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72, HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY
increased their operations until 100,000 feet of lumber Avere required
annually. This furnishes steady Avork to tAverity-five or thirty employes.
Much of the success is due to the mechanical ability and enterprise of
its first manager, Samuel Patterson. As fruit interests increase, this
business must continue to groAV.
FREE LOVE COMMUNITY
Berlin Heights became Avidely knoAvn at one time on account of a
small free love community planted there. Only one citizen of the
tOAvnship became identified with this movement, the others coming from
remote states. It, AVIIS some time after the first gathering before a
colony was established. Their peculiar tenets Avert* taught and disseminated
until I860, when Point Hope Community AA'IIS established
upon a communistic basis, with about tAventy members. It lasted about
tAA'elve months. A second organization, called the Industrial Fraternity,
commenced in I860, witli tAventy members, lived about six months. The
third, the Berlin Community, or Christian Republic, commenced in
1865, bad tAA'elve adult members and six children and lived about one
year. Mr. Hudson Tuttle, Berlin's Avell-knoAvn author, in Avriting of
these people, says:
"So far as testing communism, the affair Avas a perfect failure.
The drifting to this section of so many individuals, AVIIO, to use their
OAA-n phrase, AA'ere 'intensely individualized,' and AVIIO remained after
the complete failure of their schemes, has had an influence on the character
of the toAvn. They engaged in fruit growing, have multiplied the
small farms, and added to the prosperity and intellectual life of the
people," etc.
He then alludes to a sketch of this community in Johnson's Encyclopedia,
in which it is spoken of as a society of Spiritualists, which Mr.
Tuttle says is false, because many of the bitterest opponents tin* community
bad Avere Spiritualists. A part of the number AA'ere atheists,
some AA'ere believers in different creeds, and some AA'ere Spiritualists.
There AA'as little toleration SIIOAVII the newcomers, and at one time, Avhen
Francis Barry attempted to mail an issue of the Age of Freedom, twenty
Berlin women seized the mail-sack in AA'hich he had brought it on his
shoulder to the office and burned it in the street.
Several papers were started by the communists and had a brief
career. The Social Revolutionist, in 1857, by J. S, Patterson: Age of
Freedom, 1858; Good Time Coming, 1859: the New'Republic, 1862: the
Optimist and Kingdom of Heaven, I860; the Principia or Personality,
1868; the NCAV Campaign, 1871; the Toledo Sun,-moved from Toledo 1o
Berlin Heights in 1875, by John A. Laut.
Besides these tAA'o local ncAvspapers Avere started, but were unsuccessful:
The Bulletin, by W. B. Harrison, commenced in 1870: and flic
Index, by F. J. .Miles, commenced in 1875.
The Register of March 14, 1870, quotes the folloAving description of
the Free Love Community Avhich existed in Berlin Township in 1858.