On a rainy day in May of 1915, the first settlers of the Ferrer Colony of Stelton got off their train from New York and walked about a mile to their new homes. The crowd on its way to the old farmstead included 32 children who would be enrolled in the radical school that anchored the community.

While there was no political test to participate, committed anarchists and reformers with libertarian leanings were the driving force behind the school and made up a large number of Stelton residents. They were leaving the city behind to build a community where the Modern School model of Francisco Ferrer could be tested away from the struggles and investigations that the school in New York could not avoid. The community they founded was not without its problems, but it would grow and thrive for years, creating a pocket of freedom that nurtured many students and gave all residents a chance to participate in cooperative living that respected their individual liberty. Even after the community lost its identity and the school closed in 1953, many former residents recall their time at Stelton as a good time that shaped them into the people they are today.

The Martyred Educator

Francisco Ferrer was born on a farm near Barcelona in 1859. He fled to France in 1885 after a failed republican uprising against the Spanish monarchy. While in France, Ferrer was heavily influenced by anarchist thought and inspired by a libertarian school he saw. A wealthy French woman whom Ferrer had tutored in Spanish left him half of her estate when she died. He returned to Barcelona in 1901 and used his new money to found the Modern School.

Ferrer schools were intended to help students – children and adults – pursue self-realization by providing them with opportunities to develop their knowledge and skills. They avoided drilled instruction, planned lessons, and strict schedules. Modern School education emphasized the individuality of each student, the concept of education as a continuous, lifetime process, and the need to learn through experience and the integration of physical and intellectual activity. The schools were to improve individual lives as well as society by making services available to everyone. Tuition was kept low to attract working class families, and boys and girls learned together.

Ferrer was arrested after the Spanish military suppressed an uprising against conscription in Barcelona during the summer of 1909, an event known as the Tragic Week. It was a convenient excuse for church and state to get rid of a man who created schools that undermined their rule. Ferrer was executed on October 13, 1909 to international outrage.

In June 1910 the Francisco Ferrer Association was formed in New York City. While the Ferrer Association was not a strictly anarchist project, from the beginning anarchists took leading roles in the organization. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were prominent Ferrer Association figures, Voltairine de Cleyre had a number of important roles, and a significant number of those who lived in Stelton were anarchists or people with libertarian sympathies.

Harry Kelly, an anarchist who served as the first professional organizer of the Ferrer Association wrote in 1913 that a “libertarian impulse” was at the base of the Association’s work.

The predominating spirit is anarchistic; yet it cannot be too strongly insisted on that the association as such is not committed to any special economic theory or political ideal… The interpretation of freedom and justice and how to attain them differ, but free expression of opinion and interchange of ideas is the working method.

The Ferrer Center of New York became an important anchor for educational experiments and adult programs, with Jack London, Will Durant, Margaret Sanger, Lincoln Steffens, Clarence Darrow, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn all passing through its doors. Men and women of all economic classes came to the Ferrer Center to learn and socialize. Ferrer Association leaders debated whether a setting away from urban life would be better for the development of the school. The decision was tipped in favor of moving in the summer of 1914, when a bomb intended to avenge violence against workers and protesters exploded in a New York apartment, killing four people who had attended lectures at the Ferrer Center.

The Pioneers ...