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The Hopedale Community was founded in Milford, Massachusetts, in 1843 by Adin Ballou. He and his followers purchased 600 acres (2.4 km2) of land on which they built homes for the community members, chapels and the factories for which the company was initially formed. The area was later split from Milford and became the town of Hopedale, Massachusetts.
Ballou believed that he could create a utopian community blending the features of a factory town with those of a religion-based commune. He called this "Practical Christianity" but unlike several similar communities, it was important to Ballou that Hopedale would not be isolated from the rest of society. The community stood for temperance, abolitionism, women's rights, spiritualism, and education.[1] Fourteen years after the land was purchased, Hopedale went bankrupt. The intentional community was converted into a textile factory town. The factories were purchased by George and Ebenezer Draper, later of the Draper Corporation.
- ^ Spann, Edward K. (31 March 1992). Hopedale: From Commune to Company Town, 1840-1920. Ohio State University Press. ISBN 9780814205754 – via Google Books.