Stirpiculture in the Oneida Community :: essays research papers

Stirpiculture in the Oneida CommunityJohn Humphrey Noyes, a native of Brattleboro, Vermont, rebelled from religion from a young age and after a near death date 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 ex decenniumsive failure, Noyes finally acquired a adjacent in 1844 in which the thirty-seven members lived communally. Two years later, the prominent ideals began to originate such as Complex Marriages and Male Continence. The Oneida Communitys doctrines had many components, exactly 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 proverb as free love. One such idea was the experiment for the superior aftermath through with(predicate) a monitored procedure known as stirpiculture. Based upon kind 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 process was vigorous, including submitting an application to a cabinet of central members who would make the final decision of whether the span 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 cabinets criterion involved being very spiritually refined, while his son Theodore looked more at the natural condition of the prospective candidates. As early as 1859, women were prescribe d to enjoy fresh air, the outdoors and the continual development of mental and spiritual qualities (Kern 263). Women were a necessity part of the eugenics experiment, but Noyes and others thought 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 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).