In the 1960's when communes became newsworthy, I thought that an ideal way to live. Then of course Charles Manson and Family made the news for the brutal slaying of actress Sharon Tate and friends I started to doubt. Yesterday while surfing the web I came across a history of a commune that existed in the 1800's in a place that is not that far from me. After reading this, I am positive that communes are the place to live, that is if you want this much control in your life. I tend to think for myself, which wouldn't work in utopia.
The Oneida Community was a utopian commune founded by John Humphrey Noyes in 1848 in Oneida, New York. The community believed that since Christ had already returned in the year 70 AD it was possible for them to bring about Christ's millenial kingdom themselves, and be free of sin and perfect in this lifetime (a belief called Perfectionism).
The Oneida Community practiced Communalism (in the sense of communal property and possessions), Complex Marriage, Male Continence, Mutual Criticism and Ascending Fellowship. There were smaller communities in Wallingford, Connecticut; Newark, New Jersey; Putney, Vermont; and Cambridge, Vermont. The community's original 87 members grew to 172 by February 1850, 208 by 1852 and 306 by 1878. With the exception of the Wallingford community, which remained in operation until devastated by a tornado in 1878, all the rest of the branches were closed in 1854. The Oneida Community dissolved in 1881, and eventually became the silverware giant Oneida Limited.
Community structure
Males and females had equality and equal voice in the governance of the community. A community nursery provided care for infants and children so that both parents could work. Females adopted a style of dress, believed to have been copied from the Iroquois, consisting of a short skirt over trousers (bloomers). This allowed them much greater freedom of movement than contemporary women's styles.
Even though the community reached a maximum population of about three hundred, it had a complex bureaucracy of twenty-seven standing committees and forty-eight administrative sections.
The Oneida Community was a self-supporting enterprise. Its primary industries were the growing and canning of fruits and vegetables, the production of silk thread, and the manufacture of animal traps. They were the primary supplier of animal traps to the Hudson Bay Company. The manufacturing of silverware, the sole remaining industry, was not begun until 1877, relatively late in the life of the Oneida Community. Secondary industries of the Oneida Community included the manufacture of leather travel bags, the weaving of palm-frond hats, the construction of rustic garden furniture, and tourism.
Complex marriage
In theory, every male was married to every female. In practice, this meant that most adults had continuous sexual access to a partner. Community members were not to have an exclusive sexual or romantic relationship with each other, but were to keep in constant circulation. To help prevent a "special love" from forming, each Community member had his or her own bedroom. This extended even to couples who came to the Community already married. A married couple entering the Community was not required or even encouraged to legally dissolve their union, but rather to extend the borders of it to the rest of the Community in complex marriage. The average female Community member had three sexual encounters, or "interviews", a week.
Post-menopausal women were encouraged to introduce teenage males to sex, providing both with legitimate partners that rarely resulted in pregnancies. Furthermore, these women became religious role models for the young men. Noyes often used his own judgment in determining the partnerships which would form and would often encourage relationships between the non-devout and the devout in the community, in the hopes that the attitudes and behaviors of the devout would influence the non-devout.
Male continence
Males were encouraged to avoid orgasms during intercourse with their partners, as a sign of grace. (Compare with Tantric sex.) This meant that many sexual acts did not cause impregnation of the female partner. This practice was based on the idea that "wasting" a man's semen was bad, and that difficult pregnancies for women should be avoided. (Noyes' wife had lost four of five children during her pregnancies.) The Oneida Community had a low fecundity rate, although there are around 40 unplanned pregnancies documented during the early years of the Oneida Community.
Male Continence is based on the male's muscular ability to control his ejaculation during sexual coitus. Young boys just entering puberty were only allowed to participate in sexual acts with women who were past the child bearing age until they had proved their fully mastered ability to control ejaculation. Many women of the community found male continence to lead to the furtherment of their sexual enjoyment, as sexual encounters often could last for more than one hour.
There were rumors at the time claiming that controlling the man's 'seed' could be detrimental to the male's health and lead to infertility, but these claims were later disproved.
Mutual criticism
Every member of the community was subject to criticism by committee or the community as a whole, during a general meeting. The goal was to eliminate bad character traits. Various, contemporary sources contend that Noyes himself was the subject of criticism, although less often and of probably less severe criticism than the rest of the community.
Ascending fellowship
John Humphrey Noyes believed that sex had social and spiritual purposes, not only biological. To Communitarians, it was yet another path to perfection. Generally, it was believed that older people were spiritually superior to younger people, and men were spiritually superior to women. Noyes and his inner circle were at the top of this hierarchy in the Community. In order to improve oneself, one was only supposed to have sexual relations with those spiritually superior. This was called "ascending fellowship." Once a Community member had reached a certain level (usually determined by Noyes and his inner circle), they were then to turn around and practice "descending fellowship" with those Communitarians trying to work their way up.
Stirpiculture
Stirpiculture was not in practice at the founding of the Oneida Community, but was introduced in 1869. It was a selective breeding program designed to create even more perfect children. Communitarians who wished to be parents would go before a committee and get matched based on their spiritual and moral qualities. 53 women and 38 men participated in this program, which necessitated the construction of a new wing of the Oneida Community Mansion House. The experiment yielded 58 children, nine of whom were fathered by Noyes.
Once children were weaned from breast milk (usually at around the age of one), they were raised communally in the Children's Wing, or South Wing. Their parents were allowed to visit, but if those in charge of the Children's Wing suspected a parent and child were bonding too closely to one another, the Community would enforce a period of separation.
Decline
The community lasted until John Humphrey Noyes attempted to pass the leadership of the Community to his son, Theodore Noyes. This move was unsuccessful because Theodore Noyes was an atheist and lacked his father's talent for leadership. The move also divided the Community, with Communitarian John Towner attempting to wrest control for himself.
Within the commune, there was a debate about when children should be initiated into sexual rituals, and by whom. There was also much debate about its practices as a whole. The founding members of the Community were aging or deceased, and many of the younger Communitarians desired to enter into exclusive, traditional marriages.
The coping stone to all these pressures was the harassment campaign of Professor Mears, of Hamilton College. John Humphrey Noyes was tipped off by trusted adviser Myron Kinsley that a warrant for his arrest on charges of statutory rape was imminent. Noyes fled the Oneida Community Mansion House and the country in the middle of a June night in 1879, never to return to America alive. Shortly afterwards, he wrote to his followers from Niagara Falls, Ontario, advising that the practice of complex marriage be abandoned.
Complex Marriage was abandoned in 1879 following external pressures and the community soon after broke apart with some of the members reorganizing as a joint-stock company. Marital partners normalized their status with the partners they were cohabiting with at the time of the re-organization. Over 70 Community members entered into a traditional marriage in the following year.
The joint-stock corporation is still in existence as of 2006 and is a major producer of cutlery under the brand name "Oneida Limited" OTCBB: ONEI. In September 2004 Oneida Limited announced that it would cease all manufacturing operations in the beginning of 2005, ending a 124 year tradition. The company would continue as a marketer for products manufactured overseas. The company has been selling off its manufacturing facilities. Most recently, the distribution center in Sherrill, New York was closed. Administrative offices remain in the Oneida area.
The last original member of the community, Ella Florence Underwood (1850-1950), died on June 25, 1950 in Kenwood, New York near to Oneida, New York.[1][2]
Until last year Oneida Silversmiths was a viable part of our local economy. Strange that it's genesis occured from one mans desire to have a harem.
