Below are the names of many members of the Hopedale Community. I've never come across a complete list of all the people who joined over the years, but below the list of original members are names of some of the others who joined after the founding. As I come across others who joined after 1841, I'll add them to the list. The numbers you'll see following some of the names are page numbers from History of the Hopedale Community where you can find a mention of that person. Where there are no page numbers, it's either because you can easily find many references to that person by skimming HHC, and/or you can find them in the index, or I've only found them in the list Ballou gives of all the original members. (HHC, p. 37) Names found from sources other than History of the Hopedale Community are followed by asterisks with the source below.
"The membership of the Community was at about its maximum when the change of 1856 was made, numbering some one hundred and ten persons. But for obvious reasons it at once began to decrease, the process of disintegration and expiration going on by slow degrees until at the expiration of a dozen years scarcely more than forty remained, of whom not more than half were residents of Hopedale." Ballou, HHC, p. 305.
Original Members of the Hopedale Community
Adin Ballou
Lucy Hunt Ballou
Mary Louisa Brown????
Samuel Silsbee Brown, 79, 211
Barbara Barker Colburn, 78
Samuel Colburn
Abigail Draper Cook, 175
William Walker Cook, 79, 270
Anna Thwing Draper
Ebenezer Daggett Draper
Ann Eliza Fish, 270
William Henry Fish
Emily Gay
Charles Gladding, 79
Ruth Shrove Gladding
Martha Harris
Nathan Harris
David Rich Lamson
Mary Lamson
Caroline Hayden Lillie
Henry Lillie
Lemuel Munyon
Amos Wood Pitts
Mary Ann Pitts
Jemima Sherman
George Whittemore Stacy
Charlotte Taft Thayer
Perry Thayer
Levi Tower
John Wheeler
Miriam P. Wheeler
Daniel Sanderson Whitney
********************
The first [death of a Community member in 1853] was that of Sally Borden, who passed on at Charlton on the 15th of April, in the 44th year of her age. She was one of the original members of the Community and paid the first hundred dollars into its Joint-Stock Fund. HIstory of the Hopedale Community, p. 244.
I thought the sentence above was interesting because Ballou states that Sally Borden was an original Community member, but she doesn't appear on the list above. The list evidently is of members that moved to Hopedale in the first year. Probably there were other members who supported the Community by buying stock, but didn't live in Hopedale. In Hopedale: Commune to Company Town, (p. 27), Edward Spann writes, "One of the original investors in the joint-stock association, Sally Borden, had come to Hopedale to recover from the nervous breakdown that had temporarily confined her to the state insane asylum; she found no respite and withdrew to a decade of physical and mental torment that ended only with her death at age forty-three."
Community Members Who Joined After 1841
Mary Abbott**
Abner Adams, 270
Stephen Albee, 270, 306
Lyman Allen, 280
Amos Ballou***
Joseph B. Bancroft
Sylvia W. Bancroft
Cyrus Bradbury, 283, 316
Reuben H. Brown*, 63
Mrs. Reuben H. Brown*, 63
Bryan J. Butts, 325
Daniel Carter, 211, 283
D.B. Chapman, 211
Mary J. Colburn, 195
George Draper
George Gay, 283, 325
Harriet Greene
Horatio Edson, 190
George O. Hatch, 283
John Lowell Heywood, 270, 318
William S. Heywood
John Hill, 169
Sarah B. Holbrook, 270
Charlotte P. Hooten*, 63
Almira B. Humphrey, 270, 283
William H. Humphrey
Melissa Inman, 283
Ellijah S. Mulliken, 270, 284
Helen L. Mulliken, 270
C.G. Munyan**
D.A. Mundy**
Lucy Patrick, 322
Abby Hills Price
Charles Henry Price***
Edmund Price, 205
Thomas Provan**
Rebecca Provan**
Clement O. Reed (also sp Read) 171, 201
Edmund Soward
Abbie Spaulding, 270
Asaph Spaulding, 190
Harriet Thompson
Almon Thwing
Mary A. Walden, 396
Richard Walker, 283
Noyes S. Wentworth, 270
Sarah Howard Wentworth***
Butler Wilmarth, 204
Jerome Wilmarth, 306
Phila Wilmarth, 202
* These names didn't appear on a list of original members, but were among the first families to move into the Old House in 1842.
** These names came from a list of delegates to the Worcester Women's Rights Convention of 1850. They were said to be from Hopedale so it seems reasonable to assume that they were Community members.
*** From Ballou's History of Milford.
****Mentioned in Hopedale Reminiscences (Old House story)
I've given the names Lemuel Munyon and C.G. Munyan as I found them spelled. I don't know if one was spelled incorrectly or if they are correct, and perhaps the two weren't even related. Lemuel's name appears often enough so that it seems likely that Munyon would be correct for him. C.G. Munyan was taken from a list at the Worcester convention and it could well be that it was copied from a signature that was difficult to read.
Settlement at Hopedale
No other meeting of the Community was held until after a substantial settlement had been made on our Hopedale domain and practical operations effectively inaugurated. Br. Henry Lillie had already gone thither with his family, having taken possession of part of the ancient dwelling-house the previous October [1841], and assumed charge of the Community property on the premises. He was our pioneer settler. On the 28th of the same month, a daughter was born to himself and wife, the first Hopedale child, who was named Lucy Ballou Lillie, in honor of my wife. This made the family, parents and children, six in number. On the 20th of January, three weeks after the annual meeting, the second family arrived, that of Br. Nathan Harris, consisting of himself, wife and four children. Next appeared Br. Ebenezer Draper, his wife, Anna T. Draper, and Wm. T. Stacey, a lad they had taken to bring up, about the middle of March. A few days later, on the 22d, I removed my family there, four of us, and also Mrs. Charles P. Hooten, to whom I had sub-let a portion of my house in Mendon some months before in anticipation of locating at Hopedale, about this time, with her children, four more. Br. Daniel S. Whitney, Br. Wm. W. Cook and wife, and Brother Reuben H. Brown and wife, soon followed; so that on the 1st of April, 1842, the Community family numbered twenty-eight persons. Adin Ballou, History of the Hopedale Community, pp. 62 - 63.
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