Oneida: From Free Love Utopia To The Well-set Table
by Ellen Wayland-Smith /
2016 / English / EPUB
5.4 MB Download
A fascinating and unusual chapter in American history about a
religious community that held radical notions of equality, sex,
and religion―only to transform itself, at the beginning of the
twentieth century, into a successful silverware company and a
model of buttoned-down corporate propriety.
A fascinating and unusual chapter in American history about a
religious community that held radical notions of equality, sex,
and religion―only to transform itself, at the beginning of the
twentieth century, into a successful silverware company and a
model of buttoned-down corporate propriety.
In the early nineteenth century, many Americans were looking for
an alternative to the Puritanism that had been the foundation of
the new country. Amid the fervor of the religious revival known
as the Second Great Awakening, John Humphrey Noyes, a spirited
but socially awkward young man, attracted a group of devoted
followers with his fiery sermons about creating Jesus’ millennial
kingdom here on Earth. Noyes established a revolutionary
community in rural New York centered around achieving a life free
of sin through God’s grace, while also espousing equality of the
sexes and “complex marriage,” a system of free love where sexual
relations with multiple partners was encouraged. Noyes’s belief
in the perfectibility of human nature eventually inspired him to
institute a program of eugenics, known as stirpiculture, that
resulted in a new generation of Oneidans who, when the Community
disbanded in 1880, sought to exorcise the ghost of their fathers’
disreputable sexual theories. Converted into a joint-stock
company, Oneida Community, Limited, would go on to become one of
the nation’s leading manufacturers of silverware, and their brand
a coveted mark of middle-class respectability in pre- and
post-WWII America.
In the early nineteenth century, many Americans were looking for
an alternative to the Puritanism that had been the foundation of
the new country. Amid the fervor of the religious revival known
as the Second Great Awakening, John Humphrey Noyes, a spirited
but socially awkward young man, attracted a group of devoted
followers with his fiery sermons about creating Jesus’ millennial
kingdom here on Earth. Noyes established a revolutionary
community in rural New York centered around achieving a life free
of sin through God’s grace, while also espousing equality of the
sexes and “complex marriage,” a system of free love where sexual
relations with multiple partners was encouraged. Noyes’s belief
in the perfectibility of human nature eventually inspired him to
institute a program of eugenics, known as stirpiculture, that
resulted in a new generation of Oneidans who, when the Community
disbanded in 1880, sought to exorcise the ghost of their fathers’
disreputable sexual theories. Converted into a joint-stock
company, Oneida Community, Limited, would go on to become one of
the nation’s leading manufacturers of silverware, and their brand
a coveted mark of middle-class respectability in pre- and
post-WWII America.
Told by a descendant of one of the Community’s original families,
Ellen Wayland-Smith's
Told by a descendant of one of the Community’s original families,
Ellen Wayland-Smith'sOneida
Oneida is a captivating story that
straddles two centuries to reveal how a radical, free-love sect,
turning its back on its own ideals, transformed into a purveyor
of the white-picket-fence American dream.
is a captivating story that
straddles two centuries to reveal how a radical, free-love sect,
turning its back on its own ideals, transformed into a purveyor
of the white-picket-fence American dream.