One of the famous visitors of Modern Times was a well known clergyman, abolitionist, scolar and author,  Moncure Daniel Conway. Moncure was born on March 17, 1832 to Walker Peyton and Margaret (Daniel) Conway in Falmouth, Virginia.  He was born into a wealthy family where his father was a gentleman farmer, judge and slave owner. His mother cared for her home and practiced homeopathic medicine while raising her family. She disagreed with Moncure’s father who believed in slavery.

When Moncure turned fifteen he was sent to Dickinson College, a Methodist college in Pennsylvania earning a M.A. in two years. He became a transcendentalist, a protestor against the general state of culture and society, after reading Ralph Waldo Emerson writings. Moncure worked for a year as a Methodist circuit rider then attended Harvard Divinity School graduating with a B.D. in 1854. He had an opportunity to meet many radicals who influenced his thinking such as Theodore Parker, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips and leading him to becoming an abolitionist. In 1855, Moncure was ordained and accepted a position at the First Unitarian Church of Washington.  He ended up leaving Washington to preach in Cincinnati when he declared that slavery was immoral. He married Ellen Davis Dana, a Unitarian, feminist, and abolitionist.  They had four children, Eustace, Emerson, Dana and Mildred. Later he became disillusioned with the Unitarians and separated himself from the church.

The next issue will cover Moncure’s visit to Modern Times.

-M. Koferl, Local History Newsletter, February 2009

Sometime before Moncure moved to Cincinnati he visited Modern Times (Brentwood) around 1848.  Encouraged through a letter he had received from Modern Times reporting that the village had achieved success running on certain philosophies.  Moncure continued to hear about this village and one day when he was speaking to laborers he was approached by someone who said, “If you ever visit Modern Times you will find out the troubles of labor comes from the existence of money.” That next summer he made a visit to the village and located Josiah Warren, founder of this utopian community. Moncure recounts his visit to Modern Times in his Autobiography. He reports in his biography that he had traveled by train to Thompson Station  and then walked about five or six miles to the center of town in the darkness.  At times the forest which surrounded him was very dense and it was hard to determine his way to Modern Times. He reached the village around 9 PM and located Josiah Warren who made arrangements for him to stay with a couple (probably Henry Edger and his wife) for the evening.

The next day Josiah Warren introduced Moncure to his theory of Equitable Commerce where “ disproportion between wages and the time and labour spent in production created the evils of drudgery and pauperism, luxury and idleness, he determined to bring about a system of equitable commerce, by which each product should have its price measured by its cost. If it were a shoe, for example, the separate cost of leather, pegs, thread, etc. was to be estimated, and time taken in putting them together, and the sum would be enough to decide the relative value of the shoe.”  Warren perceived that the value of time was worth the same amount no matter what occupation. He also believed “ ..that the most disagreeable labour is entitle to the highest compensation.” 

We know from Moncure’s book that he  only stayed a day at the village but years later he remarked that perhaps they never found peace in this utopian village for he notes that after the civil war started according to Moncure, the residents of Modern Times sailed from Montauk Point to South American.

-M. Koferl, Local History Newsletter, March 2009