Hopedale      Within two generations of the settlement of Plymouth, 64 square miles of land was purchased from the Nipmuc Indians by a group from Braintree and Weymouth.  This area became the town of Mendon which was incorporated in 1667.  Settlers moved into the region prior to incorporation, however, and in 1664 Benjamin Albee built a grist mill on the Mill River in what is now the south end of Hopedale.  The mill and the rest of the buildings in Mendon were destroyed in 1675 during King Phillip's War.  A new mill was built on the site by Matthias Puffer in 1684.        By the 1700s more people were moving in to the Mill River valley, which by that time was known as The Dale.  One of the best known settlers of that time was John Jones.  Several sections of Mendon had broken off to form separate towns and Jones became a leader of a group that wanted a new town in the area that was to eventually become Milford.  Jones ran into strong opposition to his plan and for ten years failed to get any nearer to his goal.  In 1741 Jones decided on another approach.  Instead of petitioning for incorporation, he and his group, the Mill River Men, called an Eccliastical Council of area churches and received permission to start a new church. Because only a town could have a church at that time, this was an important step, but it wasn't until 1780 that Milford, including what is now Hopedale, became a town.      A  map drawn in 1829 shows that The Dale had been settled by thirty families and the Mill River had five mill sites.  The drop in the river that made these sites possible would have a major impact on the development of the town through the middle decades of the nineteenth century.      As the Industrial Revolution was beginning to turn the Blackstone into "the hardest working river in America," Adin Ballou was turning his thoughts to making life better in ways that rivers and waterwheels couldn't.  Born in 1803 in Cumberland, Rhode Island, a descendant of an associate of Roger Williams, he had little formal schooling, which, he later wrote, left him free to form, "the independent convictions, principles, and aims now so sacred to me."  By the early 1820s Ballou had become a Universalist and in 1823 he became the Universalist minister in Milford.  By 1831 he had moved on the become the minister of the Unitarian Church in Mendon.  This was an era of reform movements and Rev. Ballou soon became involved in several of them; most notably, peace, women's rights, abolitionism, temperance and Practical Christian Socialism.      Through letters and meetings, Ballou maintained contact with other reformers and in 1840 he began publishing a biweekly newspaper, The Practical Christian, to promote their ideas.  The first suggestion of a community based on his beliefs appeared in the September 15, 1840 edition of his paper.  In it, he proposed to establish "a compact neighborhood or village of practical Christians, dwelling together by families in love and peace, insuring themselves the comforts of life by agricultural and mechanical industry and directing the entire residue of their intellectual, moral and physical resources to the Christianization and general welfare of the human race."  After a long period of working out the details and raising money, they purchased a 258 acre farm on the Mill River in what by that time was Milford.  They renamed the area, long known as The Dale, Hope Dale.  The farm included several building in rather poor condition but the group felt that the twenty-four foot drop in the river would provide a useful amount of water power.  In April 1842 Ballou and about forty others moved into the Old House which had been built in 1703.  They immediately went to work planting crops, repairing buildings, constructing a two-story mechanic shop, and building a structure that would serve as a school, dormitory and office for the Practical Christian. Before long they were also at work on a dam and a chapel which would also be used as a school.  Within a year they were also building homes after dealing with the difficulties of having more than forty people living in one house.  Over the next several years the Community made progress in some areas but its strict standards limited new membership and it had difficulty in establishing business that would generate a reasonable income.        However some growth was made and by 1846 Hopedale had seventy resident, a dozen houses, a machine shop, a blacksmith shop, a sawmill and a second dam.  They had also started producing temples, an important component of looms, which keep the cloth stretched to the desired width while it is woven.  By 1852 the population had reached 200, the number of houses had nearly tripled, land ownership by the community had almost doubled, more orchards and gardens had been planted and several small businesses had been opened.      Through the 1840s and 1850s Ballou and the Community continued to speak for and promote the causes that they had been identified with since the beginning.  They were opposed to the Mexican War.  They hosted antislavery meetings where Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison spoke to a thousand people.  Women had the right to vote on Community affairs and many had committee memberships, though positions of leadership were rare.  There were two women doctors in town in the 1850s, Emily Gay and Phila Wilmarth.  Abby Price who had joined the Community in 1842 gave one of the major speeches at the women's rights convention in Worcester in 1851.  Later that year Lucy Stone gave two lectures on women's rights in Hopedale.        While the shops along the river may be the first things to come to mind when thinking of nineteenth century Hopedale, the community established branches in agriculture, horticulture and orchardry.  During the 1850s, a large barn was constructed and twenty-five acres were planted in corn and potatoes.  Two thousand apple trees and a smaller number of other trees had been planted.  A store was opened in the center of Milford to sell Hopedale's produce and deliveries were made to homes by wagon.  The orchardry division also did well in selling trees, bushes and shrubs.     In 1853 Mr. and Mrs. Morgan Bloom opened the Hopedale Juvenile Home School, which was both a boarding school and a day school for boys and girls.  Under the Blooms, the school didn't attract many students.  It did better after it was sold to Ballou's daughter and son-in-law, Abby and William Heywood.  By 1858 they had over fifty students.  One of the students at the Home School was the son of William Lloyd Garrison.      Most of the members of the Hopedale Community were opposed to the idea of a communistic arrangement with all members owning an equal share.  Rather, it was a joint-stock association with many members having few or no shares and a few owning large numbers. Ebenezer Draper, in attempting to assist the community's growth, had used a large amount of the money he had earned in his temple business to buy stock in the community.  In 1853 he took his brother, George into his business as a partner.  George also became a member of the Community but he didn't share all of the idealistic goals of Rev. Ballou and Ebenezer.  In 1856, George convinced his brother to join him in withdrawing their investment, which amounted to three-quarters of the total value of the Community.  This action resulted in the end of the Hopedale Community, except for a few of its lesser functions, and the beginning of the Draper era.      The latter half of the nineteenth century was a time of tremendous growth for the companies along the Mill River in Hopedale which, by 1897 would be absorbed by the Draper Company.  In 1900 Drapers became the largest producer of textile machinery in the United States.  Along with business success, Drapers also acquired sufficient power and political influence to separate Hopedale from Milford and incorporate as a town.                Like the rest of the New England textile industry, Drapers found orders declining even before the Depression and while World War II provided military contracts and kept business going for a while, foreign competition after the war resulted in a recurrence of the earlier problems.  In 1967 a controlling interest in Drapers was acquired by North American Rockwell and in 1980 the Hopedale plant was closed.    Received by email, July 2008 - Hi Dan,      My name is Doug Kasten.  I'm a descendant of Maturin Ballou.  I came across your site about the Hopedale, MA community.  I was reading the page about the history of your town.  However, I believe that there is a slight error on the page at:  http://www.oocities.org/daninhopedale/histofhopedale.html      You state that: "... Adin Ballou was turning his thoughts to making life better in ways that rivers and waterwheels couldn't.  Born in 1803 in Cumberland, Rhode Island, a descendant of an associate of Roger Williams..."  The information I have is that Maturin Ballou was an associate of Roger Williams; who helped to found Providence, RI.  Maturin was given some land in Providence and worked off his "debt" until he was declared a "freeman" in the mid 1600's.  But, to the best of my knowledge, there was no family relationship between the 2.  Adin is a descendant of Maturin, his great-, or great-great-, grandson.                                                                                             HOME