Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, everybody. We recently got an email from listener
Speaker 1: Ellen who asked us to do a show about the
Speaker 1: onidat Utopia, and that's one that's already in our archive
Speaker 1: from back in tleven from our previous hosts Sarah and Babuina.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's really strongly associated with the
Speaker 1: Anida community was free love and complex marriages. And that
Speaker 1: means that there is a little more sex talk, in
Speaker 1: a little more candid sex talk in today's show than
Speaker 1: you might typically associate with us. It might even be
Speaker 1: a lot more so Happy listening, Welcome to Stuff you
Speaker 1: missed in history Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm
Speaker 1: Deblina Chuckerboarding, and today we're gonna talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about free love. I mean, hopefully that makes you
Speaker 1: keep on listening right away. But I was thinking about
Speaker 1: it because we did a podcast a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: ago on Victoria wood Hall, who was the first female
Speaker 1: presidential candidate. And I don't know if you want to
Speaker 1: give a quick recap of her beliefs on free love. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she basically didn't believe free in free love in the
Speaker 1: sense that everyone should be having sex with each other.
Speaker 1: But she did believe that people should have the choice
Speaker 1: whether or not to be together. So that was just
Speaker 1: a little bit about it. You didn't have to be
Speaker 1: stuck in a marriage if you didn't want to be. Now,
Speaker 1: So we we had her on our minds. And then
Speaker 1: also I co edited an article recently that Molly Edmonds
Speaker 1: wrote one of the hosts of Stuff Mom Never Told
Speaker 1: You on polyamory, and so it came up again, and
Speaker 1: she actually even mentioned the Oneida Community in her article.
Speaker 1: So both of those examples got me thinking about this community,
Speaker 1: which is probably the most famous example of organized free
Speaker 1: love in American history, and it is, of course the
Speaker 1: Oneida Commune or Oneida Community in New York State. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when I first started researching this with you, it seemed
Speaker 1: almost too crazy to be real. I don't know, Maybe
Speaker 1: I've just lived too sheltered a life. Maybe I'm alone
Speaker 1: in this, but I don't know. Can you tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about some of these things? It does
Speaker 1: sound too crazy to be real, And that's partly because
Speaker 1: the people that made up this large Victorian community shared
Speaker 1: not only property and labor, but of course sexual partners,
Speaker 1: and they surprisingly earned boatloads of money through these really
Speaker 1: successful marketing schemes. I think that's sort of the first
Speaker 1: loop in this In this episode, they were actually quite
Speaker 1: successful financially. Another potentially strange fact about them they regarded
Speaker 1: the genders equally and they shared labor, so pretty surprising.
Speaker 1: The ladies even more pantaloons. You can look up pictures
Speaker 1: of them. They have short skirts and little pantaloons underneath.
Speaker 1: And um. Then, maybe the strangest thing of all. Their
Speaker 1: eventual undoing came about when this eugenics inspired breeding pro
Speaker 1: Graham left the younger members yearning for good old fashioned
Speaker 1: courtly love and and monogamous marriage. And for those of
Speaker 1: you who own some fine Oneida silver, you might know
Speaker 1: where it goes from there. The commune doesn't last forever,
Speaker 1: much like a lot of other communes, even those that
Speaker 1: are often considered to be the most successful in American history,
Speaker 1: like Oneida. So who was behind this Oneida community in
Speaker 1: the first place. This guy named John Humphrey. Noise and
Speaker 1: it's not doesn't look like noise. It's n O y
Speaker 1: E s. In case you want to look up this
Speaker 1: guy a little more. But yeah, the commune and the
Speaker 1: ideas behind it came from his ideas and preaching. And
Speaker 1: he was born in eighteen eleven in Vermont. He was
Speaker 1: a wealthy kid. He went to Dartmouth and then to
Speaker 1: law school. Really seemed to be on the right track
Speaker 1: to being a well off New England lawyer until he
Speaker 1: attends a revival of evangelist Charles Finney in eighteen thirty one,
Speaker 1: and at that point he decides to become a minister instead,
Speaker 1: so big career change. But but even then he seems
Speaker 1: like he was possibly on the track to becoming just
Speaker 1: a well off New England minister instead of a lawyer.
Speaker 1: He went to Andover Theological Seminary. From there he transferred
Speaker 1: to Yale. But after that his ideas started to get
Speaker 1: kind of out there, and definitely two out there. For Yale,
Speaker 1: he believed in something called perfectionism, which was the idea
Speaker 1: that after conversion we are free from sin, which obviously
Speaker 1: that idea didn't sit very well with the Calvinist faculty
Speaker 1: at Yale and they denied his ordination. Yeah, so just
Speaker 1: to give you a little background on the beliefs that
Speaker 1: he had. They extend from the central idea of Perfectionism,
Speaker 1: and they're pretty controversial. He, for one thing, thinks the
Speaker 1: Second Coming has come and gone already. In fact, he
Speaker 1: thinks that happened in a d seventy at the destruction
Speaker 1: of the Temple in Jerusalem. This meant that man didn't
Speaker 1: have to wait for heaven to be one with God.
Speaker 1: You could do it here on earth as well. But
Speaker 1: to do so you had to leave the world and
Speaker 1: live according to the laws of heaven, like maybe in
Speaker 1: a commune run by noise. So he gets kicked out
Speaker 1: of Yale, and he starts kind of meeting with other perfectionists,
Speaker 1: learning the drill, talking to people going on the circuit,
Speaker 1: and he decides, well, I'm going to start my own
Speaker 1: group here, and he organizes the Bible Communists in Putney, Vermont,
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty six and preaches love and harmony to them.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting to sort of get a look at
Speaker 1: what type of people were joining this group, the Bible Communists.
Speaker 1: They were mostly small town folks. They came from all
Speaker 1: sorts of occupation, something that probably proved useful down the line,
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe if it had stayed at this level,
Speaker 1: it would have been pretty under the radar. You know,
Speaker 1: a religious group that's too radical for Gale, but not
Speaker 1: so radical that it doesn't fit in in some way
Speaker 1: with all of the revivals sweeping the United States at
Speaker 1: this time, then Noise shakes things up a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he doesn't just keep it at that level. Just a
Speaker 1: year after starting that group, Noise writes the so called
Speaker 1: battle Axe Letter. And this letter it really gets the
Speaker 1: public riled up. It stirs up a lot of controversy
Speaker 1: because it advocates free love. Specifically, it says, quote, when
Speaker 1: the will of God is done on earth as it
Speaker 1: is in heaven, there will be no marriage. And his
Speaker 1: rationale came from scripture. It came from Matthew, which says
Speaker 1: for in the Resurrection, they neither marry nor are given
Speaker 1: in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.
Speaker 1: So Noise took this to mean that marriage should not
Speaker 1: be exclusive. All men should be married to all women
Speaker 1: and it's something called complex marriage. So this is definitely
Speaker 1: an example of free love that's different from the one
Speaker 1: we talked about in the Victoria Woodhole episode. Quite different
Speaker 1: in fact, but the idea, just like Victoria Woodhell made
Speaker 1: Noise in his followers incredibly in its corious and when
Speaker 1: they actually start practicing complex marriage by eighteen forty six,
Speaker 1: which is a little bit after they decide that they're
Speaker 1: going to share all their property and all their belongings,
Speaker 1: it does not sit well with their neighbors in Putney, Vermont,
Speaker 1: not at all. And Noise is arrested for adultery because
Speaker 1: he is married legally, and he jumps bail, and by
Speaker 1: eighteen forty eight he and most of his followers DeCamp
Speaker 1: for Oneida, New York. And there are a few other
Speaker 1: satellite communities, but the main Oneada community is set up
Speaker 1: there in New York and it lasts for another thirty years.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna talk more about free love and that
Speaker 1: aspect of the community later, but first, it's interesting to
Speaker 1: figure out how these perfectionists Biblical communists actually made a living. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: at first they don't write the two hundred people that
Speaker 1: live in this community. They try farming and logging. It's
Speaker 1: a situation where men and women are sharing the same
Speaker 1: rights and lay bur but the community isn't doing well
Speaker 1: enough to support itself for the long term. So then
Speaker 1: things start picking up eventually, though when they start manufacturing
Speaker 1: things again into manufacturing work a little more reliable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So what sorts of things were they manufacturing. They were
Speaker 1: canning and jarring veggies and fruit, also processing silk and printing.
Speaker 1: They were milling grist mills and sawmills both and making
Speaker 1: small goods like traveling bags. Yeah, and there. That was
Speaker 1: all pretty successful for them. But the big win, the
Speaker 1: thing that really made them sustainable, was the invention of
Speaker 1: one of the community's members, a guy named Suel new House,
Speaker 1: and he came up with a new kind of lightweight
Speaker 1: animal trap for for animals, and the trap market at
Speaker 1: the time was not so crowded that you couldn't have
Speaker 1: a new a new trap birth through and so by
Speaker 1: the mid eighteen fifties, they were making so many of
Speaker 1: these traps, and they were selling them so well that
Speaker 1: they had to hire on wade workers, which was kind
Speaker 1: of at odds with their belief because they were not
Speaker 1: only against slavery, they were also against wage labor, and
Speaker 1: especially seasonal wage labor, because at this point people would work,
Speaker 1: they'd have jobs during the summer, and then they'd get
Speaker 1: laid off in the winter, especially in a place like
Speaker 1: New York where there were pretty heavy winters, so here
Speaker 1: they were doing it themselves, you know, hiring seasonally to
Speaker 1: make these traps. But they did create many things. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think we all know some of the results of
Speaker 1: their inventiveness, for example, the Victor mouse trap and the
Speaker 1: Lazy Susan. I was so excited to learn that they
Speaker 1: were responsible for this. It's made such a difference in
Speaker 1: my life. Excellent piece of trivia, I think. Well, And
Speaker 1: the interesting thing about the Lazy season Um, one of
Speaker 1: the important things in the community was that mediocracy was key.
Speaker 1: You were never supposed to be lazy, but you weren't
Speaker 1: supposed to try to strive above all the others. And
Speaker 1: I think it's maybe a little funny that the Lazy
Speaker 1: Susan is the result of that, a convenience product at least.
Speaker 1: But even though some inventions did stand out and some
Speaker 1: adventures did stand out in this community community, that word
Speaker 1: was still definitely the key. Even labor was social. They
Speaker 1: would hold these bees to complete tasks in a timely
Speaker 1: manner um. And maybe you can talk about the bees
Speaker 1: a little more, Sarah, Yeah, I mean probably most people
Speaker 1: are maybe familiar with quilting bees, that kind of thing
Speaker 1: where everybody gets together and you make all the quilts.
Speaker 1: You know, you have the tops piece together already, but
Speaker 1: you go ahead and do the more boring work, which
Speaker 1: is is attaching it to the bottom and putting in
Speaker 1: the padding and everything. But they wouldn't do this just
Speaker 1: for quilts. They would do it for any kind of
Speaker 1: task that needed to be accomplished quickly. So for instance,
Speaker 1: like bringing in the hay it's something you better do
Speaker 1: before it rains heavily, or making these bags. You know,
Speaker 1: they'd all get together. And the interesting thing about it is,
Speaker 1: like you mentioned earlier, they really did emphasize the community aspect.
Speaker 1: It was something that was supposed to be fun, not
Speaker 1: just boring work if you're doing it yourself. And there's
Speaker 1: even a quote from their second annual report where they
Speaker 1: wrote that the task could be done quote at a
Speaker 1: single stroke with all the enthusiastic, sportive feeling of a
Speaker 1: game of ball. That does sound rather exciting, but it
Speaker 1: does beg the question also, if a hayin bee is
Speaker 1: as fun as a game of ball, then what is
Speaker 1: downtime like in this community? And again we see that
Speaker 1: it's really communal. The adults live in what is called
Speaker 1: the mansion house, which was a three story modern home
Speaker 1: complete with shared dining and living spaces. It's a pretty
Speaker 1: handsome home actually still stands. Yeah, and it's interesting. One
Speaker 1: of the perks of living in Oneida meant that because
Speaker 1: of scale, the community could afford some things that other
Speaker 1: people couldn't. They could afford luxuries like um furnaces and
Speaker 1: heated drawing rooms, things that only wealthy people could afford
Speaker 1: at the time. Yeah, because it is a mansion house,
Speaker 1: it just has a lot of people living in it.
Speaker 1: So we're going to take you on a little tour
Speaker 1: of the home. Um, starting in the dining room, which
Speaker 1: could hold the entire community. And I think this is
Speaker 1: a really interesting thing they did to to ensure that
Speaker 1: clicks wouldn't pop up in the dining room as they
Speaker 1: always do, right, Yeah, the typical Yeah, you would take
Speaker 1: your seat by your place in the serving line, so
Speaker 1: I guess you could maybe jump the line to be
Speaker 1: with your friend, but you would essentially be seated at random,
Speaker 1: so so no favorites. After dinner. After dinner with with
Speaker 1: any of your random community members, you would move on
Speaker 1: to the big hall and have a meeting. And the
Speaker 1: hall is sort of the center of the religious aspect
Speaker 1: of this community too, But it doesn't look at all
Speaker 1: like a church. It had paintings of justice and music
Speaker 1: and astronomy and history, allegorical paintings, and it's also where
Speaker 1: members would discuss their spiritual concerns and talk about community
Speaker 1: concerns and then maybe relax a little too and enjoy
Speaker 1: a concert. I think the community kept a band among
Speaker 1: its members or some other kind of entertainment, and it's
Speaker 1: quite the program. And if that program on any given
Speaker 1: night was promising enough, maybe some tourists would stop by
Speaker 1: pay about twenty five cents for an evening of grand entertainment.
Speaker 1: So they build it. Yeah, but the gatherings in the
Speaker 1: big hall, they weren't always that fun. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want to show up on a night where
Speaker 1: they were doing quote mutual criticism, and on those nights
Speaker 1: that's when everyone could basically air their grievances with everyone else.
Speaker 1: Reminds me kind of a festivus, not to make a
Speaker 1: comparison with a fake religion, but um, the mutual criticism
Speaker 1: part is one of the strangest aspects of this to me,
Speaker 1: that you would go face to face with these people
Speaker 1: who you lived with and worked with every day, and
Speaker 1: tell them what was wrong, which could be not only
Speaker 1: you're not working hard enough to support the community, but
Speaker 1: you're working too hard. You're going above and beyond, and
Speaker 1: it's it's not you don't fit in. Yeah. It goes
Speaker 1: back to that goal of mediocrity that you mentioned before.
Speaker 1: So after getting some of these neighborly criticisms off your chest,
Speaker 1: you might go on up to the upper sitting Room,
Speaker 1: which was a well appointed salon where you could page
Speaker 1: through some books like Charles Dickens The Mystery of Edwin Drewd,
Speaker 1: which I think you read recently. I read the spin off.
Speaker 1: You read the spin off. Sorry, my mistake. They wouldn't
Speaker 1: have read the spin off, probably not quite, but they
Speaker 1: might have also read some bound copies of magazines like
Speaker 1: Atlantic Monthly. Anyway, just your basic chill out space, take
Speaker 1: some time off after the hanging, Yeah, and then it's
Speaker 1: off to bed in your private room with a twin bed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And here's the kicker there. You would definitely be by
Speaker 1: yourself when you we're going off to bed. And this
Speaker 1: brings us to the complex marriage which he knew we
Speaker 1: were going to have to talk about. Eventually, it's what
Speaker 1: made the Onida community so infamous, and Noise believed that
Speaker 1: for the community to live without sin, they would need
Speaker 1: to quote mail marriage to the cross. So he was
Speaker 1: against monogamous marriage, but he wasn't against sex. He was
Speaker 1: actually quite in favor of it as long as it
Speaker 1: took place between multiple partners. But he knew that there
Speaker 1: was a potential problem with that, and that was that
Speaker 1: complex marriage would soon produce a whole lot of kids,
Speaker 1: more kids than the community could support. So he instituted
Speaker 1: this practice that he himself had begun after his wife
Speaker 1: had suffered from four premature births and death, and it
Speaker 1: was he called it male continents, and it was basically
Speaker 1: male birth control UM. He decided to do it himself
Speaker 1: after her after her premature births UM. She was quite
Speaker 1: understandably distraught over the death of those four kids, and
Speaker 1: he decided that she shouldn't have to go through it again.
Speaker 1: But he actually turns it into part of his philosophy
Speaker 1: after that. It's not just something that happened personally to him.
Speaker 1: He takes it and makes it part of the community.
Speaker 1: So he separates sex into two components. Essentially, the pleasurable
Speaker 1: aspect of it and the reproductive aspect and treats them
Speaker 1: into entirely different ways. So, since Adam and Eveson, the
Speaker 1: reproductive part had been dominant, but by taking the reproductive
Speaker 1: aspect out of the picture, people would be free to
Speaker 1: indulge in the more pleasurable part. So this is how
Speaker 1: he saw it. Yeah, and this male continence idea that
Speaker 1: he comes up with really does work pretty well for
Speaker 1: the community as far as limiting the number of children born,
Speaker 1: because between eighteen forty eight and eighteen sixty nine only
Speaker 1: thirty one kids are born. And we're going to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about kids in the community later,
Speaker 1: But after they were weaned, they were raised communally in
Speaker 1: this children's house by guardians. But there aren't just rules
Speaker 1: about how people were supposed to have sex and not reproduced.
Speaker 1: There were also rules about how the matchups even were made. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the main thing about these rules is that there
Speaker 1: were no secrets, right. That was the essential component here.
Speaker 1: For example, if you had sex with someone, it wasn't
Speaker 1: even happening in a private room. Instead, you would go
Speaker 1: to these small trysting rooms, is how they were known.
Speaker 1: I think right off of the upper sitting room, and
Speaker 1: you could essentially book a room for a few hours,
Speaker 1: but everybody knew about it when you did. It seems
Speaker 1: so awkward to they are right off the room. I
Speaker 1: think one that is still in existence as a as
Speaker 1: a show piece really is right off the sitting room
Speaker 1: where everyone is hanging out. But really everyone already knew
Speaker 1: who was matched up anyways, because couples had to be
Speaker 1: approved by the Central Guidance Committee, which was made of
Speaker 1: course of Noise and his family and other elders. And
Speaker 1: they not only approved the couples, but they kept an
Speaker 1: eye out for anyone that was getting too exclusive, because
Speaker 1: that was of course at odds with the community's ideals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and other couplings were enforced and created by the committee itself,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a strange idea. This is where
Speaker 1: it gets a little disturbing. Yeah, Noise would initiate teen girls,
Speaker 1: while his wife and sister would do the same for boys.
Speaker 1: So this is one type of arrangement that was made
Speaker 1: to sort of introduce these younger people into the system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and these these couples that were formed by the committee
Speaker 1: not because of some other attraction. After the members hit
Speaker 1: their twenties, they were usually allowed to choose have a
Speaker 1: little more choice in who their partners were going to be.
Speaker 1: But interestingly, it is this regulation surround ding not just sex,
Speaker 1: but eventually child bearing that eventually signaled the beginning of
Speaker 1: the end for the community. So Noise decided that it
Speaker 1: seemed like the Kingdom of Heaven wasn't immediately on hand,
Speaker 1: and he started thinking that maybe they should start having
Speaker 1: more children and and beef up the numbers a little
Speaker 1: bit and have the community grow. So he started to
Speaker 1: approve natural reproduction, no longer using male continents. But there's
Speaker 1: a catch, only the reproduction between partners that seemed to
Speaker 1: be a good spiritual match with each other. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: calls it Sturp culture. That's the name that he gave it,
Speaker 1: and it basically says that only those with the highest
Speaker 1: spiritual development will be allowed to reproduce. So couples would
Speaker 1: have to apply to the committee and either be accepted, rejected,
Speaker 1: or rematched with another person. And it was pretty successful.
Speaker 1: Forty eight kids or fifty eight, depending on which you read,
Speaker 1: were born between eighteen sixty nine and eighteen sevent nine.
Speaker 1: Nine of those were Noise kids. Because of course, he
Speaker 1: has the highest level of spiritual development. And one of
Speaker 1: the strange things about this is, of course it is
Speaker 1: very much inspired by eugenics. It's spiritual, but it is eugenics,
Speaker 1: and he had read quite a bit about it and
Speaker 1: was trying to emulate that. But obviously it read a
Speaker 1: lot of hard feelings. In addition to children, there were
Speaker 1: couples who were rejected, who felt jealous of the people
Speaker 1: who did get to have children. Some of the new
Speaker 1: parents were sad because they're forced to turn their kids
Speaker 1: over to this communal upbringing. And so by eighteen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: some of the younger community members were getting really tired
Speaker 1: of it. They were getting fed up with being rejected
Speaker 1: or matched with the people they didn't want, or having
Speaker 1: to give up their kids, and they wanted romance and
Speaker 1: monogamous marriage and family, and so some of them started
Speaker 1: to pull up and leave the community, often when they
Speaker 1: were rejected by the committee. And trouble was compounded by
Speaker 1: noise passing on administration more and more to his son Theodore,
Speaker 1: who was not very competent, and in eighteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: he fled to Canada because he was faced with this
Speaker 1: moral lawsuit, and it only took two months for the
Speaker 1: community to end the practice of complex marriage and mutual criticism.
Speaker 1: Can imagine maybe people are a little bit tired of that,
Speaker 1: but it's interesting to see how how quickly it crumbles
Speaker 1: with without him, it dissolved quickly. But it didn't end there, right,
Speaker 1: not exactly after the community dissolved in a couple of months.
Speaker 1: Within a year, they became a corporation, which is a
Speaker 1: total surprise. Which was as a total shock, but I
Speaker 1: mean when you look at it, they already had the
Speaker 1: foundations for this and this share all things group. They
Speaker 1: got together and decided that instead of property and partners,
Speaker 1: they would share talk in business. Yeah, So they formed
Speaker 1: the Oneida Community Limited, which was a joint stock company
Speaker 1: that made silver plate. Because they were quite successful and
Speaker 1: good in this manufacturing realm, and probably they were also
Speaker 1: thinking they had invested their life's work into a community,
Speaker 1: you want to get some kind of return on it,
Speaker 1: even if it's in the form of stock. That sort
Speaker 1: of goes against their their original community ideals. But Onida
Speaker 1: Silver is of course still one of the most famous
Speaker 1: American silver companies today. Of their motto. Interestingly, like I
Speaker 1: checked out their website to see what they were what
Speaker 1: they were offering these days, and their motto is bring
Speaker 1: life to the table, which I'm probably reading too much
Speaker 1: into that. And the mansion house is also still intact.
Speaker 1: You can tour it, stay the night, and some people
Speaker 1: even rent apartments there. Only one trusting room is still
Speaker 1: left for show, however, the one I mentioned that is
Speaker 1: really right off of the upper sitting room. And um,
Speaker 1: I think maybe we could close out with this quote
Speaker 1: from an Oneida expert. He's a historian, Robert S. Fogerty,
Speaker 1: and he wrote quote, there's some who think Noise is
Speaker 1: just a lecture, pure and simple. There are others who
Speaker 1: believe that he was a great forward thinking individual who
Speaker 1: is a great religious figure. I think it's fifty fifty
Speaker 1: to be honest. Thank you so much for joining us
Speaker 1: for this Saturday Classic SyncE. This is out of the archive.
Speaker 1: If you heard an email address or a Facebook U
Speaker 1: r L or something similar during the course of the show,
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