Nashoba Community facts for kids

The Nashoba Community was an interesting experiment started in 1825 by a woman named Frances "Fanny" Wright. She wanted to find a way to educate slaves and help them become free. The community was located on 2,000 acres (about 8 square kilometers) of land near what is now Germantown, Tennessee, which is a suburb of Memphis. It was along the Wolf River.

Fanny Wright's idea was a small test of her plan to free slaves without slaveholders losing money. She believed that slaves could work together to earn enough money to buy their own freedom. After becoming free, they would then be moved to Haiti or to settlements that would later become Liberia.

What Was Nashoba's Goal?

The main goal of the Nashoba community was to show how Fanny Wright's plan for freeing slaves could work. It was meant to be a place where slaves could learn and get ready for freedom and for moving to Haiti or Liberia. Wright was very inspired by Robert Owen and his utopian (meaning "perfect place") community called New Harmony, Indiana. Nashoba lasted for three years, which was even longer than New Harmony.

Wright first shared her plan in an article in October 1825. She called it "A Plan for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in the United States, without Danger of Loss to the Citizens of the South." Wright thought that if she could arrange for slaves to be freed without slave owners losing money, then many planters (large farm owners) in the South would agree to it. She believed that slave owners wanted to free their people but were worried about them being unprepared for life on their own. Wright hoped that if her experimental community worked, its methods could be used all over the country.

Wright worked hard to raise money and find people to join her. One of the first people to help was George Flower from England, who had started another settlement in Albion, Illinois. A social reformer named Emily Ronalds also gave £300 to the project. However, Wright couldn't raise enough money from others. She ended up using a lot of her own money to buy land and slaves. She named the community "Nashoba," which is the Chickasaw word for "wolf."

Nashoba is sometimes remembered as a community where everyone was equal and people of different races lived together. But it didn't quite reach these goals. Even though Wright was a strong supporter of freeing slaves, the people in the community were still her property until they could buy their freedom. Gail Bederman, who wrote about Nashoba, explained that the community's focus on moving freed slaves away and making sure slave owners were paid meant that the slaves remained under control and were still considered property.

When the plan to pay slave owners didn't work out as expected, Wright changed Nashoba into more of a utopian community. The white members of the community became "trustees." They were in charge of managing the property and making all the decisions. The slaves could never become trustees.

Wright left Nashoba in 1827 to go to Europe because she was sick with malaria. While she was gone, the trustees managed the community. But by the time Wright returned in 1828, Nashoba had fallen apart. At its biggest, Nashoba only had about 20 members.

Nashoba is mentioned briefly in a book from 1832 called Domestic Manners of the Americans by Frances Trollope. She visited Nashoba with Wright in 1827. Trollope's book was critical of American society. She thought the people at Nashoba didn't have enough food or comforts.

Why Did Nashoba End?

The Nashoba community faced many challenges. Even though it was a place where people of different races lived together, it wasn't truly equal. As stories spread about how people were living together, the community started having more and more money problems. These difficulties eventually led to its collapse in 1828.

Before Nashoba completely failed, Wright was on a ship returning to America. During her trip, she wrote a document called "Explanatory Notes Respecting the Nature and Objects of the Institution of Nashoba, and of the Principles upon which it is Founded." In this, she described Nashoba as a perfect place where people of all races would be equal. However, her plans in these "Explanatory Notes" were never put into action. Nashoba had already failed by the time Wright arrived back in the United States. Wright personally rented a ship and took the remaining slaves from Nashoba to Haiti, where she set them free.

Nashoba's Lasting Impact

Even though Nashoba failed, it still showed what a "utopian theory" could look like in practice. Fanny Wright had very forward-thinking ideas about freedom and equality for her time. But the challenges of leading the community and the financial difficulties proved too much for Nashoba to overcome.

In 1963, Edd Winfield Parks published a novel called Nashoba. It was described as a story about Fanny Wright's brave experiment to free slaves.

The Twin Oaks Community, which started in 1967, is a modern "intentional community" with 100 members in Virginia. All of their buildings are named after older communities, and one of their homes is named after Nashoba.

Also, the Neshoba Unitarian Universalist Church, founded in 1992, is located in the same area where the original community was. It is named after Nashoba.

The name Nashoba (sometimes spelled "Neshoba") is the Chickasaw name for the nearby Wolf River. It is still used in the Germantown area for places like Neshoba Road. For a short time during World War I, Germantown itself was even called Nashoba as a way to protest against Germany.

Images for kids

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  A sketch of Nashoba from the book Domestic Manners of the Americans, published in 1832.