Your tour begins in Adin Ballou Park. Here, a statue of Hopedale's founder, Adin Ballou, presides over a beaten front doorstep and boot scraper. These are the only remnants of the Jones farmhouse, an old farmhouse where a group of Practical Christians set up an experimental form of communal living in March 1842. The name they chose for the community emphasized their own spirit of hope. Ballou, a local minister, led the group of forty-four likeminded people in purchasing hundreds of acres. Together, they built a commune from the ground up and made “Fraternal Community No. 1” a reality. These kindred spirits (who believed in abolition, temperance, equality of the sexes, and more) imagined that others would want to make Practical Christian communities, too, and that they could all transform the world.
During this time period, many people felt disillusioned with society and the Practical Christians of Hopedale were not alone in trying to create their own way of life, apart from others. Elsewhere in Massachusetts, Henry David Thoreau withdrew to his cabin on Walden Pond to live out his values alone while Transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Bronson Alcott experimented with communal living. The original Hopedale community was the most enduring of these communal societies, outliving the better-known Brook Farm by a decade. The Community members only resided in one house all together for a very short period. The street in front of the park would soon be filled with businesses and homes belonging to Community members. Shares in the community were distributed to its members to give everyone an equitable say and portion of the profit. Ballou’s own house was once on this land. This is where he wrote his sermons and worked on The Practical Christian, the Community paper. The house was moved to Dutcher Street in 1900, and this statue was put in its place. 
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Last updated: March 14, 2024