The 19th Century wasn’t just a stodgy, old-fashioned century eagerly awaiting the technological hellscape of the 20th Century. Among other things it was a time of social and cultural experimentation when a lot of new and different ideas were tried. John Humphrey Noyes, who was born September 3, 1811, was one of the pioneers.
Noyes was born in Brattleboro, Vermont, into a fairly prominent family. His father was elected to the US House of Representatives, and his mother was the aunt of the 19th US President, Rutherford B. Hayes. He grew up in a pretty conventional way for the time, then when he was 20 underwent what he later called a “religious conversion.” It was enough to make him change his life plan, which was to study law, and enroll in a theological seminary. Just a year later, he added political activism to his list, organizing one of the nation’s first anti-slavery societies.
He kept up his theological studies, though. Christian theologians were focused on when the second coming of Christ was going to happen, and Noyes calculated that it already had. Not only already had, but it happened nearly 2 millennia ago, in 70 CE. This led him to a second religious conversion, and began to claim that he, himself was completely free of sin. As a person free of sin, evidently there was little or no restriction on what he could do, and he came up with something he called “complex marriage.” It was essentially a group marriage — at first involving himself and his wife along with another married couple. By the time he was 35 or so, he’d attracted some more “converts” (all men, oddly enough) and they began to try to increase the number of young women in their complex marriage.
The authorities, for some reason, overlooked Noyes’ contention that the normal mores and rules didn’t apply to him, and arrested him. He was arraigned in court, but then escaped to upstate New York and founded a utopian town, the Oneida Community. He continued to espouse the idea that no laws or morals applied to him, to the extent that even his friends began to think he was just nuts. His “license to preach” was revoked (evidently you needed a license in those days), but he ignored it and kept preaching anyway. He returned to Putney, Vermont, and founded another communal organization, the Putney Bible School.
He split his time between his two communities, but in 1879 he was tipped off, in Oneida, that he was about to be arrested again. He escaped to Ontario, Canada in the middle of the night, and never returned to the US. Although he kept in touch with many of his followers, the Oneida Community was dissolved two years later and became a commercial company (they had several successful businesses). Noyes eventually announced that “complex marriage” was no longer a good idea, and his followers should live more conventionally. He didn’t make it clear whether this was due to another religious conversion. He passed away in 1886. But the organization that the Oneida Community had become survived, and in 1929 Noyes’ son concentrated the company on its most successful business: silver-plated tableware. By 1935 the company changed its name to Oneida Ltd, and the brand is still around today — although now the company is owned by the Lenox Corporation, and a subsidiary, The Oneida Group, is now known as Anchor Hocking Holdings, Inc. It’s quite a commercial conversion, after being based on several religious ones.
