Utopia, Ohio

**Utopia, Ohio**, also referred to as **Trialville** by its residents, was an Equity Village built according to the principles Josiah Warren laid out in his 1846 book Equitable Commerce.

## Background

### **Clermont Phalanx**

A newly formed Fourierist community in Cincinnati in 1843 decided to build it's own Ohioan phalanx in Clermont County, about 30 miles upriver. Josiah Warren spoke to the group in the next year, in hopes of converting them from Fourierism to Equitable Commerce, warning them that "a joint-stock commune based on shared property would collapse under all its high-minded constitutions, just as New Harmony had." Warren told the group to remember his warning, "you cannot succeed; you will fail within three years."

According to the journalist A. J. Macdonald, who in 1844 accompanied 130 associationists to the location where they were to build their phalanx, the site did have "all that could be desired, hill and plain, rich soil, fine scenery, plenty of first-rate timber, a maple-sugar camp, a good commercial situation, convenient to the best market in the West."

By the summer of 1847, Warren heard that his prediction had come true: "victims of floods, debt, and internecine lawsuits, the Clermont Fourierists were calling it quits." He quickly headed north to see it for himself. As he recalled 25 years later,

> "I had not been landed from the steam boat thirty minutes when Mr. Daniel Prescott (a stranger to me) approached and said, 'Well, we failed, just as you said we should--it worked just as you said it would. Now I am ready for your movement."
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### **Tuscarawas, Ohio**

In 1833 Warren and six other families (including Josiah Warren's friends from the Spring Hill boy's labor school with whom Warren had briefly stayed and learn wheel-making675) purchased a 400 acre tract of land in Tuscarawas county Ohio in order to build the first Equity Village (referred to as Equity). There the village economy would be based on labor notes and the exchange of labor. Although Warren never called himself an anarchist, later academics have decalred him as such, and the historian James J. Martin referred to this Tuscarawas community as "the site of the first anarchist community in America, years before anything similar was attempted in Europe.":2428

The community lasted only a few years, having been decimated by influenza and malaria.:2428-46 The settlers had erected a few houses and a saw-mill, but they wouldn't invite any more settlers to join them and subject them to the same malarial environment. Many of the residents had spent their entire savings to join the community, spent up to two years before they were able to secure themselves homes elsewhere.675

## Establishment

### **Founding**

Warren arrived back at the Ohio Phalanx in Clermont County in 1847. Only six families that were "almost destitute" according to Warren, still remained at the site. 2483

### **Population**

Within a few years of founding, the community was over two dozen families strong,2483 and by 1854 there had been over 100 new arrivals.2500

### **Notable Residents & Visitors**

Josiah Warren himself lived in the community during the first few years, but, having declared the community of Utopia a success in "that it had proven that men and women could form a society without a state-- a realm of voluntary cooperation that required no compromise of liberty on the part of the individual." Thus ready to move on, in 1850 Warren moved to New York City in hopes of drumming up support for a larger Equity Village in the Northeast.2500

### **The Public**

Having been part of the spectacular and public failure of New Harmony, Warren wanted to conduct this trial of his ideas away from public scrutiny. Unlike Robert Owen who promoted New Harmony excessively, Warren did his best to spread the word of his community to possible residents without stirring the curiosity of the gossip-hungry public.

## Community Structure

### Governance

The idea behind the Equity Village was to have no governance at all. Warren boasted, "The cooperation was as perfect as cooperation could be, yet everyone was entirely free from all trammels of organization, constitutions, pledges, and everything of the kind."2483

### Facilities and Landscape

In July of 1847 Warren leased 20 acres of land from a local landowner on the promise that the price of the land would not be raised for three years. Dividing the land into 80 quarter lots, Warren sold them, at cost, to the families for 15$ each.2483 by December 4 of the 6 families had completely or nearly paid for. Soon roads and alleys were laid, and some of the first non-residential buildings to be erected were a brick kiln, a sawmill, and a gristmill. Within a few years there would be 26 buildings at the site.2483

## Economy

### Labor and Work

The community was based on the reciprocation of labor.

> "a man could work in the mill, and then pay for his quarter-acre lot with labor notes to another man who needed lumber from the mill, which he paid for with the labor notes he accrued from the man who bought his land."2483
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As one resident told a local newspaper about the labor notes,

> "These put us into a reciprocating society. The result was, in two years 12 families found themselves with homes who never owned them before. Labor capital did it. I built a brick cottage one and a half stories high, and all the money I paid out was $9.81. All the rest was effected by exchanging labor for labor. Money prices, with no principle to guide, have always deceived us."2483-2500
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## Decline & Dissolution

Before too long, Utopia found itself unable to grow beyond its original 80 lots due to surrounding land speculation. Consequently, many of the residents picked up and moved west in search of cheaper land, settling down in Minnesota.2500

## Legacy

### Location

According to the author of Utopia Drive,

> "Today, the town that bears the name Utopia consists of two roads and about twenty homes, mostly double-wides. At the end of one road sits the weather-worn Nuts N Boats Campground. It's empty since this is a weekday. The gate is locked, and a menacing German shepherd barks at the end of a short chain. Today Utopia feels, frankly, a little sad." 2500
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There is a historic marker on Route 52, but it doesn't mention Josiah Warren or his followers at all. The original Clermont Fourierist phalanx which was present from 1844-1846 is mentioned, as is a group of spiritualists lead by one John O. Wattles from 1847 until a fatal flash flood that December. It then credits Henry Jernegan of Amelia with laying out the present village in 1847. The marker claims that with the flood of 1847 and the scattering of the survivors "the idea of the perfect society, or utopia, died." But in actuality, 1847 was the year Josiah Warren arrived.

## References

1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 Reece, Erik. *Utopia Drive : A Road Trip through America’s Most Radical Idea*. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Bailie, William. *Josiah Warren, the First American Anarchist: A Sociological Study*. Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, 1906. Kindle Edition.