Misc. Notes
Misc. Notes
Amos and wife Abby had four surviving children, all daughters.
After their marriage the Alcotts moved to a boarding house at 12 Franklin Street in Boston.
In December 1830 they moved to Germantown, Philadelphia, PA
On April 10, 1833, the family moved to Philadelphia.
By September of 1834, they had moved back to Boston where he opened the Temple School.
In late April 1840 the Alcott’s moved to Concord, MA where he rented a home for $50 year within walking distance of friend Ralph Waldo Emerson’s house.
In June 1843 Amos moved his family to Harvard, MA to a farm "Fruitlands" despite only ten old apple trees on the property. The plan was to create a utopian society regaining access to Eden by finding the correct formula for perfect living, following specific rules governing agriculture, diet, and reproduction. In order to achieve this, they removed themselves from the economy as much as possible and lived independently avoiding interaction with local communities.
Calling themselves a "consociate family", they agreed to follow a strict vegetarian diet and to till the land without the use of animal labor. After some difficulty, they relented and allowed some cattle to be "enslaved”. They also banned coffee, tea, alcoholic drinks, milk, and warm bathwater. They only ate "aspiring vegetables" — those which grew upward — and refused those that grew downward like potatoes. As Alcott had published earlier, "Our wine is water,—flesh, bead,—drugs, fruits." For clothing, they prohibited leather because animals were killed for it, as well as cotton, silk, and wool, because they were products of slave labor. Alcott had high expectations but was often away when the community most needed him as he attempted to recruit more members.
The experimental community was never successful, partly because most of the land was not arable. Alcott lamented, "None of us were prepared to actualize practically the ideal life of which we dreamed. So we fell apart" In its seven months, only 13 people joined, included the Alcotts and Lanes [an associate]. Other than Abby May and her daughters, only one other woman joined.
In January 1844, Alcott moved his family to Still River, a village within Harvard but, on March 1, 1845, the family returned to Concord to live in a home they named "The Hillside". The Alcotts hosted a steady stream of visitors at The Hillside, including fugitive slaves, which they hosted in secret as a station of the Underground Railroad.
In 1848, Abby May insisted they leave Concord, which she called "cold, heartless, brainless, soulless". The Alcott family put The Hillside up for rent and moved to Boston. There, next door to Peabody's book store on West Street, Bronson Alcott hosted a series based on the "Conversations" model by Margaret Fuller called "A Course on the Conversations on Man — his History, Resources, and Expectations". Participants, both men and women, were charged three dollars to attend or five dollars for all seven lectures.
Alcott and his family moved back to Concord after 1857, where he and his family lived in the Orchard House until 1877.
Alcott voted in a presidential election for the first time in 1860. In his journal for November 6, 1860, he wrote: "At Town House, and cast my vote for
Lincoln and the Republican candidates generally — the first vote I ever cast for a President and State officers."
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