While Benton County in far northwest Arkansas has grown more diverse in recent years, it is still known as a conservative area. I recall being surprised years ago when I learned that a vegetarian commune existed in rural Benton County before the Civil War. Recently I was again surprised to come across information on a different experiment in vegetarian living in Benton County, this time in 1903.
In the autumn of 1903 the Arkansas Gazette carried a brief report datelined Rogers on "Conable's Arkansas Colony, No Breakfast Eaten and No Animal Life Destroyed." While the reporter began by noting that Edgar Wallace Conable had founded "a strange health colony in Colorado several years ago," the story was reported in a relatively straightforward manner.
Conable had "abandoned the high altitude of the Rockies" and purchased 8,000 acres of land in Benton County where he was developing a colony for several hundred of his followers. Fruit trees were being planted and buildings erected. Most of the news story dealt with Conable's unusual theology and philosophy. He planned to establish a colony "on fruitarian lines," to use his own words.
"The colonists eat no breakfast. The men do not love their wives, nor do the wives love their husbands. Living in family groups is a mere matter of form," reported the newspaper. The story continued, "No form of animal life must be killed on the premises, but it is the endeavor of the colonists to drive away all kinds of insects and pests."
Conable's magazine, Conable's Path-Finder, was devoted to "the higher development of the Human Race--Physical and Metaphysical." Conable used the pages to promote "the highest form of physical and mental life." He regarded fasting as a means of cleansing and strengthening the body. He boasted of a follower named Miss Reda Benjamin who had recently completed a 25-day fast "without any bad effect to her body." "She has muscles," Conable continued, "as hard as an athlete and is a perfect specimen of physical womanhood."
Conable had no use for medical doctors. According to news reports, "no physicians are allowed in the colony." A New York Sun article summarized Conable's system: "Whenever a person is ill he is placed under the care of one of the health teachers, who, by a system of cereal and fruit products, and by fasting or starving the disease, as they say, attempts to cure the patient."
Conable was far from the most famous man to mix eating cereals with health and happiness. W.K. Kellogg of Battle Creek, Mich., began his famous company in 1906 after inventing a dried breakfast cereal. As a devout member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, Kellogg's development of Corn Flakes dry cereal was motivated by both spiritual and business impulses. Conable and Kellogg might have shared a belief in a vegetarian diet, but that was about as far as the similarities went.
Conable was definitely outside the American mainstream in his medical and theological theories. And there's politics: Conable was a socialist. Conable did not get run out of Benton County on a rail for being a socialist because in 1903 socialists were much more a part of the political mainstream, even running candidates for public office in numerous Arkansas cities and counties.
Actually, Benton County residents seem to have welcomed Conable. He hobnobbed with local business and political leaders. A post office was established at his colony. He traveled about the county. Conable announced plans to build a railroad spur to his colony. But suddenly, after only an eight-month stay, Conable left Arkansas and took his followers to California. He blamed the departure on poor agricultural production on colony lands and the unpredictable weather.
It is interesting to contrast Conable's tolerant reception in Benton County to the way a pre-Civil War vegetarian commune was hounded out of the area. In 1857 the Harmonial Vegetarian Society bought a tract of land on the edge of Beatie's Prairie near Maysville in western Benton County. The Society grew to 38 members by 1860.
Local residents did not welcome these "grass-eaters," and they were hauled into local court and convicted of Sabbath breaking. This action caused an indignant Fayetteville editor to wax eloquent about "religious intolerance" in Benton County. In 1861 the Confederate military took over the Society's main building and used it for a hospital.
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Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com. An earlier version of this column was published on Oct. 17, 2010.
Editorial on 04/19/2015