New York's Utopian Oneida Commune Lasted Three Decades -- Sex Was Free But Controlled By Leaders

ONEIDA, N.Y. - Victor Hawley yearned to father a child, but the "breeding committee" said no. Instead, his beloved Mary Jones was impregnated by the son of the commune's leader.

It sounds like the far-fetched plot of some futuristic soap opera. But it's a page out of American history.

Hawley was one of 300 Bible communists who lived in the Oneida Community, a group of Christian Perfectionists led by John Humphrey Noyes. Hawley wrote of his tormented love affair in a diary kept in 1877, as Oneida was nearing the end of its 30-year adventure in group living, socialist industry and idiosyncratic sex.

Regarded as the most successful of 19th-century America's 40-odd utopian communes, Oneida has long intrigued social historians. A dozen books have been written about the community, which was born in an era of religious zeal and ultimately evolved into the world's largest silverware company, Oneida Ltd.

The two latest books are Spencer Klaw's "Without Sin," published last September by Penguin Books, and Robert S. Fogarty's "Special Love, Special Sex," to be published in June by Syracuse University Press.

DOCUMENTS NOW AVAILABLE

Both writers make use of a rich archive of documents recently opened to the public as part of an effort to make Oneida more widely known.

Hawley's diary is the basis for the book by Fogarty, a history professor at Antioch College who has written extensively on utopian communities.

"Oneida remains one of the most fascinating historical subjects available," Fogarty said in a telephone interview. "It's a great intellectual and social puzzle."

The charismatic Noyes brought his band of disciples to this rural spot 100 miles west of Albany in 1848. They built an imposing brick edifice called the Mansion House, where they strived to live without sin, selflessly sharing everything: work, play, intellectual studies, Bible readings, housework, child-rearing and sexual partners.

Monogamous marriage, which might pit a couple's interests against those of the group, was replaced by "complex marriage." All were as one family. Children were raised communally, apart from their mothers, who might otherwise develop an "idolatrous" love for them.

Klaw recounts how Oneida girls ceremoniously burned their favorite dolls to overcome the "doll spirit," a form of "graven image" worship that distracted from studies. He quotes the diary of Frank Wayland-Smith, an Oneida leader forced to give up his violin because Noyes felt he loved music more than community obligations.

Hard work was a major theme at Oneida. The commune supported itself by farming, canning fruit and vegetables, and making silk thread, travel bags, brooms, chains, rustic seats, silver spoons and, most profitably, steel animal traps.

Sex was also a big part of life at Oneida. Noyes, claiming divine inspiration, encouraged free and vigorous sex within the community, comparing it to religious ecstasy.

There were rules, however. One was "male continence." Men were required to avoid sexual climax, as a means of birth control. Noyes likened it to rowing a boat near a waterfall. Just stay out of the rapids, he said.

Another rule involved what Noyes called "ascending fellowship." Young people were paired sexually with their elders, for spiritual benefits. Noyes took on the duty of initiating virgins, as young as 13, into the "complex marriage."

The hardest rule for Hawley, a dental assistant and insect collector, was the one forbidding "special love." To prevent such romantic attachments, a committee cleared all sexual liaisons and saw that people kept circulating.

Eventually, Noyes got interested in "scientific breeding" to create a spiritually superior race. In 1869 he initiated the only major eugenics experiment undertaken in America. Noyes himself sired nine of the 58 "stirpicults," as he termed the children born of committee-approved parents.

The community disbanded in 1881, after an aging Noyes fled to Canada, fearing arrest on adultery and fornication charges. By then, the religious zeal that sustained the community had waned, internal disputes had arisen, and no strong leader emerged to replace the messianic Noyes.

The dissolved community's assets were formed into a joint-stock company, now Oneida Ltd., which boasts the most-recognized name in silverware.

Oneida Ltd. was a true family business for decades after the commune disbanded, led by sons of Noyes and other former communists. Today, there are few commune descendants among the corporate brass, who stress inventiveness and productivity rather than sex when asked about the old community.

A vast collection of Oneida diaries, letters and records - 80 linear feet of boxes - was donated to the Syracuse University library about 1983, said Mark Weimer, curator of the collection. "But the owners put a restriction on that and closed access until about a year ago," he said.

"The anguish people went through during the eugenics period was really downplayed previous to people seeing these records," Fogarty said.

"Oneida is a powerful example of how people struggle with the idea of God and their relationship to God, and how to deal with two primal passions: sex and the desire for property and power," said Richard Kathmann, director of the Mansion House.

He was hired two years ago to develop the Mansion House as a museum and center for scholarly studies, after he helped build a national profile for a Shaker community in New Hampshire.

MANSION HAS 300 ROOMS

The 300-room Mansion House, now run by the nonprofit educational group Oneida Community Mansion House Inc., is a home as well as a museum, with 35 apartments, 10 hotel rooms and 10 dormitory rooms. Visitors can partake of elegant meals served family style in the dining room alongside residents, about 40 percent of whom are elderly descendants of the old community.

"I tell people what they want to know when they ask questions," said John Humphrey Noyes III, 81, who worked as a salesman for Oneida Ltd. for 40 years and moved into the Mansion House in 1987. "Both my parents were born here in this house."

"I've learned a lot from the people investigating and writing about the old community, things I never knew," said Emily Herrick Schmidt, 90.

Schmidt is the granddaughter of Frank Wayland-Smith, the violinist. But her family didn't talk about their ancestry when she was growing up.

"My grandmother was very embarrassed," she said.

Schmidt, who worked for Oneida Ltd. for 30 years and moved to the Mansion House in 1980, is proud of her forebears, not embarrassed.

"I think they were splendid people, deadly earnest about having a mission, a real calling," she said.