Work Habits

Rugby’s settlers’ uneven balance between their leisure and labor time limited their chances of the community’s long-term economic viability. While many of the Rugbeians were not monetarily wealthy, they belonged to a genteel class who did not understand the daily need to work the land for a living.

Work Habits

Thomas Hughes envisioned Rugby to be a place where educated, young men learned to work and live off the land, but most of them were oblivious to the rigors of an agrarian lifestyle. Engravings, like the one above, romanticized that life and work habits Hughes envisioned. Though he did not hide the type of work to be done at Rugby, most of the men were not prepared. 

Read an excerpt from Thomas Hughes’s advice to parents and guardians.

To gain experience, a young man worked in the English garden or apprenticed with an experienced farming family for a year. But the latter privilege also came with a price tag of sixty to seventy pounds for that year of hands-on education.1 Once learned, their parents provided them with the means to purchase a small plot of land to farm. Most of the single, Rugby men did not want to work the long hours needed to make this settlement a success and would rather play croquet or hunt.

The colonists attempted various economic ventures, all of which failed, including sheep-raising, dairying, brick and pottery making, and canning.2 The colony organized The Rugby Canning Company LTD in 1883 and hoped to succeed as other utopian settlements had in America. They prepared a factory ready to can tomatoes, printed up labels—complete with the price in shillings and pence—and waited for the harvest. The Rugby Handbook printed in 1884 highlighted the canning company’s potential.

The Rugby Canning Company was organized in 1883, meeting with quite a cordial support from many of Rugby’s most reliable supporters. An admirable building was secured, and adapted to the purposes of the business, and fitted with necessary and most complete machinery. The company are sanguine that the soil and the locality, and the room there is in this section of the South for the industry, will in time, build up a prosperous manufactory.3

But, the gardens did not produce a surplus of tomatoes to can and sell and the idea was given up quickly.4

Despite recommendations by Colonel Killebrew, Minister of Agriculture for Tennessee, the colony made no effort to capitalize on the abundance of timber on the plateau. Chestnut, White Oak, and Hickory trees abounded in the forest, good for the manufacturing of furniture, carriages, and wagons.5 The task of clearing the forest was too arduous for the Rugbeians.

The isolation in the Cumberland Plateau also contributed to Rugby’s unsuccessful economic ventures. There was only one road that led out of the town and a hack service traveled seven miles each way to the railroad station twice a day. A tramway between the two was planned to ease the hassle of the trip but was never built. The Cincinnati Southern railroad planned to run the track out to Rugby, but those plans were never realized. By 1883, a telephone line ran between the railroad station and the main office at Rugby.6 But, the lines of communication were meager for a colony with connections overseas. 

Most of the income to support the colony stemmed from patronage of the Tabard Inn. Thomas Hughes hoped to promote it as a health resort. The rural setting of the Inn in a temperate climate, in the picturesque village of Rugby might appeal to northeasterners accustomed to burgeoning and polluted urban areas. Charles Dana, noted Fourierist and editor of the New York Sun vacationed at the Inn. The Tabard's proximity to water, billiard tables, croquet on the front lawn, and stables boasting 20 blooded horses had the potential to compete with many other vacations spots in the United States.7

After only one year in business, tragedy struck the Tabard and the entire community. In 1881, a typhoid fever epidemic originated from the well water at the Tabard Inn killing seven colonists. This bruised their reputation as a health resort. Rugby rebuilt its hotel, but in 1884 the Inn burned down, only to be rebuilt in 1887 and burn again in 1889. With a streak of unfortunate luck, the Inn could not sustain the colony economically that reached its peak in 1884 at almost 400 residents.8 

The Rugby colonists viewed their venture as an extended holiday, rather than a serious commitment to working the land. After the colony faded in 1888, some settlers continued to live in Tennessee but most returned to England.

Social Clubs / Back to Top

At Rugby, the settlers worked to establish their social life before their economic stability. There were numerous clubs that settlers could participate in from the beginning, such as an Archery Club, Pioneers Football Club, Baseball Club, Isthmian games—Equestrian events, and a Dramatics Club.9 When Hughes first arrived at the settlement, he watched a lawn tennis match that was to his liking and he saw signs marking off a new cricket ground.10 One of the largest sections in the Rugby Handbook discussed amusement and leisure, which began by stating:

The Rugbeians, remembering that “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” have not neglected to supply some of the means of entertainment—and natural surroundings have well seconded their efforts—every one at times requires.11

To feed his constituents’ intellect in rural Tennessee, Rugby established a free public library with 7000 volumes—the only library in the area. Despite broken vows promising donations from the Chicago Municipal Library, Hughes collected a fine assortment of contemporary literature for the use of his colonists of his own volition.12 Accompanying the library was the school, optimistically erected to emulate the reformed public schools Hughes knew in England. Both the library and the school reflected Hughes's commitment to education, even when his colonists worked the land. He had great hopes of beginning a university at Rugby, but the brief life of the colony prevented that dream from coming true. 

1 Hamer, “Thomas Hughes and his American Rugby,” 398.

2Ibid., 405, 407.

3 The Rugby Handbook of the English-American Colony on the Plateau of the Cumberland Mountains in East Tennessee, (np. 1884); reprint (Historic Rugby Press, 1996), 21-2.

4Miller, English Settlement at Rugby, 26.

5 Colonel Killebrew's Report reprinted by Hughes in, Rugby Tennessee Being Some Account of the Settlement Founded on the Cumberland Plateau by the Board of Aid to Land Ownership, Limited, 157-8.

6 Miller, English Settlement at Rugby, 33.

7Ibid., 28.

8 Stagg, 11-14.

9Marguerite Bartlett Hamer, “Thomas Hughes and his American Rugby,” North Carolina Historical Review 5, no.4 (Oct. 1928): 399.

10Hughes, 51-2.

11 Rugby Handbook, 24.

12Hughes donated 7500 books to establish Chicago's first municipal library after their great fire in 1871 upon hearing that Chicago never had a public library. After Hughes established his library at Rugby, the Chicago Library planned to donate 2500 volumes in return for his generosity, but it never followed through on its offer. Brian Stagg, “Tennessee's Rugby Colony,”Tennessee Historical Quarterly 27, no.3 (Fall 1968): 214.