First Advisor

Welsh, Michael E.

Date Created

8-1-2011

Abstract

In 1898, the Salvation Army ventured into a colonization project to take urban working poor people, relocate them to rural areas, and allow them to become productive agriculturalists. The impetus for the project was the book, In Darkest England and the Way Out (1890), by General William Booth, the founder of The Salvation Army. General Booth's daughter, Emma, and son-in-law, Fredrick St. George de Lautour Booth-Tucker, took charge of the Salvation Army in the United States in 1896, and took it upon themselves to carry out General Booth's plan in the United States. The plan was characterized by Frederick Booth-Tucker as an experiment in “domiculture,” or the cultivation of families on family farms. The Booth-Tuckers appointed Col. Thomas Holland as the National Colonization Secretary, and together they chose sites in California, Colorado, and Ohio, for the colonies. This thesis concerns the Colorado colony, Fort Amity. It was founded near Holly, Colorado, near the Arkansas River, and was purported to be the most successful of the three experimental colonies. This thesis challenges the conclusions of previous authors regarding the demise of the colony, and documents the unexplored subject of what it was like to live on the Colorado prairie at Fort Amity.

Abstract Format

html

Keywords

In Darkest England and the Way Out; Domiculture; Progressive era utopians; Colorado history

Extent

111 pages

Local Identifiers

SchempThesis2011

Rights Statement

Copyright is held by author.

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