.I run across lots of interesting material in The Practical Christian while helping Elaine with her upcoming talk to the Friends of Adin Ballou.  Here's a sample for your spare time reading.  I've seen most of it elsewhere but there were a few items that were new to me.                                                   The Practical Christian                                                June 11, 1842                                           Community Affairs    We have now on the Hopedale Estate about 45 persons great and small.  These are all boarded in one general family.  There are 13 men12 women, and 20 children and youth under fifteen years of age.  We have 13 cows, 4 yokes of oxen and steers, 2 horses and 6 swine.  We have planted with garden sauce for market and our own use some 3 acres, with Indian corn 4 or more, with potatoes and beans 10 or more; in all from 17 to 20 acres.  We have made numerous repairs in and upon our old buildings, erected a new building 32 by 14 feet, one and a half story above the basement; calculated for a Printing Office, schoolroom, two upper sleeping rooms and two basement shop rooms, all of course on a small scale.  The brethren have just commenced building a dam and the foundation for a Mechanics shop to be 30 by 40 feet, two stories high above the basement, designed for various machines to be operated by water power.  The erection and furnishing of this establishment will occupy all the labor and resources, which we can spare from other demands for several months to come.  Our little school will go into operation shortly.  We might have many boarding scholars, if we could accommodate them; but this we cannot do at present.  A few scholars in the vicinity, who can board at home, will probably be taught in the school.  Our business is multiform and arduous.  There is everything to do and small means with which to operate.  Division of labor is also difficult; but we have got along better than most people would normally imagine, and hope for better days to come.     Ballou  refers to the shop completed in 1843 as a mechanic shop so at first I had thought that must be the Little Red Shop.    However, the size of it (30 x 40 feet) sounds like it could have been the one that eventually became the Dutcher Temple Company.  I wish The Practical Christian had more to say on such matters but there is very little.  I was looking through some from 1855 today and saw that by then they had (he had, I suppose) started a local column that I found quite interesting.  Now I’ll have to look and see how far back that goes.  I know I haven’t seen it in the earlier years.  Here’s the quote that made me think the 1843 shop was the Little Red.  Any thoughts about any of this?     The mechanic shop was completed in the early Spring [1843], and the first story and basement were supplied with a considerable amount and variety of labor-saving machinery for facilitating work in carpentering, joinery, box-making, and kindred callings.  The story above was so partitioned and fitted up as to afford tolerable accommodations in its southern part for the printing press and its accessories, while the northern was made convenient and comfortable for school purposes and for services of public worship; in which twofold capacity it met our needs, in a rude fashion to be sure, until we were in a condition to erect a building for the same purposes the following year.  Adin Ballou, The History of the Hopedale Community, p.  110.                              Hopedale History Email Menu                      HOME