, Mass., soon after my return from imprisonment in Florida. J. W.” This postscript was likely added by Amy Post or the editor of this edition of the Narrative, Frances W. Titus, to introduce Walker to the reader. The mention makes little sense coming from Walker, as he and Truth had been in contact throughout the years since their meeting at the Northampton Association. In Sojourner Truth’s America, Washington mentions Walker and Truth’s reunion at an abolitionist meeting in Livonia in the mid-1850s, which had helped inspire her move to Michigan in 1857 (Washington, Sojourner Truth’s America, 277). Truth also seemed to acknowledge the need for Walker’s identity to be explained to her readers, as she wrote in a letter to Amy Post in February, 1869. In this letter to Post, Truth asks Post to publish Walker’s letter to her in the Anti-Slavery Standard, adding “I will look for Walkers letter in the Standard & please have it understood who Walker is. ‘The brand-ed hand.’” Sojourner Truth, letter (transcribed) to Amy Post, Detroit, Michigan, Feb. 8, 1869, Isaac and Amy Post Family Papers, D.93, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.
- 51.
Walker’s branded hand came to symbolize the brutality to which the United States government would resort in the effort to defend the institution of slavery. Walker’s wounded hand was particularly effective for abolitionists who wished to identify slavery as a nationwide issue, not one simply limited to the South, as it was a U.S. Marshall who had branded the hand. See Washington, Sojourner Truth’s America, 171; Alvin Oickle, The Man with the Branded Hand: The Life of Jonathan Walker (Yardley, Penn.: Westholme Publishing, LLC, 2011), 190–194.
- 52.
On Gilbert’s visit to her brother in Kentucky, see Washington, Sojourner Truth’s America, 186. Gilbert’s uncle, Theodore Scarborough, was one of the founders of the Northampton Association, which also contributed to her draw to the area.
- 53.
Olive Gilbert, letter to Sojourner Truth, circa 1870, in Sojourner Truth, Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1884 Reprint), 276–277.
- 54.
Birthplace and date found in “‘Connecticut Births and Christenings, 1649–1906,’” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F7WD-HLC), Olive Gilbert, 06 Aug 1801; For information on Brooklyn as a significant place of origin for Northampton Association members, see Christopher Clark, The Communitarian Moment, 80; The most thorough account of Gilbert’s life is by Margaret Washington in Sojourner Truth’s America.
- 55.
Washington, Sojourner Truth’s America, 183–184; On Prudence Crandall’s school, see Donald E. Williams Jr., Prudence Crandall’s Legacy: The Fight for Equality in the 1830s, Dredd Scott, and Brown vs. Board of Education (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2014); Susan Strane, A Whole-Souled Woman: Prudence Crandall and the Education of Black Women (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990).
- 56.
William Lloyd Garrison, letter to George W. Benson, Boston, June 12, 1843 states that Olive Gilbert had been staying with them for a fortnight. The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, Vol. III.
- 57.
Olive Gilbert, letter to William Lloyd Garrison, May 22, 1876, MS Am 1906 (18), Houghton Library, Harvard University.
- 58.
To George Benson, Boston, July 24, 1847. In it, Benson writes that he is attaching a letter from Olive Gilbert to Sarah Benson, who will be happy to receive it. The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, Vol. III; The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, Vol. II, A House Dividing against Itself, Louis Ruchames, ed. (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971), xxiii; Painter also indicates Gilbert’s close relationship with Sarah Benson in Sojourner Truth, 103–104. Letters from Dolly Stetson to James Stetson also indicate that Gilbert and Sarah Benson were frequent travel partners. See Dolly Stetson’s letter to James Stetson, June 12, 1845, in Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 116–117.
- 59.
As reported in The Liberator, Aug. 16, 1834, pg. 4.
- 60.
In a letter from William Lloyd Garrison to Helen Benson’s mother, Sarah Benson, Garrison asks whether “dear sister Sarah” could help them with childcare for the next six weeks. Letter, William Lloyd Garrison to Sarah T. Benson, April 8, 1837, William Lloyd Garrison Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Reel 1. On Sarah as the caretaker of Anne Elizabeth Benson, see Letter, William Lloyd Garrison to George Benson, April 15, 1843, William Lloyd Garrison Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Reel 1. On Sarah as the caretaker of her mother and Garrison’s children, see Letter, William Lloyd Garrison to Sarah Benson, Oct. 14, 1843, William Lloyd Garrison Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Reel 1.
- 61.
Store Records, Microfilm Vol. 7, NAEI Records 1836–1853, American Antiquarian Society. Records indicate Gilbert had purchased postage stamps during the month, as recorded on the end-of-the-month store reports on Jan 31, 1846, Feb. 28, 1846, and March 31, 1846. Store purchase records indicate she made store purchases on May 14, 1846, May 23, 1846, June 9, 1846, and June 19, 1846. Store records from Jan. 31, 1846 also indicate past postage stamp transactions for November and December, 1845, which may indicate Gilbert’s earlier arrival at Northampton.
- 62.
Historians disagree to what extent the narrative was Truth’s story or Gilbert’s interpretation of that story. Manisha Sinha argues that “her story….is more biography than autobiography, though Gilbert relied on information provided by Truth.” Sinha, The Slave’s Cause, 433. Margaret Washington, in contrast, argues that the narrative was Truth’s, writing: “her consistent verification of the Narrative confirms that she exerted more control than modern writers have acknowledged.” Washington, Sojourner Truth’s America, 187. Painter describes the Narrative as a struggle between the interests of Truth and her transcriber: “…Gilbert the abolitionist is often at odds with Truth the autobiographer. The abolitionist presses Truth to provide examples of the iniquities of slavery, which Truth delivers and Gilbert amplifies, but which must be tacked on Truth’s own, more enigmatic story.” Painter, Sojourner Truth, 106.
- 63.
While single women often experienced poverty and relied on family members for assistance, they nevertheless had more time to spend on social activism, a fact that was often expressed by suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony. Anthony frequently expressed dissatisfaction with her friend, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, for not being able to dedicate more time to the suffrage movement due to her obligation to spend so much time on childcare. Lillian Faderman argues that single women were sometimes able to support each other partly through their involvement in “Boston marriages,” or intimate partnerships with fellow unmarried women. Together, these women encouraged each other to live professional and politically active lives without dependence on men. Single women were able to spend more time and financial resources on activist work if they did not have the burden of continuous childbirth during this period before reliable birth control methods were invented. See Faderman, To Believe in Women: What Lesbians have done for America—A History (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999).
- 64.
Perfectionism was the belief that humanity would continue improving itself in morality and spirituality, as opposed to becoming more spiritually depraved over time. See Margaret Washington, Sojourner Truth’s America, 181–182. By the time she met Gilbert, Truth spoke English, which she had learned from her slaveholders in upstate New York, though Dutch was her first language, as her first slaveholders had been Dutch.
- 65.
Margaret Washington argues for the 1844 date in Sojourner Truth’s America, 169.
- 66.
Painter, Sojourner Truth, 110–111.
- 67.
Letter to Sarah Bagley, March 21, 1844, Microfilm Vol. 4, NAEI Records 1836–1853, American Antiquarian Society. No special mention is added by the secretary describing any discussions held regarding Sarah Bagley’s membership. The secretary simply writes that a similar rejection letter was written to her as was written to the previous applicant, dated March 19, which is the letter quoted above.
- 68.
Correspondence records left by David Mack on May 10, 1843, indicate the number of Northampton residents was 120. See letter, David Mack, May 10, 1843, Microfilm Vol. 4, NAEI Records 1836–1853, American Antiquarian Society. The same page of records kept by Mack indicates four letters of rejection sent out to applicants. Clark also discusses the rigorous application process in The Communitarian Moment, 62–69.
- 69.
By Feb. 1844, David Mack was actively seeking new members who could “help pay our debt by the subscription of stock.” Secretary Notes, Feb. 25, 1844, Microfilm Vol. 4, NAEI Records 1836–1853, American Antiquarian Society.
- 70.
Clark, “We Might be Happyer Here,” in Letters from an American Utopia, 189–190.
- 71.
See Charles A. Sheffeld, The History of Florence, Massachusetts: Including A Complete Account of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry (Florence, Mass.: Published by the Author, 1895), 107.
- 72.
Hodges, David Ruggles , 191–192.
- 73.
Paul Gaffney, “Coloring Utopia,” in Clark and Buckley, Letters from an American Utopia, 264.
- 74.
George Stetson, “When I was a Boy,” in Sheffeld, The History of Florence, Massachusetts, 118.
- 75.
Gerorge Stetson, “When I was a Boy,” in Sheffeld, The History of Florence, Massachusetts, 123.
- 76.
Eric Foner, Gateway to Freedom, 15.
- 77.
As discussed by Hodges in David Ruggles , 184–185; See also Sheffeld, The History of Florence, Massachusetts, 165–167.
- 78.
Washington, Sojourner Truth’s America, 278; Transcribed letter, Sojourner Truth to Amy Kirby Post, Nov. 4, 1867, Battle Creek, Michigan, Isaac and Amy Post Family Papers, D.93, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.
- 79.
From 1847–1848, Walker was accompanied on his lecture circuit by John Jacobs, an ex-slave and the brother of Harriet Jacobs, who would later write the slave narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. On Walker and Jacob’s lecture tour, see “The Walker Meetings,” The North Star, February 4, 1848; “Correspondence,” Jonathan Walker to Frederick Douglass, printed in The North Star, February 25, 1848.
- 80.
Oickle, The Man with the Branded Hand, 199–200.
- 81.
Oickle, The Man with the Branded Hand, 224–226. Oickle also mentions that Horace Greeley once visited this community, as he visited many Fourierist communities. Carl Guarneri also mentions Spring Farm, assigning its dates of existence as 1846–1849 in The Utopian Alternative, 408; Widdicome, Morris, and Kross date the community at 1846–1848 in The Historical Dictionary of Utopianism, eds. Toby Widdicome, James Morris, and Andrea Kross (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017 [second edition]), 169.
- 82.
Oickle, The Man with the Branded Hand, 225–227.
- 83.
Julius A. Laack’s account of Walker’s movements vary somewhat from the dates given by Oickle. However, Laack mentions that Walker’s first home in Wisconsin was in Fond du Lac County, the same county as the Fourierist community, Ceresco, which is analyzed in a subsequent chapter. There is no evidence as to whether the presence of that Fourierist community inspired Walker to move there; however, he stayed only for one to two years before moving on to Spring Field. See Julius A. Laack, “Captain Jonathan Walker, Abolitionist,” The Wisconsin Magazine of History Vol. 32, No. 3 (Mar., 1949): 320; On Truth and Walker’s meeting in New York, see Washington, Sojourner Truth’s America, 277.
- 84.
Oickle places Walker at Fort Monroe, while Washington places Truth at the Freedman’s Village in Arlington, though their simultaneous travels to Virginia imply they might have crossed paths. See Oickle, The Man with the Branded Hand, 240–243; Washington, Sojourner Truth’s America, 317–320.
- 85.
Jonathan Walker, letter to Amy Post, Jan. 1, 1869, Michigan, Isaac and Amy Post Family Papers, D.93, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.; His mention of loneliness appears to reference the isolated, rural area, as Walker’s biographer, Alvin Oickle, claims that Walker’s wife, Jane, did not die until 1871. See The Man with the Branded Hand, 251.
- 86.
Sojourner Truth (transcribed), letter to Amy Post, Jan. 18, 1869, Isaac and Amy Post Family Papers, D.93, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.
- 87.
Gilbert appears to have visited or lived with her brother, George Scarborough, at Vineland for a time after the death of his wife prompted his move away from Kentucky. See Washington, Sojourner Truth’s America, 186, 359.
- 88.
Letter from Olive Gilbert to Sojourner Truth, circa 1870, in Sojourner Truth, Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1884 reprint), 277–278. “Moloch” is a Biblical reference to a Canaanite God of child sacrifice.
- 89.
Letter from Olive Gilbert to Sojourner Truth, January 17, 1870, in Truth, Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1884 reprint), 276–277.
- 90.
Letter from Olive Gilbert to Sojourner Truth, circa 1870, in Sojourner Truth, Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1884 reprint), 278. Gilbert’s reference to giving away or selling Truth’s books, seemingly without care to which, might be interpreted as Gilbert’s lack of understanding of the financial benefit those books offered Truth. However, Painter analyzed Truth’s book as “appreciated by its purchasers more as than object than as a text,” indicating that for many abolitionists, the book was not valued for the words within it, but that the mere possession of the book indicated solidarity with the abolitionist cause. Gilbert was thus perhaps attempting to build support for the cause by offering those interested the “keepsakes” of the movement, which could broaden knowledge of the book and lead to further sales. See Painter, “Representing Truth,” 473–474.
- 91.
Washington, Sojourner Truth’s America, 294–296.
- 92.
Letter (transcribed) from Sojourner Truth to Diana Truth, Nov. 3, 1864, Isaac and Amy Post Family Papers, D.93, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.
- 93.
On the quote by Sojourner Truth, see Washington, Sojourner Truth’s America, 201.
- 94.
Frederick Douglass and other former abolitionists argued for the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment even if it didn’t offer women the vote, arguing that it was a necessary step toward equal rights for African Americans, and a positive step for all of American society. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony disagreed, and argued that only an amendment that included women would be acceptable. See Lisa Tetrault, The Myth of Seneca Falls, 30–31; See also Eleanor Flexner, A Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1959), 146–151.
- 95.
On a material level, Truth reached out to her Northampton Association friends in times of financial struggle throughout her life. See Letter (transcribed) from Sojourner Truth to Amy Kirby Post, August 26, 1873, Battle Creek, Michigan, Isaac and Amy Post Family Papers, D.93, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.
- 96.
On Ruggles’s contributions to The Liberator and The North Star, see Hodges, David Ruggles , 193; See also David Ruggles, “Communications, Northampton, Jan. 1, 1848,” printed in The North Star, Jan. 28, 1848.
- 97.
Christopher Clark, The Communitarian Moment: The Radical Challenge of the Northampton Association (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), xii.
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Hart, A. (2021). Demonstrating Racial Diversity Within Community: The Northampton Association of Education and Industry. In: Fourierist Communities of Reform. Palgrave Studies in Utopianism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68356-6_3
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