Albert Chavannes

Life Chavannes was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, one of six children of the Reverend Adrian Chavannes and his wife, Anna Francillon.

Albert Chavannes married fellow French Swiss immigrant Cecile Bolli in 1857, and the two settled down to a life of dairy farming.

During the Civil War, Chavannes supported the Confederacy. He was part of the citizens-guard that defended Knoxville from a raid by Union general William P. Sanders in June 1863, and later provided an account of this raid in his book, East Tennessee Sketches. In 1864, following the occupation of Knoxville by Union forces, Chavannes moved to Berkshire, New York, where he opened a woodworking shop. In 1870, he moved back to Knox County, where he established a new dairy farm in the Adair Creek area north of Knoxville. Between 1883 and 1885, Chavannes published a journal, The Sociologist. In 1888, Chavannes published his theories on magnetism in his book, Vital Force and Magnetic Exchange.

By the 1890s, Chavannes was exchanging ideas with socialists Lester Frank Ward and Edward Bellamy. In 1892, Chavannes published his first Socioland novel, The Future Commonwealth. That year, Chavannes ran for the state legislature on the Populist ticket, but lost badly. His wife, Cecile, wrote an account of their canvassing trip across rural East Tennessee that was included in their book, East Tennessee Sketches. The new country had been formed circa 1900 by American colonists disenchanted with the ills of American society and the lack of progress in fixing the ills, in spite of the nation's rapidly growing wealth. All children receive the same educational opportunities, and are required to serve a 6-year apprenticeship. Intellectual vital force, he believed, is stored in the brain, emotional vital force is stored behind the heart, and sexual vital force is stored in the genitalia.

Chavannes considered his 1900 work, Lizzie Melton, A Self-Reliant Girl, to be his only full-fledged novel. The book is essentially a critique of Victorian morals regarding women, with the title character being ostracized by the community after becoming pregnant out of wedlock. The novel is set in Richland, New York, with characters and scenes inspired by Chavannes' experiences in the region following the Civil War.