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The Cult Dossier · No. 029 · Christian-Derived

Oneida Community

Bible Communists; Perfectionists

1848 – 1881 · Oneida, New York (and Putney, Vermont)

III. THE LONG NINETEENTH CENTURY

Fully religious — Perfectionist Christian commune

Who led it

JOHN HUMPHREY NOYES (1811–1886), Yale-trained, who declared in 1834 that he had achieved sinlessness and that the Second Coming had already occurred in 70 CE, meaning the kingdom of heaven could be built now.

What it worshipped and taught

Christian Perfectionism. Three practices defined it: COMPLEX MARRIAGE — every man was married to every woman, and exclusive romantic attachment (called special love) was condemned and broken up; MALE CONTINENCE — intercourse without ejaculation, which shifted contraceptive responsibility to men and was taught by older women to adolescent boys; and MUTUAL CRITICISM — the group publicly dissected each member's faults in a session that is the direct ancestor of encounter-group and LGAT confrontation techniques.

Who was in it

John Humphrey Noyes; his wife Harriet Holton; Mary Cragin; Charlotte Miller; his son Dr Theodore Noyes, an agnostic who proved a disastrous successor; Pierrepont Noyes, who built the silverware business; Professor John Mears of Hamilton College, who led the campaign against them.

How it ended, or where it stands

Dissolved under legal and internal pressure; converted into a corporation that outlived it by a century.

The dead

—

Of note

The clearest 19th-century example of the leader-controlled sexual economy, complete with a eugenics programme, group confession, and the suppression of pair bonds — every element of which reappears in 20th-century groups.

Its timeline

  1. 1834 Noyes declares his own sinlessness; loses his preaching licence at Yale.
  2. 1846 Complex marriage begins at Putney, Vermont.
  3. 1847 Noyes charged with adultery in Vermont; flees.
  4. 1848 Community re-founded at Oneida, New York.
  5. 1848–1879 Grows to roughly 300 members; becomes prosperous through animal traps, silk thread and later silverware.
  6. 1869–1879 STIRPICULTURE — a eugenics programme. A committee approved which members might conceive; THE STANDARD FIGURE IS 58 CHILDREN BORN BETWEEN 1869 AND 1879, WITH 9 FATHERED BY NOYES HIMSELF. SOME SCHOLARSHIP GIVES 62 CHILDREN AND 10 BY NOYES, the difference probably turning on whether births just outside the formal experiment window are counted. Either way roughly one child in six was his. They were raised communally in the Children's House.
  7. June 1879 Facing prosecution and internal revolt over his insistence on being the first sexual partner of young girls, Noyes flees to Niagara Falls, Ontario, and never returns.
  8. 28 August 1879 Complex marriage abandoned by letter from Noyes.
  9. 1 January 1881 Community reorganised as the joint-stock company Oneida Ltd, which became one of the largest silverware manufacturers in the world.

Its people

John Humphrey Noyes

—

Founder, the Oneida Community · 3 September 1811 – 13 April 1886 · active 1834–1879

Yale-educated, he declared in 1834 that he had achieved sinlessness and lost his preaching licence for it. He built a community around three inventions: complex marriage, in which every man was married to every woman and exclusive love was suppressed as a sin; male continence, intercourse without ejaculation; and mutual criticism, a group session dissecting each member's faults that is the direct ancestor of encounter-group technique. From 1869 he ran a eugenics programme, stirpiculture, personally fathering nine of the 58 approved children. In 1879, facing prosecution and internal revolt over his insistence on being the first sexual partner of the community's young girls, he fled to Canada and never returned.

Before the law. Charged with adultery in Vermont 1847; fled. Never tried. Fled a second prosecution in 1879.

Where things stand. Deceased 1886. The community became Oneida Ltd, a major silverware manufacturer.

  1. 1834 Declares his own sinlessness; loses his licence.
  2. 1846 Complex marriage begins at Putney, Vermont.
  3. 1847 Charged with adultery; flees Vermont.
  4. 1848 Community re-founded at Oneida, New York.
  5. 1869–79 Stirpiculture eugenics programme; 58 children.
  6. June 1879 Flees to Niagara Falls, Ontario.
  7. 13 April 1886 Dies in Canada.

Checked 2026-08-24

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