NASHVILLE — Stephen Gaskin — a visionary who established one of the country’s oldest surviving communes, located in rural Middle Tennessee — has died at age 79.
Gretchen Bates, who grew up on The Farm commune and is close to Mr. Gaskin’s family, said Wednesday that he died of natural causes at his home in Summertown Tuesday.
Bates said that Mr. Gaskin had been ill. She described him as a visionary and spiritual guide who advocated being responsible and giving back to the community.
‘‘He made us think about taking responsibility for your life . . . and trying to give back as much as you possibly could,’’ said Bates, one of the baby boomers of The Farm. ‘‘He really was a visionary.’’
The Farm’s website said: ‘‘We mourn the passing of Stephen Gaskin, our founder and friend. Our community would not exist were it not for his bravery and free spirit.’’
In 1970, Mr. Gaskin and his school bus led a caravan of about 320 hippies to 1,750 acres of rough ridge country where they founded the back-to-basics collective.
By 1980, The Farm’s population had grown to more than 1,200 in Lewis County near Summertown. But a financial crisis a few years later led to a reorganization in which members began paying monthly dues.
The Farm currently has about 200 residents. Most of them work in nearby towns, while others work within the community for homegrown industries such as a book publishing company and soy dairy.
Mr. Gaskin wrote in an opinion piece in 1997 published in The Tennessean newspaper that his ‘‘freethinking’’ philosophy was generational.
Mr. Gaskin said his grandmother, who drove a covered wagon from Tennessee to Texas, was a freethinker who marched in the streets for the right of women to vote. And he said her brother helped organize the longshoremen’s union in San Francisco in the 1930s.