Fruitlands Museums

The rolling hills of the town of Harvard, (not to be confused with Harvard University located in Cambridge) is home to the Fruitlands Museums.

With breathtaking panoramic views overlooking the Nashua River Valley and New Hampshire mountain ranges, this institution is proud of being the first Shaker museum in the United States.

The name "Fruitlands" dates back to over one hundred and fifty years ago, when Bronson Alcott, together with his family and a small following of believers, moved to the area, where the museum is situated, and decided to create a utopian transcendentalist commune.

It was their belief that they could survive by living off the fruits of the land, and abstain from eating or using any animal products or cotton produced by slaves Unfortunately, eight months later, the experiment ended in disaster and the group disbanded.

It is interesting to note that one of the Alcott children was Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women. Apparently, Louisa derived some of her writing inspirations while living at Fruitlands with her family. In the early part of the 1900s, Clara Endicott Sears, a single woman of considerable means, discovered that her 400-acre "gentleman farm" located in Harvard had included the Alcott farmhouse.

Interested in history, art and philosophy, Sears restored the farmhouse and opened it to the public in 1914. It was as a result of her research pertaining to the Alcotts, that she befriended the local Shakers, whose way of life had immensely impressed her.

When the Shaker community closed, they convinced her to move a building together with various manuscripts and furniture from their site to Fruitlands. This eventually led to the opening of the first Shaker Museum in the United States.

In 1927 an arrowhead and other artifacts were discovered on the property, eventually leading to the creation of an Indian Museum, that today comprises a small comprehensive collection of Native American artifacts. In addition, Sears built an art gallery to store and exhibit her collection of Hudson River School landscape paintings and nineteenth-century American vernacular portraits.

Today, Fruitlands rightfully claims to be one of the premier wedding ceremony and reception sites in Central Massachusetts. These are generally celebrated in the picturesque tearoom and in an outdoor tent, that in season is made up of an 18' x 28' dance floor, cathedral window sidewalls, chandelier lighting, and wooden French doors at entryway.The windows have breathtaking views of some of the mountain peaks of Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

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