Brook+Farm+&+transcendentalism

Brook Farm was created by George Ripley. George was a pastor of a church in Boston, who became upset with the social competition in the nation. George resigned from his church in order to start a colony called Brook Farm.

Brook Farm held many of the principles of Transcendentalists. Mainly, a departure from the structure found in both society and in religion. Transcendentalists believed the historical perspective, and rules in which current society was founded stopped self reliance and growth of the soul. Additionally, Brook Farm incorporated a reliance and appreciation of nature in order to bring forth freshness and to unlock self expression. Finally Brook Farm provided dedicated time for self-development. Self development, along with self expression, was seen as one of the purposes of life. Ripley’s goals were to create a community in which individual freedom was combined with spiritual growth.

In addition to creating a colony with a focus on mind, body and spirit, Brook Farm also had the goal of eliminating the social gap which existed at the time. By sharing the work load among colony members, the goal was to achieve economic freedom, and put an end to differences in earned wages.

Brook Farm was a socialist community where all members are equal, and all members work a similar amount of hours. All members share in the fruits of their labor, eliminating upper and lower classes. Both Brook Farm and transcendentalism are very independent groups. Their main goal is freedom from the establishment. Brook Farm had very limited rules because that was the one reason it was started in the first place. As Brook Farm matured, members started to take advantage of the socialist community and did less work then others. To fix this problem, Brook Farm created rules. Rules added structure, which many of the founding members found offensive.

Brook Farm began to fall in October of 1844 no matter how many times it was reorganized. Money was becoming depleted and in an act to save money they stopped offering meat, butter, coffee, tea, and butter at supper time. Even that Thanksgiving they couldn’t afford their own turkey, but it was a kindness of a neighbor to donate one. Yet that was just the beginning, life instantly worsened because of a Small Pox spread through Brook Farm. 26 people at Brook Farm were infected in November 1845, no one died however. Phalanstery, a building created for a utopian society, was being built and the project was succeeding, that is until March 3, 1846 because it had caught fire. George Ripley finally gave up and left at that point, which made a lot of others leave as well. After he left he found a job with the New York Tribune. It took Ripley thirteen years to pay off the debt that Brook Farm had dragged him into.

After Brook Farm the property was sold to a man named John Plummer before he sold it to another. 150 years later most of the original buildings were burned down when the Metropolitan District Commission bought 148 acres of the prior land of Brook Farm. Now, the Brook Farm land has been proclaimed as a U.S. National Historic Landmark, is part of a nature reserve, and is used by Baker Street Jewish Cemeteries. Brook Farm was important because it was a colony of transcendentalists who tried to make everything equal, but in the end, it wound up being more unfair. Brook farm made people rethink the transcendentalism theory.

By Connor Neville and Cassidy Bokor