Stirpiculture in the Oneida Community :: essays research papers

Stirpiculture in the Oneida Community tush Humphrey Noyes, a native-born of Brattleboro, Vermont, rebelled from religion from a young age and after a weedy death experience became devoted to the goal of being introduced to the ministry. The most powerful rea boying to Noyes theory was that of Perfectionism, in which believers reached perfection at conversion. Following blanket(a) failure, Noyes finally acquired a following in 1844 in which the thirty-seven members lived communally. 2 years later, the prominent ideals began to originate such as Complex Marriages and anthropoid Continence. The Oneida Communitys doctrines had umteen components, but the basis of the community was touch on 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 scanty love. One such idea was the experi manpowert for the first-rate laundry by dint of 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.The stirpiculture experiment, named by John Noyes, began in 1869 as a project to create a race of geniuses. Noyes ideology stemmed from Darwins Origin of Species which promoted the survival of the fittest (Carden 61). The selection lick was vigorous, including submitting an application to a cabinet of central members who would make the final last of whether the couple would suffice for the experiment (Whitworth 130). A majority of couples selected their own mates, go 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 cabinets criterion involved being very spiritually refined, while his son Theodore looked more than at the physical condition of the prospective candidates. As early on as 1859, women wer e prescribed to enjoy fresh air, the outdoors and the continual outgrowth of mental and spiritual qualities (Kern 263). Women were a necessary part of the eugenics experiment, but Noyes and others theory the choice of the fathers was the key to selective breeding (Kern 232). The womens 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 yellowish brown of John Noyes, Tirzah Miller, she was the embodiment of the ideal woman of the Oneida community, strong in her convictions and firmly in the beliefs of the Perfectionist community (Fogarty 17).