To Live a Truer Life
A Story of the Hopedale Community

To Live a Truer Life Written by Lynn Gordon Hughes Illustrated by Lindro ISBN 0-9725017-2-X Publisher: Blackstone Editions Hardcover, 32 pages

Suppose you could live, surrounded by congenial, caring neighbors, in a perfect community where crime, poverty, violence and injustice are unknown. Since colonial times, this has been one of the most persistent of American dreams. Unfortunately, most ideal communities remain in the realm of daydreams, and most of those that do not are dismal failures. One of the most successful was the Hopedale Community, founded by the Universalist (later Unitarian) minister Adin Ballou, which flourished for fifteen years, from 1841 to 1856.

Much has been written about Unitarian Universalist history, but little that is accessible to children and families. To Live a Truer Life: A Story of the Hopedale Community fills this gap by presenting the history and ideals of the Hopedale Community in language a child can understand. Author Lynn Gordon Hughes, a graduate student in United States history at Brown University, based the story on the community’s newspaper and the accounts of the participants. Artist Linda Rogers – known professionally as Lindro – has used archival photographs and drawings to create illustrations that combine a wealth of period detail with the simplicity of a period folk-art painting.

The members of the Hopedale Community believed in a radical form of non-violence called Christian Non-Resistance, which rejected not only war and capital punishment, but all authority based on force. Therefore, they did not vote or participate in government or make use of police or courts. In an era when even short periods of illness or unemployment could leave families destitute, they guaranteed jobs for all able-bodied members and loving care for those unable to work. At a time when the anti-slavery cause was just beginning to gather momentum, and the women’s rights movement still lay in the future, the Hopedale constitution proclaimed that all members “shall stand on a footing of personal equality, irrespective of sex, color, occupation, wealth, rank, or any other natural or adventitious peculiarity.” They put their principles to the test by sheltering escaping slaves and by extending their charity even to a burglar who came to rob them.

The story takes place in the summer of 1855, when narrator Susan Thwing was eight years old. As the daughters of the community’s postmistress, Susie and her sister Anna had the job of delivering mail to everyone in Hopedale, and selling the pink “Hopedale Penny Post” stamps. As she makes her rounds one June evening, Susie takes the reader on a tour of her town, explaining its origins, its customs, its ideals and its unique way of life.

Many of the details in the story, as well as the inspiration for the character of Susie herself – lively, cheery, proud of her town and eager to share it with others – are taken from the memoir of her childhood, which Susan wrote when she was in her sixties. Looking back on the Community in later years, she wrote, “Surely they hitched their wagon to a star – and though it fell to earth, it left a pathway so bright that it still points the way to perfection.”

Susie delivers a letter to Adin Ballou		Sojourner Truth speaks at Hopedale

To Live a Truer Life is available from the UUA Bookstore
or send $20.00 to Blackstone Editions, 60 12th Street, Providence, RI 02906
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