Scope and Contents:
A. J. MacDonald collected these materials for a projected book, "The Communities of the United States," which was announced in 1851 but never completed because of MacDonald's death from cholera in 1854. These research items include articles and statements of people concerned with communitarianism in the United States, histories of communities set up in the 1700s, and a description and review of over fifty communities set up during the 1820s, 1830s and 1840s. These communities include the Brook Farm Phalanx; the Hopedale Community; the Icarian Community ( Nauvoo, Ill.); the New Harmony Community; the North American Phalanx; the Oneida Community; the Raritan Bay Union; the Skaneateles Community; the Social Reform Unity; the Sodus Bay Phalanx; and the Trumbull Phalanx.
These materials were microfilmed from the originals in the Yale University Library.