Hopedale Memories
opedale, Massachusetts lies in the Blackstone River valley about thirty miles southwest of Boston. It's a small town with a church on a village green, looking like it was painted by Norman Rockwell for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post, circa 1950s. Hopedale was founded as a utopian society in the 1840s, during a nationwide spiritual revival called the Great Awakening; its inspiration was the back-to-the-land commune movement based on philosophical transcendentalism preached by Ralph Waldo Emerson and his friend Henry David Thoreau over in Concord. Twenty-eight Hopedale founders settled five square miles of the "Dale" section of Milford, Massachusetts, as a farming and light industrial commune.
Two brothers, Ebenezer and George Draper, started a business manufacturing automatic looms for the textile industries in Lowell and Lawrence that made cloth for the rest of the country. By 1856, the commune had failed and the Drapers owned the farm. In the 1880s the Draper Corporation had 3,000 employees and the political clout to secede from the town of Milford. The Drapers called their new town Hopedale because for decades it had been known as the "Dale of Hope" for new immigrants to America, who were able to find work and start new lives there. Today Hopedale is a beautiful suburban town with public band concerts, a Little League parade, and kids riding bicycles on quiet streets. It's no longer a company town but a commuter community near Boston, very quiet and removed. It's the town where time stood still. Residents use words like "private" and "haven" to describe the atmosphere. Hopedale is basically what you want if you happen to be looking for the perfect American hometown.
Two brothers, Ebenezer and George Draper, started a business manufacturing automatic looms for the textile industries in Lowell and Lawrence that made cloth for the rest of the country. By 1856, the commune had failed and the Drapers owned the farm. In the 1880s the Draper Corporation had 3,000 employees and the political clout to secede from the town of Milford. The Drapers called their new town Hopedale because for decades it had been known as the "Dale of Hope" for new immigrants to America, who were able to find work and start new lives there. Today Hopedale is a beautiful suburban town with public band concerts, a Little League parade, and kids riding bicycles on quiet streets. It's no longer a company town but a commuter community near Boston, very quiet and removed. It's the town where time stood still. Residents use words like "private" and "haven" to describe the atmosphere. Hopedale is basically what you want if you happen to be looking for the perfect American hometown.
