Lane, Charles, 1800-1870

Charles Lane was born on 31 Mar 1800 in England. Very little is known about the first 30 years of his life. During the 1830s he worked in London as a commercial journalist and as editor and manager of the London Mercantile Price Current. During this time Lane met John Pierrepont Greaves and became part of the reform circle led by Greaves. The group was interested in spiritual affairs and communal education. In 1838, Greaves opened an experimental school at Ham Common in Surrey; he named the school Alcott House (after Amos Bronson Alcott).
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By 1841, Lane had settled at Alcott House as a teacher. Lane was in sympathy with Alcott’s educational, spiritual, and abolitionist ideas. He had written to Alcott in 1839 and the two met on Alcott's trip to England in 1842. By October of the same year, Lane, who was divorced, and his ten-year-old son William were sailing back to the United States with Alcott. The two men were intent upon starting a community that would practice their ideals. But money was scarce at first and Lane settled down with the Alcotts in Concord to plan the venture and find an ideal site for the community. During this time, he became acquainted with Alcott’s Transcendental friends. Lane was a libertarian and an abolitionist. He held strong beliefs in voluntary government. (While Alcott was being arrested for non-payment of poll taxes, Lane initiated a series of articles in <i>The Liberator</i> describing his ideas about voluntary government.)
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By May of 1843, Alcott and Lane discovered a 90-acre farm in Harvard, Massachusetts, that would become the site of their experiment. Renaming the farm Fruitlands, Lane purchased it for $18,000 and on June 1st, the group—composed of the Alcott family of six and Charles Lane and his son—took up residence there. As the summer passed Lane wrote his friends enthusiastically about the community. Fall and the approaching winter brought problems. At the end of November, Abba May Alcott, Amos Bronson Alcott’s wife, gave notice that she was removing herself and her daughters from the community. Alcott went with them and the Fruitlands community was thus disbanded.
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After the dissolution of the Fruitlands experiment, Lane and his son went to live with the Harvard Shaker community in January 1844. In the summer of 1846, Lane and Joseph Palmer joined together to form the Leominster and Harvard Benevolent Association. On lands owned by the Association, individuals could be provided with room and board in exchange for their labor on the lands. Lane quickly became disillusioned with his life in the Association and resolved to return to England and Alcott House where he intended to write a short history of the Fruitlands experiment. He mortgaged the Fruitlands farm to Joseph Palmer and returned to England. Alcott House was abandoned in 1849. In 1850, Charles Lane married Hannah Bond, and they had five children. He returned to a career in journalism. He died peacefully in 1870, leaving his wife, Hannah, and at least three surviving children.