Leonard Abbott

Leonard Abbott (May 20, 1878 – 1953) was an anarchist and socialist best known for co-founding the Stelton Colony and related Ferrer Association in the 1910s.

[2] Having read Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason in his youth, Abbott eschewed college, whose tuition his family could have afforded, and chose to pursue social issues and a conventional career as a magazine editor upon immigrating to the United States in 1898.

[4] Abbott was radicalized through the free speech movement in the Progressive Era, as anarchists were repressed their civil liberties.

But Abbott became best known as a leader of the New Jersey Ferrer Colony, which he helped to split from the Association in 1916 following its 1914 move.

[3] In the middle of the Ferrer affair, Abbott wrote that radical ideas stirred his spirit, and he pursued them almost impulsively, but he believed in principles of self-development and individualism on balance with conservative values, such as self-sacrifice.

Abbott speaking before a crowd, 1910