The Cedar Vale Progressive Community—A Report

By Gary White

Last month, Phil Foust provided this blog with an introduction to the Cedar Vale Progressive Community and I have been hot on their trail since returning from Ireland. My sources have included two books: Nordhoff, Charles. The Communistic Societies of The United States. NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 1966; and Hasty, Olga Peters and Susanne Fusso. America Through Russian Eyes, 1874-1926. Yale University, 1988. The first of these books is a reprint of the original 1875 edition by Harper and Brothers. I have also conducted extensive searches using the resources of Ancestry.com to establish additional facts about the commune.

Nordhoff devotes a complete chapter to what he calls the Cedar Vale Commune. In this chapter he gives a general description of the community as quoted in the previous blog entry:

“At Cedar Vale, a communistic society has been founded, which, though its small numbers might make it insignificant, is remarkable by reason of the nationality of some of its members.

“It was begun three years ago, and the purpose of its projectors was "to achieve both communism and individual freedom, or to lead persons of all kinds of opinions to labor together for their common welfare. If there was to be any law, it should be only for the regulation of industry or hours of work." I quote this from the letter of a gentleman who is familiar with this society, and who has been kind enough to send me its constitution, and to give me the following particulars: "It is now three years since the founders of the society settled in this domain, coming here entirely destitute, and building first as a residence a covered burrow in a hillside. Two of them had left affluence and position in Russia, and subjected themselves to this poverty for the sake of their principles. Of course they suffered here from fever, from insufficient food, and cold, and were not able to make much improvement on the place. The practical condition now, though insignificant from the common point of view, compared with what has been, is very satisfactory. There are at least comfortable shelter and enough to eat, and this year sufficient land will be fenced and planted to leave a surplus.

"The propaganda has been made among two essentially differing classes of socialists - the Russian Materialists and the American Spiritualists. Both these classes are represented in the community, and thus far seem to live in harmony. There are here a 'hygienic doctor' and a 'reformed clergyman,' both Spiritualists, and a Russian sculptor of consider fame, a Russian astronomer, and a very pretty and devoted and wonderfully industrious Russian woman."

Hasty and Fusso flesh out this description by relating that the community was formed in 1871, and consisted of Vladimir Konstantinovich Gejus (1839-88), who took the name William Frey (Frey is German for “free”) and his young wife Marija Evstaf’evna Slavinskij, who took the name Mary Frey in the U.S. The Freys had spent time in Jersey City, NJ, St. Louis, MO and New York City after immigrating and before coming to Kansas. A census report for 1870 in the Carthage, Missouri area shows: William Frey, age 31, Mary Frey, age 24, and an infant daughter, Isabelle, age 1. Just six lines above the Freys is an entry for one S. S. Briggs, age 51, whose occupation is listed as “physician.” These people were in a commune with one Alex Longley, whose family is listed on the intervening lines. This commune apparently broke up over financial difficulties and a “free love” splinter group and the Freys and S. S. Briggs set off for Kansas with the Frey’s infant daughter. Who the “free love” group might have been is unknown. Given later facts that are known about the Freys, it is possible that they were the splinter group.

The Freys and Mr. Briggs bought 320 acres of land from the U. S. government for $1.25 per acre. I have been unable to provide a legal description for this property, but Don Cox reports that it is half a mile east of Spring Branch School and on the south side of the present 166 Highway. An account by another Russian, Grigorij Machtet, who visited the community for eight months in early 1875 describes the property as follows: “Briggs, having gone ahead to choose a place, stopped on some land abandoned by the Osage (Indians), in Howard County, Kansas, where the government was selling land for $1.25 an acre, and took two adjacent parcels of a hundred and fifty (should be one hundred and sixty) acres each, four miles from the already established hamlet of Cedar Vale. Their resettlement entailed a whole series of adversities and deprivations. The winter was more severe than any in recent memory. The settlers’ fingers and toes were frostbitten, they ate the most meager food, and all the while they were excavating a dugout where Frey’s wife and child, who were waiting for spring to resettle, could take shelter for a time until a house could be built. They themselves settled in the shanty of a hospitable pioneer neighbor. In spring the dugout was ready. Mary Frey and her child came in a wagon loaded with seed, poultry, and utensils, and the settlers, having bought up planks in the hamlet (Cedar Vale), set about building a house and working the fields.”

When Machtet wrote asking to visit the community Frey’s response was, “You yourself no doubt understand with what delight my wife and I will receive any Russian who wishes to come see us, whether his aim is only to visit or to remain with us forever. And what pleases us will also please our dear friend, old Briggs. But however much I may wish to see you, I consider it my primary duty to advise you to think it over hard before you set out to come here. We live extremely poorly, even more poorly than the Russian peasant, whose hut is after all warmer than ours. . .”

Nevertheless, Machtet set out by train from Kansas City to Independence, Kansas, where the railroad stopped at that time, and then overland by horse or stage coach to the Progressive Community. He wrote a very poetic description of his travels south of Kansas City, which I may put up at a later time. His description of his reception at the community is, “I was greeted affably and happily by a small, swarthy woman with pitch-black hair and an intelligent, energetic, and kind face; pressed closely against her stood a little girl, her daughter Bella, opening her intelligent little black eyes wide in either fright or amazement.” Machtet stayed with the Frey’s for eight months and in the process, won the heart of Mary, who was, by that time, somewhat estranged from William because he had adopted a rule of celibacy for himself. Mary and Machtet kept up a correspondence long after Machtet returned to Russia.

The Kansas Census for 1875 lists the following residents at the commune: William Frey, age 35, Mary Frey, age 28, Isabelle Frey, age 6, George McDonald, age 6, S. S. Briggs, age 56, and J. G. Truman, age 37. William lists the members as follows: "Number of members: four males; three females; one child. Persons on probation: two males; one female; one child.” It is impossible to ascertain who the other members might be. It is possible that the “probationary” members are listed along with the members, making the total membership eight. However, the census report shows only six members. It is also possible that William is using his imagination somewhat in painting the best possible picture of his commune for potential members. The “hygienic doctor” mentioned above is S. S. Briggs, who is described elsewhere as a homeopathic physician. The “reformed clergyman” is, no doubt, J. G. Truman, who is described by Machtet as being a pale copy of Briggs, a person who advocated many wild ideas about the commune becoming a nudist colony. The “Russian sculptor and Russian astronomer” must have been William himself, and possibly, Machtet, who might have still been in residence. Who 6-year-old George McDonald was is a total mystery. He is listed as having been born in Illinois, but I have been unable to place his origin or subsequent residence. He simply seems to have disappeared.

One might think that a small farm out in the wilds of Kansas would have been insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but The Progressive Community was well known, both nationally and internationally. The Nordhoff book, which was written by a reporter from the New York Herald, was a detailed account of all the Utopian communities in existence in the U.S. in 1874. His book was widely read here and abroad and the Dover reprint edition shows that it continued to be read well into the 20th century. A biography of William Frey was published in 1965 (Yarmolinsky, Avrahm. A Russian’s American Dream—A memoir on William Frey, Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1965) Machtet’s account was published and widely read in Russia, as was the account by Mary Frey’s brother Nikolaj Evstaf’evich Slavinskij entitled Letters about America and the Russian Emigrants, (1873.) In Russia in the last quarter of the 19th century the winds of change that finally erupted into full revolution were beginning to blow. Experimental communist communities in the U.S. were giving the future revolutionaries in Russia hope for change at home. William Frey maintained a steady correspondence with many people, including the great Russian novelist, essayist, and playwright, Leo Tolstoy, who invited him to visit Tolstoy’s estate in Russia. Frey also wrote a number of books with titles like Vegetarianism in Connection with the Religion of Humanity and published them himself.

When the Progressive Community broke up in 1877, the Frey’s moved around the country with William working as a draftsman, printer, and farmhand. In 1880 he established his last experimental community in Clermont, Iowa. There he set up a complex family in which monogamy was replaced by free sexual relations among all members of the community. In truth, this community was quite small. The 1880 Iowa Census lists the following members of the community: Wm. Frey, age 40, Printer; Lydia Frey, age 28, wife; Isabella Frey, age 11, daughter; Wm. Frey, age 4, son; Walter Frey, age 5 months, son, and Mary Engle, age 36, boarder. Mary had, by that time, divorced William and taken the last name, Engle. Nevertheless, she continued to live with the family until William’s death. There is evidence that she also bore a son by another Russian, Vladimir Muromcev and Frey married Lydia Eichoff, another Russian immigrant. Which of the two women was the mother of the younger children is unknown, and, indeed it is not known if William was the father.

The family moved to England in 1885 and William died in 1888. I have not, as yet, begun to research the English period, but there are many other areas that would be of interest to CV readers, including how the community was run and relationships with neighbors in the Cedar Vale area, which included at least one other Russian family.