Stirpiculture in the Oneida Community :: essays research papers

Stirpiculture in the Oneida Community   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  John Humphrey Noyes, a native of Brattleboro, Vermont, rebelled from religion from a young age and after a near death experience became devoted to the goal of being introduced to the ministry. The most influential reasoning to Noyes’ theory was that of Perfectionism, in which believers reached perfection at conversion. Following extensive failure, Noyes finally acquired a following in 1844 in which the thirty-seven members lived communally. Two years later, the prominent ideals began to originate such as â€Å"Complex Marriages† and â€Å"Male Continence.† The Oneida Community’s doctrines had many components, but the basis of the community was centered on the idea of complex marriages. The practice of complex marriages provides the source for many controversial ideas they enacted in addition to what some saw as â€Å"free love.† One such idea was the experiment for the superior race through a monitored procedure known as stirpicu lture. Based upon social Darwinism, the eugenics experiment known as stirpiculture caused unrest in and out of the community.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The stirpiculture experiment, named by John Noyes, began in 1869 as a project to create a race of geniuses. Noyes ideology stemmed from Darwin’s Origin of Species which promoted the â€Å"survival of the fittest† (Carden 61). The selection process was vigorous, including submitting an application to a cabinet of central members who would make the final decision of whether the couple would suffice for the experiment (Whitworth 130). A majority of couples selected their own mates, while a quarter were suggested pairs by the committee (Carden 62). The Oneida founder strived to reach this superior race through the careful selection of healthy, beautiful, and intelligent couples. Noyes and the cabinet’s criterion involved being very spiritually refined, while his son Theodore looked more at the physical condition of the prospective candidates. As early as 1859, women were prescribed to enjoy fresh air, the outdoors and the continual development of mental and spiritual qualities (Kern 263). Women were a necessary part of the eugenics experiment, but Noyes and others thought the choice of the fathers was the key to selective breeding (Kern 232).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The women’s ages ranged from twenty-three to forty-two, the men from twenty five thru sixty; often the fathers were ten or more years older than the female participants (Kern 250). One such woman was the niece and lover of John Noyes, Tirzah Miller, she was the embodiment of the ideal woman of the Oneida community, strong in her convictions and firm in the beliefs of the Perfectionist community (Fogarty 17).