Life on Brook Farm was based on balancing labor and leisure while working together for the greater community's benefit.
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20 Facts About Brook Farm
2.
Brook Farm was one of Massachusetts's first sites to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places and be designated a National Historic Site.
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3.
Brook Farm was one of at least 80 communal experiments active in the United States in the 1840s, though it was the first to be secular.
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4.
Writer and editor Margaret Fuller was invited to Brook Farm and, though she never officially joined the community, was a frequent visitor, often spending New Year's Eve there.
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5.
Brook Farm's considered moving there as well and even visited in May 1841, though Hawthorne sent her away.
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6.
Horace Greeley, a New York newspaper editor, and others began to pressure Brook Farm to follow more closely the pattern of Fourier at a time when the community was struggling to be self-sufficient.
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7.
Brook Farm published similar articles in 1842 in The Dial, the journal of the Transcendentalists.
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8.
Brook Farm called his system for an ideal community a "Phalanx".
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9.
Brook Farm took a job with the New York Tribune and it took him 13 years to repay Brook Farm's debt, which he did in 1862.
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10.
Brook Farm was named for the brook that ran near the roadside and eventually went to the Charles River.
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11.
Organization of work in Brook Farm changed over time because of both financial troubles and changes in ideology.
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12.
When Brook Farm first adopted Fourierist notions, it created a more structured work environment with a system that consisted of three series of industry: agriculture, mechanical, and domestic.
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13.
Typical work duties at Brook Farm included chopping wood, bringing in firewood, milking cows, turning a grindstone, and other farming chores.
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14.
Brook Farm got into the habit of spending money before it had been raised.
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15.
People of Brook Farm spent most of their time either studying or working the farm, but they always set aside time for play.
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16.
Sophia Ripley, who had written an outspoken feminist essay for The Dial on "Woman" before moving to Brook Farm, was very educated and taught history and foreign languages at the farm.
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17.
Brook Farm wrote that he had "sincere respect" for the group and that its journal, The Harbinger, was "conducted by an assemblage of well-read persons who mean no harm—and who, perhaps, can do no less".
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18.
Brook Farm questioned the community's idealism, particularly its optimism that all members would share responsibility and workload equally.
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19.
Brook Farm said they were "playing away their youth and day-time in a miserably joyous frivolous manner".
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20.
Brook Farm presented a fictionalized portrait of his experience in his 1852 novel The Blithedale Romance.
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