issues in the fall of 1847. In 1847, Meeker opened a store with his brothers in Cleveland. Rozene was born in 1849 in Munson. The store failed in 1850. Meeker opened another store in Hiram in 1852. He was asked to help found the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute by the Disciples of Christ, but he was furious when his claim was held up because he sold whiskey. He only sold whiskey by prescription, but was so angry over the misunderstanding that he left the church. In 1854, Mary was born in Hiram, and three years later Josephine was born there. Meeker lost his store and property during the Great Panic of 1857. He moved to Dongola, Illinois, where he opened a small store and grew fruit. Meeker wrote articles, often about sociology, that were published by the Cleveland Plaindealer and reprinted by Horace Greeley in the New-York Tribune. His first novel, The Adventures of Captain Armstrong was published in 1856, with Horace Greeley's assistance. Meeker became a war correspondent for Greeley in his Cairo, Illinois office during the Civil War. He was present at and reported on the battle at Fort Donelson, among other journalists such as Junius Henri Browne and Charles Carleton Coffin. Meeker became made an agricultural journalist and editor at the end of the war for the New-York Tribune. Meeker's novel Life in the West or Stories of the Mississippi Valley was published in 1866. He went to the Rocky Mountains for the Tribune in 1869, and was inspired to live there. Union Colony Meeker, who was interested in communal and cooperative farms, created his vision of a utopian community based upon Christianity and communal economic enterprise, which was a modification of Charles Fourier’s definition of a utopian society. With the backing of his editor Horace Greeley, Meeker organized the Union Colony (later the town of Greeley) to be settled in the Colorado Territory. He advertised for applicants to move to the South Platte River basin, in what was intended as a cooperative venture for people of "high moral standards" and temperance. Meeker received approximately 3,000 replies that winter, and accepted about 700 of them to purchase shares. With the capital from the shares, in 1870 Meeker purchased 2,000 acres (8 km2), primarily from Native Americans, at the confluence of the South Platte and the Cache La Poudre River (Powder Bag) rivers near present-day Greeley. The venture