However, the Valcour Community appeared to take the Oneida philosophy a step further by embracing a complete acceptance of equality between the sexes.

In August 1974, the Burlington Sentinel sent a reporter to the island to investigate Orren Shipman and the plans for the commune. In a column headed “Vermont Communists,” he wrote: “Mr. Shipman has been for years what is called a man of radical views, one who entertains extreme opinions on social matters. He had come to believe in the feasibility and propriety of the community plan. The industrial pursuits are to be agricultural and horticultural, combining the dairy business, the raising of small fruits, grapes, and commercial orchards. Prospective members are to state the amount they can subscribe in money, or the amount of property they can offer in pledge, to be disposed of.”

While one might question the feasibility of locating an experimental collective in such a remote location, it should be noted that an island in a large lake has advantages for horticulture, especially where climate is concerned. The surrounding water moderates weather extremes and results in more frost-free days.

 The Sentinel further noted, “Harmony, peace, and happiness are to be promoted. Any discourteous use of language or manner will be obnoxious.”

The plan allowed for a democratic government with all members of both sexes over the age
of fifteen to vote. “The leadership was to be comprised of a presiding officer of each sex. In the management of social and domestic affairs, each member, or gentleman and lady, will be provided with their private apartments, and  the entire group will eat at one table. Absolute social freedom, and the sovereign right to each individual to control his or her destiny in the sexual relation will be fully recognized.”

The New York Times dismissed with great skepticism the prospectus for the Dawn Valcour Community issued by Shipman and Wilcox. The prospectus described the island as “Substantially fenced on the outside against our neighbor’s cattle, and from the cold, selfish world, a home consecrated to harmony and fraternity, soft water in abundance everywhere and at all times... A commanding, attractive, unrivaled position, with richness of soil not surpassed within a thousand miles, every way natural to the best fruits of the temperate zone, the island with pure air and waters; abundance of wood, timber, and quarries... and commanding position for our objects and aims.”

In September 1874, twelve Utopian socialists from Chicago arrived on the island and by November, the Vermont Journal reported that the population had swelled to twenty. “The men having the good quality of industry, and the women the necessary gift of beauty.”

Hannah Augusta White, the first female superintendent of the community, had this “necessary gift” and was a freethinker. Ralph Nading Hill described her as “a poet, author, and lecturer” who had arrived ahead of the main body of communards “in pure conjugal love” with a young man.

At a meeting for interested locals held at Shipman’s nursery on October 3, 1874, she articulated her vision for the Valcour Community to an audience of over two hundred curious Vermonters. She complained about how she had hoped to find an enlightened populace among her new Vermont neighbors but had been met with suspicion and contempt.

She is quoted as saying, “Is it possible that the people of Vermont—that glorious old champion of freedom and equality—are ignorant of the revolution and progress being made in the world of ideas? Are they ignorant of the fact that old forms of society are toppling in dissolution [and] that with the introduction of steam and electricity, the world had reached a new epoch and that the old customs of society must of necessity be changed because we had entered a new world? Do they not know that old mother earth herself has become a communist? That the electric cable stretched beneath the bosom of our ocean has bound two continents into a grand cooperative community?”

Despite the chilly reception, Hannah White continued to proselytize the ideals of the Valcour Community in letters to The Plattsburgh Republic, but to no avail. In just a few short months, the community would suffer financial ruin, mainly because Orren Shipman had misrepresented himself as the owner of Valcour Island.

A February 11, 1875, letter from community members to the Burlington Free Press alleged that Shipman had deceived them and called his claims of ownership a “stupendous fraud.”

In April 1875, Mrs. Shipman rose to her husband’s defense and published a stinging rebuttal in which she characterized the group’s members as: “... a shiftless, idle, unprincipled set who have not worked enough to earn even their fuel, have consumed her husband’s crops, and [ruined] his credit, and so gave themselves up to promiscuity that the whole noble objects and aims of [the community] were wholly perverted.”

A story in The New York Times dated Saturday, November 13,1875, titled “End of the Dawn Valcour Community, sourly noted: “A more singular collection of poverty-stricken impracticables could scarcely be gathered than these men and women, who had undertaken the somewhat serious task of turning the world topsy-turvy, and instituting a radical reform in the customs, morals, and religion of mankind.”

Later, it was revealed that Shipman had never held a clear title to the land on Valcour Island. According to the Lake Champlain Management Plan, Shipman had purchased the northern half of Valcour Island from Daniel Fay in 1870, and because of a series of questionable land transactions and failure on Shipman’s part to pay for the land, he lost the property in 1875.

Unfortunately, for the Dawn Valcour Community, Shipman’s fraud did not become apparent until they were bankrupt. 

Orren Shipman and the Bluff Point Lighthouse

 

Orren Shipman had a connection not only with the Utopian community he sought to build on Valcour Island but also with the Bluff Point lighthouse, one of two historic structures that still stand today.

Orren Shipman first sold the land around Bluff Point to the federal government for the lighthouse project in 1871. Then in 1874, shortly after the lighthouse was completed, Shipman turned around and sold the same land—plus more acreage of questionable title—to the group that would form the Dawn Valcour Community. The community members lived side by side with the lighthouse and its keeper from September 1874 to August 1875, when the community ceased to exist. 

Valcour Island Over the Years

In the years and decades that followed the collapse of the Dawn Valcour Community, the island’s reputation as an idyllic spot was restored. In 1906, a boys’ summer camp opened, and by the ’20s cottages and cabins ringed the island. For the next few generations, dozens of families vacationed there.

Today, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation owns the 1,100-acre island, which is open to the public year-round, and there is a 7.5-mile Heritage Trail that gives visitors a chance to see the few structures that still stand, including the remnants of the foundation of the one-room structure that housed the Dawn Valcour Horticultural Association, the short-lived community’s headquarters, as well as hiking trails and campsites along the island’s perimeter.

For more information and to plan your visit, go to www.champlainvalleynhp.org.