CHAPTER XLIV.
THE BROCTON COMMUNITY.[ToC]
We are forbidden to class this Association with the Spiritualist Communities, by a positive disclaimer on the part of its founders: as the reader will see further on. Otherwise we should have said that the Brocton Community is the last of the series which commenced at Mountain Cove. Thomas L. Harris, the leader at Brocton, was also one of the two leaders at Mountain Cove, and as Swedenborgianism, his present faith, is certainly a species of Spiritualism, not altogether unrelated to the more popular kind which he held in the times of Mountain Cove, we can not be far wrong in counting the Brocton Community as one of the sequelæ of Fourierism, and in the true line of succession from Brook Farm.
After the bad failure of non-religious Socialism in the Owen experiments, and the worse failure of semi-religious Socialism in the Fourier experiments, a lesson seems to have been learned, and a tendency has come on, to lay the foundations of socialistic architecture in some kind of Spiritualism, equivalent to religion. This tendency commenced, as we have seen, among the Brook Farmers, who promulgated Swedenborgianism almost as zealously as they did Fourierism. The same tendency is seen in the history of the Owens, father and son. Thus, it is evident that the entire Spiritualistic platform has been pushed forward by a large part of its constituency, as a hopeful basis of future Socialisms. And the Brocton Community seems to be the final product and representative of this tendency to union between Spiritualism and Socialism.
As Mr. Harris and Mr. Oliphant, the two conspicuous men at Brocton, are both Englishmen, we might almost class that Community with the exotics, which do not properly come into our history. But the close connection of Brocton with the Spiritualistic movement, and the general interest it has excited in this country, on the whole entitle it to a place in the records of American Socialisms. The following account is compiled from a brilliant report in the New York Sun of April 30, 1869, written by Oliver Dyer:
History and Description of the Brocton Community.
"Nine miles beyond Dunkirk, on the southerly shore of Lake Erie, in the village of Brocton, New York, is a Community which, in some respects, and especially as to the central idea around which the members gather, is probably without a parallel in the annals of mankind.
"The founder of this Community is the Rev. Thomas Lake Harris, an Englishman by birth, but whose parents came to this country when he was three years old. He was for several years a noted preacher of the Universalist denomination in New York. Subsequently he went to England, where he had a noticeable career as a preacher of strange doctrines. Between five and six years ago he returned to this country, and settled in Amenia, Duchess County, where he prospered as a banker and agriculturist, until in October, 1867, he (as he claims), in obedience to the direct leadings of God's spirit, took up his abode at his present residence in Chautauqua County, on the southerly shore of Lake Erie, and founded the Brocton Community.
"The tract of land owned and occupied by the Community, comprises a little over sixteen hundred acres, and is about two and a-half miles long, by one mile in breadth. One-half of this tract was purchased by Mr. Harris with his own money; the residue was purchased with the money of his associates and at their request is held by him in trust for the Community. The main building on the premises (for there are several residences) is a low, two-story edifice straggling over much ground.