Fruitlands was also hampered by its structure. Alcott and Lane wielded nearly limitless authority and dictated very strict and repressive models for living. "I am prone to indulge in an occasional hilarity", wrote Alcott's wife Abby May, "but seem frowned down into still quiet and peace-less order... [and] am almost suffocated in this atmosphere of restriction and form". The Fruitlands experiment ended only seven months after it began. According to Bronson Alcott, the inhabitants left Fruitlands in January 1844; his daughter, Louisa May, wrote that they left in December 1843, which is considered to be the more accurate date. Alcott was deeply dismayed by the failure of Fruitlands and, moving with his family to live with a nearby farmer, refused to eat for several days. Later, Ralph Waldo Emerson helped purchase a home for the family in Concord. Fruitlands had only a brief opportunity to impact America and the Transcendentalist movement. After it had ended, the land was bought by one of its former participants, Joseph Palmer, who for 20 years used the site as a refuge for former reformers. The property was purchased in 1910 by Clara Endicott Sears, who opened the farmhouse to the public in 1914 as a museum. Today, the Fruitlands Museum also includes a museum on Shaker life, an art gallery of nineteenth-century paintings, and a museum of Native American art and crafts.