Silverware, Sex, and Stirpicults: John Humphrey Noyes and Oneida Community Silver

by Bethany Groff Dorau, Executive Director

Part Two This is a continuation of a previous article. For the last installment, click here.

First, an apology. It has been a month since the last installment of the wild and wonderful tale of John Humphrey Noyes, founder of the Oneida Community, whose family hailed from Newbury, and whose exploits were breathlessly reported in the sizzling pages of the Newburyport Herald. When last we left our dubious hero, it was 1848, and the good people of Putney, Vermont had just called for his arrest, based on a scandalous letter inviting a woman into a "complex marriage". He was facing charges of “adulterous fornication”, and had failed to convince his neighbors of his Perfectionist inability to sin. It was high time for Noyes and his band of self-identified Bible Communists to get out of New England.

Destination: Oneida, New York, naturally, in an area of the country so swept with spiritual fervor, emotional revivals, and the fire of religious awakening, it had become known as the Burned-over District. It was here that Noyes would build his Perfectionist community, and where I would spend my 9th wedding anniversary. 

My one and only spouse, James, snaps a pic at the Oneida Mansion House, October 12, 2023.

Nothing says romance like a night in a free-love commune, right? Upon discovering that John Humphrey Noyes is my third cousin (5x removed), and that it was possible to stay in the mansion, I announced to my long-suffering husband that he would be joining me for ten hours in the car and an overnight in the place where spooning had a whole other meaning. "You mean Oneida like the silverware?" he said. I rolled my eyes. "I'll catch you up on the way," I said. And off we went.

The Oneida Mansion House in its current incarnation is part modern hotel, part museum, and part apartment complex. After five hours of highway, past a looming fluorescent casino and miles of cornfields, there she was, atop a rise, surrounded by neat little houses that seemed nearly all from the first half of the 20th century. We were the only hotel guests, though several of the apartments in the rear of the building were occupied. Our room was beautiful, clearly very recently renovated. We were given the keys to the building and left to wander at our leisure. When the staff left for the night and we were alone, the long halls and disorienting stairways took on a bit of "The Shining" vibe.

The Oneida Mansion House sleeping rooms, unlike public spaces, were plain and utilitarian.

Down the hall from our room was a very different kind of space. The "sleeping rooms" of the Oneida Community reinforced their core beliefs. They were sparse and plain, unlike the beautifully decorated, well-appointed common rooms nearby, which included a theater, libraries, and sitting rooms. Community members were encouraged to spend as much time as possible with each other. There was a small space for personal items, as most everything was to be held in common. And, of course, the bed was very small. Nobody was supposed to get too comfortable. "Sticky" or individual attachments were to be avoided.

The sexual visits or "interviews" held in these rooms were private, but prolonged coupling was discouraged. After all, everyone in the community was married to everyone else. At the core of Noyes' teaching was the idea that non-procreative (though heterosexual) contact produced a kind of electricity, charging the spiritual battery of the community and bringing its members closer to God. The more "interviews," the better.

One of several communal sitting rooms in the Oneida Community Mansion.

John Humphrey Noyes fled to Oneida in 1848, after his unorthodox sexual doctrine led to his arrest in Vermont. Noyes and his followers, now called the "Community" were given land by a Perfectionist sympathizer. Determined to live without "egoism and exclusiveness", Noyes oversaw the construction of a common house for all 84 members of the Community. Within the next five years, he also established branches in Brooklyn and Wallingford, Connecticut.

By the 1860's, the community had outgrown the original mansion house, and another, much larger complex was built, including a separate house for the rearing of children, who could be occasionally visited by their parents. Undue attachment was punished with prolonged separation, however.

Oneida Community founder John Humphrey Noyes (1811-1886). Private collection.

Freed from the demands of motherhood and the management of a household, women were free to work at whatever best suited them. They cut their hair short, wore pants, and served as journalists, accountants, or worked in the fields and factories as they wished. Thus fortified with a full and vigorous workforce, the Community embraced capitalist endeavors, first attempting to grow and preserve fruit for sale, and then, when a Community member turned out to be an excellent trap-maker, throwing their energy into trap production. Later, the Community added silk thread twisting to their endeavors, and after 1877, they began to make the spoons that would found their silverware empire. Community members believed deeply in self-improvement, however, and work was limited to six hours a day, with the remainder of the time for socializing, music, and education.

The Oneida Trap Company laid the groundwork for a utopian community grounded in manufacturing.

John H. Noyes (standing, second row) and his community, shortly after the move to Oneida.

As the Oneida Community became more prosperous, an ageing Noyes began to look to the future. Inspired by current evolutionary theories, he began his own selective reproduction program in 1869. He called this "stirpiculture", and instituted a process whereby morally and physically suitable couples in the community could apply to have a child. Noyes, of course, thought of himself as the most evolved member of the community, and in the end, 10 of the 62 children, called "stirpicults", born between 1869 and 1879 were fathered by him.

This satirical illustration of a young couple applying to be parents was published in 1870.

The Oneida Community's success in its communal phase was dependent on the magnetism and energy of John Humphrey Noyes, and on the devotion of his followers. The stirpiculture program, from which some were excluded, caused rifts in the Community, and there was no clear successor to Noyes, who was growing increasingly deaf and inflexible. Then in June 1879, amid national debate over the Mormon practice of polygamous marriage, Noyes, believing he was about to be charged with statutory rape, left New York for Canada, never to return.

Stay tuned for Part 3, as the Stirpicults rebrand themselves as humble farmers and build an empire from the ashes of the Oneida Community.