Amos Bronson Alcott

Amos Bronson Alcott

He lived from November 29, 1799 to March 4, 1888. He was an American educator, writer, philosopher and reformer. He was the self-educated son of a poor farmer. As an educator, he focused on a conversational style instead of the traditional method of punishment. He was also an abolitionist, an advocate for women's rights and a vegan, before the term was coined. You can find some of the books he has written at this link.

He married Abby May in 1830 and they had four surviving children, all daughters. He was friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson and became a major figure in transcendentalism. In 1843, he co-founded Fruitlands, a utopian community, to enable himself and his followers to live in perfect harmony with transcendental ethics. They ate absolutely no meat or other animal products. They also didn't use any animal products like wool, honey, wax or manure and used no animal labor to till the land. Bronson Alcott's idealism was so strong, that he would not permit canker-worms to be disturbed. That's why he forbade the planting of vegetables and roots that grow downward instead of upward into the air.

The founders of Fruitlands felt that men shouldn't take anything from animals, for they should be as free as humans. They also believed that spiritual freedom depended on dispensing with the labor of animals. They wanted to eliminate cattle from the drudgery of farm labor and spare them from the degradation of slaughter for food.

The project went less well then they had expected. Only 13 people had joined the community. Even when they decided to use a few oxen to help plow the land, they still weren't able to raise enough food to get the community through the winter. By winter, only the Alcotts and one other family remained at Fruitlands. They ended up leaving that same winter. Even though the Fruitlands project had failed, Alcott never gave up the ideas upon which it had been based.

Alcott's eleven-year-old daughter Anna agreed with her father's beliefs and wrote: "We have power to think and feel with, and they have not the same power of thinking, they should be allowed to live in peace and not made to labour so hard and be eaten so much. Then to eat them! Eat what has life and feelings to make the body of the innocent animals! . . . Besides flesh is not clean food, and when there is beautiful juicy fruits who can be a flesh-eater?"

In 1845, the Alcott family moved back to Concord, the town they had lived in before the Fruitlands project. They named their home "The Hillside". It's at this time that Bronson Alcott's second daughter, Louisa May Alcott, began writing. She later said these years "were the happiest years" of her life. Their home also functioned as a secret station of the Underground Railroad, hosting many fugitive slaves.

In 1848 they moved away from Concord, but in 1857 they returned and lived in the Orchard House until 1877. Louisa May Alcott's book Little Women was written and set in that home and was loosely based on her childhood experiences with her three sisters. Bronson Alcott also wrote several of his books while they lived there.

Information obtained from the Alcott.net website and Wikipedia - Amos Bronson Alcott.