THE ONEIDA COMMUNITY:
UTOPIAN WINDOW ON
NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA
An Educational program for College & AP U.S. History (11th grade) Students
Resource Packet for Instructors
2009 (revised 2013)
Oneida Community Mansion House
170 Kenwood Ave.
Oneida, NY 13421
Tony Wonderley, Curator
315 363-0745 ext. 4228
awonderley@oneidacommunity.org
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THE ONEIDA COMMUNITY:
UTOPIAN WINDOW ON NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA
An Educational Program of the Oneida Community Mansion House
--For College and AP U.S. History (11th grade) Students
--Customized Tour of the Mansion House & Resource Packet for Instructors
Visit a National Historic Landmark
The Mansion House is an architectural jewel created by the Oneida Perfectionists
as heaven on earth. Still intact today, it can be experienced as it was 140 years ago. The
building is a unique living museum and an incomparable historic resource.
For high school AP, the Mansion House visit is related to subjects important in
the state U.S. History curriculum--gender, reform, religion, and utopian experiments.
For college, the tour is adapted to the instructor's subject in architecture, anthropology,
history, sociology, women's studies, religion, art, or economics.
Resource Packet
A set of four modules provides the instructor with materials useful for
background and for activities before or after the site visit. Filled with information from
primary sources (written and visual), the modules offer questions and possible
responses for discussion, enrichment, and further research. They can also prepare
students for Free-Response Questions likely to appear on the state examination.
1. The Second Great Awakening and the Burned-over District; The Doctrine of
Separate Spheres and the Cult of True Womanhood. This DBQ (document-based
question) exercise assembles passages in which historians reflect on religion and gender.
Students are challenged to relate the past to their presents.
2. Architecture of the Mansion House. This module of three visual exercises
challenges students to learn about nineteenth-century buildings and how they reflect
local history.
3. The "Best Quilt" and Women's Work in the Oneida Community. Suitable for
in-depth research as well as discussion, this exercise encourages students to investigate
the range of tasks performed by Oneida Community women. The module contains
primary evidence (both visual and written) relevant to understanding the status of
women in Victorian America.
4. Views of the Oneida Community Explained Theatrically. This enrichment
section contains excerpts from two contemporaneous plays about Community life. In
both, historically accurate characters concisely summarize utopian values. These takehome assignments are also suitable for class discussion and performance.
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THE ONEIDA COMMUNITY:
UTOPIAN WINDOW ON NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
I. THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING AND THE BURNED-OVER
DISTRICT; THE DOCTRINE OF SEPARATE SPHERES AND THE CULT OF
TRUE WOMANHOOD ................................................................................................. 1
A. The Second Great Awakening and the Burned-over District.......................... 1
1. The Awakening as Distinctive Regional Culture ........................................... 1
2. The Awakening as Class Ideology ................................................................... 2
3. The Awakening as something supernatural ................................................... 2
B. The Doctrine of Separate Spheres and the Cult of True Womanhood ........... 3
II. ARCHITECTURE OF THE MANSION HOUSE ................................................ 5
A. Reacting to Architecture ....................................................................................... 5
B. Learning Architectural Styles ............................................................................... 6
C. Interpreting Architecture ...................................................................................... 7
III. THE BEST QUILT & WOMEN’S WORK IN THE ONEIDA COMMUNITY
........................................................................................................................................... 12
A. PRIMARY SOURCES: ONEIDA COMMUNITY WRITINGS ABOUT
WOMEN’S OCCUPATIONAL ROLES AND STATUS........................................ 13
B. MATERIAL EVIDENCE: THE OCCUPATIONAL PANELS OF THE BEST
QUILT .......................................................................................................................... 14
IV. VIEWS OF THE ONEIDA COMMUNITY EXPLAINED THEATRICALLY
........................................................................................................................................... 22
A. A Visit to the Oneida Community .................................................................... 22
B. A Young Woman’s Oneida Community ........................................................... 26
REFERENCES CITED .................................................................................................. 28
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FIGURES
Page
Figure 1. The Mansion House, 2002, by Donald E. Janzen................................................ 8
Figure 2. Aerial View of the Mansion House, 1997, by Bruce M. Moseley ...................... 8
Figure 3. Elevations of the East and South Sides of the mansion House, about 1869, by
Erastus Hamilton ................................................................................................................. 9
Figure 4. Elevations of the East and South Sides of the Mansion House, 1925, .............. 10
Figure 5. Photo of the Mansion House, about 1864 ......................................................... 11
Figure 6. Print of the Mansion House Made from the Photo Above ................................ 11
Figure 7. The Best Quilt.................................................................................................... 14
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I. THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING AND THE BURNEDOVER DISTRICT; THE DOCTRINE OF SEPARATE SPHERES
AND THE CULT OF TRUE WOMANHOOD
Two Document-Based Question (DBQ) Exercises for Discussion or Research
These address topics of early 19th-century America--religion and gender
roles--likely to appear on the Regents Examination. In addition to acquainting
students with significant examples of historical interpretation, the passages that
follow challenge students to think about explaining history and relating the past
to the present. Appended to both topics are questions that encourage the kind of
comparative analysis emphasized in the state exam.
A. The Second Great Awakening and the Burned-over District
A wave of religious revivals known as the Second Great Awakening
swept across the country during the first half of the nineteenth century. In the
East, emotional religious sentiment centered in the “Burned-over District” of
Upstate New York. That area, from Albany west to Buffalo, witnessed America’s
greatest revival (the Rochester Revival conducted by Charles G. Finney during
the winter of 1830-31) and America’s greatest scare about the world coming to an
end (Millerism, in 1844).
What caused the religious excitement of the Second Great Awakening and
why was it particularly intense in the Burned-over District? Some historians
suggest that financial stress increased religious faith. (The Panic of 1837, for
example, caused the panic of Millerism.) Alternatively, religion served to
comfort lonely, rootless people who, migrating westward, left families and the
established order behind them. Here are two other answers historians of the
subject have offered.
1. The Awakening as Distinctive Regional Culture
According to historian Whitney Cross, most New Yorkers were recent
emigrants from New England who shared a common culture--that is, the socially
transmitted beliefs and practices characteristic of a group of people. It was their
distinctive "Yankee" culture that disposed them to be religiously excitable. Cross
described them this way:
Upon this broad belt of land congregated a people extraordinarily given to unusual
religious beliefs, peculiarly devoted to crusades aimed at the perfection of mankind and the
attainment of millennial happiness. Few of the enthusiasms or eccentricities of this generation of
Americans failed to find exponents here. Most of them gained rather greater support here than
elsewhere. Several originated in the region....
Against the "holy enterprise of minding other people's business," which produced a
marked community-mindedness, these folk balanced a stubborn introspection in the fashioning of
personal beliefs, which recognized no authority this side of Heaven. Frank curiosity, pride in
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independent thinking, a feeling that action should be motivated by sound logic and never by
whimsy, a profound skepticism of any rationalization looking to less than the supposed ultimate
good of society, and once arrived at, an overweening confidence in one's own judgment...
In New England this trait had always mitigated the repression so often made to seem the
dominant folkway of the Yankees, though much of the time and in many localities the combined
pressure of church and state had sufficed to suppress irregularities. Possibly the lack of a church
establishment in New York helped weight this side of the balance against conventionalism. More
probably, the freer reign of optimism in the younger section provided release needed for the
tendency to grow. For whatever reason, the New York descendants of the Puritans were a more
quarrelsome, argumentative, experimenting brood than their parents and stay-at-home cousins.
--Whitney Cross (1950:3, 81-82)
2. The Awakening as Class Ideology
In Rochester, those who professed religion were the well-connected
employers. Their revival, in the opinion of historian Paul Johnson, resembled a
plot by the rich to get poor people to work without personal ties or the expense
of compulsion.
[In the Rochester Revival], evangelicalism was a middle-class solution to problems of
class, legitimacy, and order generated in the early stages of manufacturing. Revivals provided
entrepreneurs with a means of imposing new standards of work discipline and personal
comportment upon themselves and the men who worked for them, and thus they functioned as
powerful social controls...
The revival of 1831...turned businessmen and masters into an active and united
missionary army. Governing their actions in the 1830s was the new and reassuring knowledge
that authoritarian controls were not necessary. For Finney had told them that man is not
innately corrupt but only corruptible. There was no need to hold employees or anyone else in
relations of direct dependence. Such relations, in fact, prevented underlings from discovering the
infinite potential for good that was in each of them. Thus they inhibited individual conversion
and blocked the millennium. From 1831 onward, middle-class religion in Rochester aimed not at
the government of a sinful mankind but at the conversion of sinners and the perfection of the
world.
--Paul Johnson (1978:138, 140-41)
3. The Awakening as something supernatural
In the early 1930s, writer Carl Carmer described a psychic highway
stretching across the state. This Bermuda Triangle of mystical feeling, he
suggested, is related to the revivals of the Burned-over District.
Across the entire breadth of York State, undeviating, a hilly strip scarcely twenty-five
miles wide invites the world’s wonder. It is a broad psychic highway, a thoroughfare of the occult
whose great stations number the mystic seven. For where, in its rolling course from east of
Albany to west of Buffalo, it has reached one of seven isolated and lonely heights, voices out of
other worlds have spoken with spiritual authority to men and women, and the invisible mantles
of the prophets have been laid on consecrated shoulders. In no other area in the Western
hemisphere have so many evidences of an existence transcending mortal living been manifest. It
is impossible to reckon the number of listeners who on the plateaus of this strange mid-state
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avenue have knelt before seen or unseen supernatural visitants to hear counsel. And the sum of
those whose lives have been affected by that counsel, save for the fact that it is in the millions, is
incalculable.
The years have lessened the power of a few of these teachings. Mother Ann’s sayings are
remembered by less than a dozen Shakers who will soon be dust. The Millerites and the
Harrisites are few. The Jemimakins live only in the bone and sinew and brains they gave to their
descendants, not in the heeded admonitions of the Universal Friend. But those who believe in the
revelations which the two little Fox sisters gave to American spiritualists still flourish and
increase their number. The children of the Oneida Community propagate and, though they have
discarded much, they have kept much of the spirit and vigor of John Humphrey Noyes. And the
followers of Joseph Smith are a legion of a million throughout the world.
I cannot pretend to offer reasons why this magic road stretches across the York State hill
country. It may be pointed out that the great evangelistic awakening which came to New
England in the last century brought with it theological interpretations which were not always
conventional and that York State was a kind of idea-frontier, a tolerant refuge from the grim
orthodoxy of Puritan sections. But this is not a comprehensive explanation nor is it wholly
sound. Until its evidences of enchantment have been academically explained away I shall prefer
to believe that a special quality of this strip of land has made it the track that leads to things
seldom in men’s knowing.
--Carl Carmer (1995:145-46)
Questions:
1. First, consider Explanation 3 (“psychic highway”):
-Imagine telling someone about Carmer’s ideas. Could you describe—in
your own words-- what he meant by “a psychic highway,” a
thoroughfare of the occult,” “a magic road”?
-What is Carmer’s hypothesis?
2. Which explanation seems best to you? Why?
3. What kind of evidence would it take to convince you that the other
explanations are better?
4. Do any of the explanations require consciousness and intentionality on the
part of the people who are doing the thing? Is it possible to effect an
important outcome without people knowing what they are supposedly
doing?
5. Attempts to explain what happened in the past sometimes are accused of
“reductionism”—that is, reducing one thing (usually complicated) to
something else (usually relatively simple). Is that true when the topic is
religion? Why or why not?
B. The Doctrine of Separate Spheres and the Cult of True Womanhood
Wives, traditionally, were considered subordinate to husbands in all
aspects of life. By the 1830s, however, a new ideal of marital relations stressed a
more balanced view of duties and responsibilities. As historian Louis Kern
(1981:9-10) puts it:
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The period from 1780 to 1850 was one of rapid and significant change in sex roles and
behavior. During these years the roles of middle-class men and women were increasingly
differentiated, as industrialization drew male attention to the affairs of the marketplace, while
married women's work remained centered in the home. The ideological foundation of this change,
the "cult of domesticity," and the doctrine of separate "sphere" of male and female competence,
served to codify sex-role assumptions in a highly conscious fashion...
From the first decade of the nineteenth century, but with increasing stridency after 1820,
moralists began to stress the purity and piety of the "true woman"... The growing advocacy of a
shrinking feminine sensibility, withdrawn from and repelled by the grosser world of male
sensibility, paralleled the separation of women from the marketplace and the sanctification of
domesticity. It found expression in the literary mode of sentimentalism...
Although sentimentalism, modesty, submissiveness, and domesticity clearly excluded
women from the male world, they heightened their influence within the feminine sphere. The cult
of the true woman represented an altered social division of labor.
The next passage, by historian Mary Ryan (1981:181-90), quotes a Utica
author (John Mather Austin) who published several marital-advice books during
the 1830s-50s.
The cult of true womanhood was first of all a gilded pedestal for a societal division of
labor and social roles. It ordained that the male "go into the world and engage in business or
laborious occupation for the maintenance of the family" while his spouse waited at home to
"advise and counsel her husband in his doubts and perplexities, and by her presence, her
affection, and her smiles to make home an elysium to which he can flee and find rest from the
storm and strife of the selfish world." Whether ministering to her husband or her children, the
ideal woman adopted a set of personal characteristics appropriate to her domestic roles. The
female of the species was "created by the great giver of all good as a helpmate of man -- formed in
a superior though more fragile and delicate mold, endowed with purer and better feelings,
stronger and more exalted affection, to play a distinct character in the great drama of the created
world." Popular writers hastily translated this sexual differentiation of roles and temperaments
into an allocation of social space, "the doctrine of the spheres." "Each has a distinct sphere of
duty -- the husband to go out into the world -- the wife to superintend the domestic affairs of the
household." "Man profits by connection with the world -- but woman never; their constituents
of mind are different. The one is raised and exalted by mingled association. The purity of the
other is maintained in silence and seclusion."
Questions:
1. The idea that men and women naturally occupied different spheres was a
"separate-but-equal" doctrine. Do you think these spheres were balanced,
comparable, fair, equitable? Why/Why not?
2. Today, do we have anything like the idea of separate spheres for men and
women? Where do you see it? How would you describe it?
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II. ARCHITECTURE OF THE MANSION HOUSE
Three Visual Exercises for Discussion or Research
Topics in this section encourage students:
--to look closely at a National Historic Landmark possessing exceptional
architectural integrity;
--to learn about nineteenth-century architecture, style, and vocabulary;
--to think about buildings as reflections of the people who created them; and
--to recognize history in the evidence of architecture standing all around us in
Upstate New York.
Architecture is deliberately constructed, physical environment that reflects
its builders--their time and place, their aspirations and ideas, their circumstances
and standing in the world. The Mansion House is a particularly good example of
a building that can be read like a historical document because it came about from
conscious, communal decisions. "At Oneida," architectural historian Dolores
Hayden notes (1976:40), "evening meetings were often devoted to dwelling and
landscape design, and the community's constant building program, stretching
over thirty years, was a constant expression of its social stability... As the
example of Oneida demonstrates, although planning and design by 206 members
was extremely slow, it was a source of continued communal satisfaction."
A. Reacting to Architecture (Figures 1 and 2)
Here is how others reacted to the Mansion House over the years.
The dwelling-house [is] a large brick building with some architectural pretensions, but no artistic
merit.
--Charles Nordhoff (1875:181)
Comments from the early 1930sPeople who have visited Kenwood do not think of it as a town but as a house. They have learned
to call the house "The Mansion," and while they know that other residences are grouped about it,
they never hear the name Kenwood but that the low-spreading, balanced red-brick structure
enters their memories. About a hundred yards wide and almost as deep, it stands on a knoll,
surrounded by a wide expanse of grass, and framed unevenly by old elms, maples and hemlocks.
Under its central gable, crowned by a cupola, is a one-story pillared entry. Wings are set back
from this middle structure, each of them supporting a square side tower a story higher than the
rest of the building. The wing on the right, built around 1870, is simple, undecorated, of a classic
New England severity, but the left wing, built a few years later, is decorated with dormers and
with carved wooden lintels above each window.
--Carl Carmer (1995:172-73)
Architecturally, I presume, most technical rules have been violated in this structure, but the
general effect is pleasing, friendly and hospitable.
--Pierrepont B. Noyes (1935:12)
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Comments from the 1950sThe great "Mansion House" still dominates its lawns and still has something otherworldly about
it. Everything is as it was in the early days and that is yet a kind of dream from which one does
not want to escape. With its ancient trees and its very well kept up grounds, it is something like
a big hotel. It has the air of a repository of some kind of authority.
--Edmund Wilson (1990:23, 42, 124, 192)
[The 1862 Mansion House] was begun on a magnificent scale, and a series of additions over
succeeding years increased its grandeur. Sections of two, three, and four stories were added
piece-meal, until the Victorian Gothic structure sprawled around a quadrangle. Situated on a
slight rise, with its profile embellished by two turrets, the house was admired by every visitor and
passer-by. Its adjacent lawns were landscaped with an imaginative selection of trees. Today, one
hundred years later, these provide a magnificent setting for the aging Mansion House.
--Maren Lockwood Carden (1998:42-43)
The aesthetic appeal of the complete structure lies in the lively proliferation of motifs developed
with uniform use of materials--red brick walls, white wooden trim, and patterned slate roofs.
Both the community's builders and their hired architect, Lewis W. Leeds of New York, who
designed a final dwelling wing in 1877, contributed diverse elements in the construction of the
various segments of the building. Despite the variety of facade treatments, coherent exterior
massing allows the building to dominate the landscape.
--Dolores Hayden (1976:202)
Questions:
-What is your reaction? How does the Mansion House seem to you?
-What local building is most like the Mansion House in appearance, size, use?
B. Learning Architectural Styles (Figures 3 and 4)
Study the architectural drawings of the Mansion House. This kind of
diagram is called an "elevation." It shows what the building looks like if you are
facing it head on.
Figure 3 depicts the Mansion House built in 1862 and a proposed wing,
both in the "Italian Villa" style. Figure 4 shows the Mansion House as it was
actually built with the added wing in the "Second Empire" style.
Consult a reference work about architectural styles to answer these
questions.
Questions:
-How many traits of the two styles can you identify in these buildings?
-How many buildings in these two styles can you identify around you?
-Italian Villa and Second Empire are only two of several architectural styles of
the 1800s. Identify a third style present in local buildings. Contrast the
date and look of the third style to those of Italian Villa and Second
Empire.
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C. Interpreting Architecture (Figures 5 and 6)
Standing on the top of a knoll in the countryside, the Mansion House was
visible from a long way away as the biggest building around. It was a residence,
of course, but it was also a giant signboard saying to the world: "Here is the
Oneida Community. Here is what we have done. We are showing you what is
important about us."
Some interpret the Mansion House in this way.
The great Victorian edifice, with its 300 rooms and spacious courtyard, its high-ceilinged library
and graceful assembly hall, was a powerful a statement of confidence.
--Michael Barkun (1986:3)
Romantic and picturesque notions are expressed in the architectural style selected for the
Mansion House, Italian Villa. The style was one that A. J. Downing promoted as ideal for a
country seat setting. The plan was one of sophistication which carefully presented the life-style,
routine, and needs--social and spiritual--of the Community family. The look was one of
refinement and composure.
--Crawford & Stearns (1997:27, 30)
Questions:
-What messages the Mansion House may have sent to the outside world about
the Oneida Community? What did this building say about its builders
and inhabitants?
-What messages did the Mansion House convey during the Civil War?
Possible Responses:
-Though relatively large, it is not gaudy or greatly ornamented--simple
decoration, orderly, strong; as to be noted in, for example, window design.
-Tangible evidence of respectability, prosperity, permanence, substance, success,
improvement, or even perfection?
-Since 1862 (its date of construction) was a bloody year of the war, this building
may have broadcast peace, harmony, hope.
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Figure 1. The Mansion House, 2002, by Donald E. Janzen
Figure 2. Aerial View of the Mansion House, 1997, by Bruce M. Moseley
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Figure 3. Elevations of the East and South Sides of the mansion House, about 1869,
by Erastus Hamilton
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Figure 4. Elevations of the East and South Sides of the Mansion House, 1925,
by C. A. Larkins
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Figure 5. Photo of the Mansion House, about 1864
Figure 6. Print of the Mansion House Made from the Photo Above
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III. THE BEST QUILT & WOMEN’S WORK IN THE ONEIDA
COMMUNITY
Data-based Research Project
This topic:
--provides primary-source material about the status of women in the Oneida
Community;
--asks students to reason from written text and from material culture;
--encourages critical thinking—analytic and comparative—about the domestic
sphere and the equality of women in mid nineteenth-century America; and
--highlights the existence of academic controversy—how scholars interpret the
same information differently.
The Topic and the Problem
The Oneida Community claimed to be in the vanguard of women’s
equality but some scholars disagree. Did women really enjoy more equality,
freedom, or power in the Oneida Community than in society at large?
The question is surprisingly difficult to answer because the evidence is
ambiguous. Let us simplify the matter by focusing on one aspect of the problem:
women’s occupational roles. In terms of jobs actually being done by women, did
the Oneida Community offer greater opportunity than was available in the
world at large?
Historian Louis Kern (1981:257-58) thought that women certainly had
more work options in the Oneida Community: "Most contemporary observers
concurred in the belief that the power and liberty of women had been greatly
expanded at Oneida... Women at Oneida certainly enjoyed more freedom of
choice than women outside the community."
Feminist scholar Marilyn Klee-Hartzell (1993, 1994) concluded, in contrast,
that the seemingly daring and liberating qualities of the Oneida Community
were illusory. Women in the Oneida Community, she claimed, were confined to
the same work of the domestic sphere--for example, taking care of the children,
house-cleaning, cooking--as women elsewhere. Oneida Community women
were subjected to the same strictures of patriarchal power and male chauvinism
existing in the outside world.
If scholars who research the subject cannot agree, maybe you should
decide for yourself from materials and writings left by the Oneida Community.
In this exercise, you will evaluate two different forms of evidence—primary
documents and “material culture” in textile form.
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A. PRIMARY SOURCES: ONEIDA COMMUNITY WRITINGS ABOUT
WOMEN’S OCCUPATIONAL ROLES AND STATUS
1. Here, women [are] employed as bookkeepers, business correspondents, packers and shippers,
and managers of large manufacturing establishments. The policy of the Community is leading
more and more in the direction of this enlargement of women’s avocations. They have a taste for
it, and it makes them happy, as well as doubly useful.
--Oneida Community, 1865
2. The opportunity for varied employment for women here, is shown by the number who are
engaged in occupations other than ordinary housework. Thus the counting-room has four women
appropriated to it, the store one, the silk-factory three, printing-office four, dentistry one, bagbusiness eight, shoe-business one, greenhouse one, school-teaching one, library and company one.
--Oneida Community, 1867
3. What employment have women in the Community aside from the common domestic routine?
An impromptu census, taken this morning, gives the following answer: A woman superintends
the spooling department in our silk works...One woman is teacher in the elementary school and
three others instruct classes in music, writing and drawing. The Circular is edited by a woman.
Another woman has charge of mailing the paper, keeps the subscription-book, and attends to the
foreign correspondence connected with our publications. From three to four women are employed
as compositors in the printing-office. Phonographic reporting is done by women....Two women
are employed in ticketing and labeling silk-boxes. Two others have the entire business of putting
up skein silk...The financier and two book-keepers in the general business office are women, who
take a large share of the duties and responsibilities connected with the accounts and money
transactions of the Community.
--Oneida Community, 1873
4. Our readers do not need to be informed that the Community took high ground on the subject
of Women’s Rights years and years ago. Curiously enough though, the movement did not
originate with the women, nor was it urged forward by Women’s Conventions, or by the use of
the ballot or any of the usual methods of insurrection. Yet certain it is some way we have
obtained our dearest rights, and so have no occasion to get up meetings to talk about them as a
separate concern.
--Oneida Community, 1874
5. Labor in the Community is voluntary...No one feels that he must labor a lifetime in one
vocation irrespective of taste and adaptation. The sexes freely mingle in different branches of
industry; and women, relieved from household drudgery, are found not only helpmeets to men in
labor, but capable of skillfully managing even complicated businesses. The women of the
Community have an organization as well as the men, and take advantage of the principle of
rotation in service even more than the men. They have officers who have general superintendence
of indoor work, and who consult about changes as often as once a week. No one is expected to
serve a very long time in the Kitchen, or Laundry, or Children's House, or Printing Office.
--Oneida Community, 1875
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6. In all the ordinary transactions of life, it is the mature men that rule. We do not have our laws
made for us by beardless boys, or young men just graduated from college or seminary. This is not
the way in which railroads are built, stock companies formed, manufacturing and mercantile
interests controlled. Such transactions are regulated by men of years, and the wisdom that comes
of experience.
--Oneida Community, 1878
B. MATERIAL EVIDENCE: THE OCCUPATIONAL PANELS OF THE BEST
QUILT
Figure 7. The Best Quilt
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In 1873, Oneida Community women made a commemorative quilt known
today as the "Best Quilt." Women all over America made commemorative quilts,
the idea being that each person contributed a panel to the larger collective work
which honored some special occasion. Like quilts everywhere, the Community
example contained an abundance of flowers, fruits, geometric designs, and
American flags (see color figure of the quilt). Unlike quilts elsewhere, it was a
deliberate statement by the Community women to indicate who they were. “For
the last month the feminine part of the Oneida Community has been busily
engaged in a unitary plan,” to create an “album bed-quilt,” they said. This quilt
“will be an interesting memorial of the industries and aspirations of the year
1873.”
In part, then, the quilt shows what women were doing and it documents
at least ten jobs being performed by women. Panels of the quilt alluding to
women's tasks are illustrated below. The job to which each refers is identified,
often with some explanation or commentary from Oneida Community times (in
quotation marks).
1. CHILDREN’S CARE-PROVIDERS (3 panels)
“M., who helps take care of the babies, has
represented some of them at their play.”
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2. HOUSEKEEPER
Lavinia Kelly depicts
the mop-wringer, a
machine which has
contributed to “the
emancipation of
women.” The
Community believed
that rotating men into
the realm of women's
work resulted in the
invention, by men, of
labor-saving devices
which would benefit
women.
3. KITCHEN WORKER
The panel depicts two
Oneida Indian women
with a caption
underneath reading,
“Where’s Margaret?"
It was made by
Margaret Langstaff, a
kitchen supervisor
whose duties included
dealing with local
Native Americans who
wanted food scraps.
"One of the
most interesting blocks
exhibits a striking
similitude of two
[Indian women] as
they sit at our back-door waiting for Margaret to take their baskets in exchange for
broken victuals."
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4. SILK-SKEINER
One of the major industries of
the Oneida Community was
manufacturing silk sewing
thread wound on wooden spools
(see #5, factory supervisor). A
related enterprise, called
“skeining the silk,” produced
hanks of unspooled silk sold for
embroidering. Skeining was
done manually by Community
women in the Mansion House.
Providing employment for
many, it also allowed the elderly
and infirm to make an important
economic contribution to the
Community.
“Mrs. S., who works at
the silk, makes a very good
likeness of [a skeining rack] with
a bunch of silk at the left, while
at the right are hanging the bright-colored skeins, all neatly knotted and ready to be
made into hanks.”
5. FACTORY SUPERVISOR
“Mrs. C., who superintendents
the silk-spooling at the factory
shows us what she does, by a
variegated pyramid of spools
filled with machine-twist.”
18
6. STENOGRAPHER/REPORTER
“O., who is a phonographic
reporter, depicts her table,
with pencils, note-book and
copying press.”
7. HEAD BOOKKEEPER
“H., who is a financier,
portrays her desk, with its
drawers, pigeon-holes, inkstands and ledger.”
19
8. JOURNAL EDITOR
“Here is the editorial
table, with books, clip
and ink-stand.”
9. TYPESETTER (COMPOSITOR)
“Here is a type-case; this was
made by E.M., who is one of
our chief typos.”
20
10. MACHINE OPERATORS (2 panels)
“Five women spend
several hours each day in
the family machine-shop,
running lathes and
learning the use of
machinery.”
“Mrs. N., who also works
in the [machine] shop
shows her industrial
implements—the
hammer, the calipers, oilcan, wrench, etc.”
21
Questions:
Assume that women in the world outside the Oneida Community were
confined to such domestic tasks as bearing and raising children, cleaning the
house and doing the laundry, cooking for the household and cleaning up after
serving meals.
From the evidence of occupations depicted on the Best Quilt and from the
written testimony of the Oneida Community, decide whether women in the
Oneida Community had more work choices available to them than women
elsewhere.
You can accept or reject one of the positions summarized below (also
mentioned in the introduction to this exercise). Alternatively, compare and
contrast the two interpretations, or formulate your own position.
1. Women of the OC were confined mostly to “women’s work,” that is, jobs
considered proper to the women’s domestic sphere. Their job opportunities did
not greatly differ from those available to women in the outside world.
2. Women in the OC enjoyed a choice of occupations substantially greater than
that of women elsewhere.
Possible Responses:
--Can both positions be supported in equal measure by the evidence?
--When you choose to defend one of these interpretations, should you deal with
evidence that does not support your opinion or even contradicts it?
--Past reality was as complicated as present reality. It probably contained
multiple opinions which, furthermore, changed over time.
--Perhaps the reading consistent with the most evidence is-- The Oneida
Community accepted the concept of separate spheres for men and
women. However, they also believed women should be equal in
important respects and, over time, realized that ideal to a greater degree
than anyone else.
--This topic could lead into discussion of the historical sin called “presentism”—
projecting present or personal values into the past to interpret the past. A
presentist interpretation of the past re-enforces opinions already held but
tells us nothing about other people or different times. Although
everybody tries to avoid it, everyone is a little guilty of presentism. The
problem is, the past is interesting or important only in relation to us of
today. Most historians try to remember that the past really is a foreign
country and should be understood in its own terms--not ours.
22
IV. VIEWS OF THE ONEIDA COMMUNITY EXPLAINED
THEATRICALLY
Two take-home assignments for enrichment:
As take-home exercises, these excerpts from plays summarize and drive
home what students have learned about the Oneida Community. Both are
historically accurate and provide unusually clear statements about utopian belief
and practice. Both theatrical skits (but especially the first) could also be read or
performed in the classroom.
A. A Visit to the Oneida Community--a scene from The Noyes Plays, by Russell
Fox (2008).
Outsiders thronged to the Oneida Community curious to see what the
notorious “free—love” Perfectionists were up to. The Community never turned
visitors away, and in time, learned to make it work for them. They developed
Central New York’s first tourist industry.
Ann Hobart, the guide explaining Oneida Community values to visitors in
this skit, was a prominent member of the Community. The tourists are
exemplified by a newspaper reporter and a minister with his wife. These
characters, also, are based on actual people and, in fact, much of this piece
dramatizes what is said about visitors in an article published in the Oneida
Community journal, The Circular, in the summer of 1870. The Rev. Mears
mentioned here visited Oneida on a number of occasions. In later years, he led a
moral crusade against the “licentious” practices of the Community.
Note to instructors: This fairly long passage can be abbreviated without
excessive loss of content by skipping ahead to the passage marked in bold
(“Begin here”).
The Oneida Community Grounds, late morning.
Backdrop: the great brick Mansion House, and landscape. Community members are
gathered in small groups on the front lawn, picnicking. The Community women wear kneelength frocks and pantalets, and their hair is short; the men are bearded. Enter Ann Hobart, a
slender and attractive young woman with short curling hair. Her manner is confident; despite
her youth, she already has the habit of command.
A couple in the foreground, obviously tourists, excitedly point out particular Community
members and comment upon them, in the manner of spectators at a carnival or a zoo. The man is
the Reverend John W. Mears; in ostentatious clerical attire and with a black patch over one eye.
The woman, wearing a long bustled dress and shading herself with a parasol, is his wife. They
whisper vociferously.
23
Mears and his wife are shortly joined by another man, F.W. Eddy, a reporter. Eddy's
demeanor is casual but interested; he is also polite in his interrogatories, unlike the Reverend and
Mrs. Mears.
Mrs. Mears:
Rev. Mears:
Mrs. M.:
Rev. M.:
F.W. Eddy:
Rev. M.:
Mrs. M.:
Rev. M.:
Mrs. M.:
Eddy:
Rev. M.:
Cragin:
Mrs. M.:
Rev. M.:
Skinner:
Rev. M.:
What can their men see in those women?
They do not even look like women--their hair shorn off, their dresses cut
short, and with those Turkish trousers completing the costume!
They look sorry and ridiculous. Don't you think so, Reverend?
It is the uncomeliest outfit that a woman in the full possession of her
senses ever put on.
I don't know. On some of the, those short gowns look rather - (the Mears
give him a sharp look; despite this, with an amuse smile) - pretty.
(Now ignoring Eddy, to his wife:) I have heard that they all distribute
themselves at bedtime by lot!
Yes. And they all sleep in one bed--one great circular bed!
(Pointing off, as George Cragin approaches:) Look, that octagonal
building. The stone one!
I see it. It is big enough—for a big circular bed.
(Writing on his notepad:) Eight foot tall by thirty feet wide all ‘round, I’d
estimate.
(To George Cragin:) Excuse me sir. What is that building there, the
round one – What is it used for?
(Pleasantly, as he passes:) That is our water reservoir.
(As John Skinner chases a stray croquet ball in their vicinity:) Ask him!
Sir, what is that great circular building over there?
That? Why, that’s the Community’s reservoir. For water. (Skinner
proceeds on his way.)
See? They all tell the same story!
[Begin here for a shorter exercise.]
Ann Hobart crosses the lawn toward them. Despite her amiable expression, Reverend
Mears and his wife suddenly seem flustered and uncomfortable.
Hobart:
Would you like a guided tour of our Community?
The Reverend and Mrs. Mears are livid at such forwardness, but the reporter readily
takes up the offer.
Eddy:
Hobart:
Eddy:
Hobart:
Why, that would be most kind of you, miss –
Ann Hobart.
(Tips his hat:) F.W. Eddy, of the New York World.
At this time, we have about three hundred members. Many of the first
members, however, were immigrants from Putney, Vermont, where they
had been organized as an Association nine years previously.
She begins to walk, gesturing about. The reporter falls in step with her; the Mears
reluctantly follow.
24
Hobart:
Eddy:
Hobart:
Eddy:
Hobart:
Eddy:
Hobart:
Rev. M.:
Hobart
Rev. M.:
Hobart
Rev. M.:
Hobart:
Rev. M.:
Hobart:
Mrs. M:
All of the buildings you see are occupied as dwellings by the Association.
The main building has a great hall, for evening meetings and
entertainment, and the dining room, where we all eat together.
If you all eat together, do you all have to eat the same thing?
Very much as members of one family do elsewhere. Do you and your
wife have different dishes? We have the ordinary variety of food, minus
meat, but plus fruit.
(Making notes:) You don’t eat meat?
No, but we do provide eggs for those of our guest who desire animal
food. Meat was voted out of the Community many years ago, but not
because we don’t believe in living well. We mean to exalt cooking to rank
among the fine arts. The table is a subject for criticism in the family
meeting from time to time, and everyone has a chance to find fault and
suggest improvements. Perhaps there is no department of human nature
in which habit is more disposed to domineer than alimentiveness; and it
is an axiom with us that the devil works in habit. We find it good then
occasionally to break in upon the routine our table arrangements. Even a
super of bread and plums may let in the spirit of resurrection newness.
(Ann indicates the house; during her explanation, the Reverend and Mrs.
Mears made a great show of averting their eyes in shame:)
Over the dining room is a large parlor for general gatherings. The rest of
the house is divided into sleeping rooms; which, with those in the
children’s house and out-buildings, accommodate the whole family.
(Admiring a tree:) How do you make your fruit trees bear so
magnificently?
I think our trees and plants grow so well because they are noticed and
praised and nurtured with human society and magnetism. They love it
and thrive by it.
(Abrupt and stern:) What are your principles?
Our fundamental principle is religion.
To what denomination do you belong?
To none of the popular denominations. We’re generally called
Perfectionists. The founder of our system, John Humphrey Noyes, is a
graduate of the Yale Theological Seminary—
I know all about John Noyes. Do you believe in the Bible?
Most heartily, and we study it more than all other books. It is, in fact, our
only written constitution.
(Increasingly aggressive and inquisitorial:) Do you hold to community of
property?
(Firmly:) We do not practice the vulgar “grab game” of the world. That
is what we call it: the “grab game”—the game in which the prizes are not
distributed by any rules of wisdom or justice, but are seized by the
strongest and craftiest. The laws of the world simply give rules, more or
less civilized, for the conduct of this “grab game.” We find that free labor
is more profitable than slave labor. Our men and women voluntarily
organize themselves into groups for the various departments of work.
The women work?
25
Hobart:
Mrs. M.:
Rev. M.:
Hobart:
Rev. M.:
Eddy:
Rev. M.:
Hobart:
We find that loving companionship and labor, and especially the
mingling of the sexes, makes labor attractive.
You not only work—but with the men!
But you separate husbands and wives—Do you not?
No, sir. We do not. But we teach them the law of love. Thou shalt love
thy neighbor as thyself. As the result of our social system, we live in
peace, have good health, and are not troubled by involuntary
propagation.
Please, miss. The lady.
Let the lady plug her ears. I would like to hear more about this marriage
system of theirs, Reverend.
Then I would like to know how your “Complex Marriage” system is justified
by the Bible.
I’m sure you’ll recall, Reverend, that in the kingdom of Heaven, the
institution of marriage which assigns the exclusive possession of one
woman to one man, does not exist. The abolishment of sexual
exclusiveness for all believers is required by the express injunction of
Christ and the apostles, and by the whole tenor of the New Testament.
“The new commandment is that we love one another,” and that not by
pairs, as in the world, but en masse. We Bible Communists are operating
in this order. A hundred young folks have passed the age of temptation
here at the Oneida Community, and yet never has there been an
elopement.
This said, and a stunned silence resulting, Ann recommences the walking tour, leading
the group toward the Mansion House. The adults and children of the Community take only a
polite and passing interest in them. Mrs. Mears whispers loudly to her husband:
Mrs. M.:
Hobart:
Mrs. M.:
Hobart:
Mrs. M.:
Hobart:
I have heard that their doors are numbered!
(Stopping and turning, straining to retain her composure:) In a house of
sixty rooms, subject to occasional change of occupants, the obvious
method of distinguishing them is by numbers. If you see any more occult
meaning in the figures over our doors than that, then you are deeper than
we are.
Are you obliged to cut off all your hair?
(Smiling, but now succinct:) Certainly not.
(Prissily confrontational:) What is that faint odor of perfume that I smell
near this house?
Perhaps it is the odor of crushed selfishness.
Questions:
1. Have students read the skit at home and address this issue: What do we learn
about the Oneida Community from it? What does the scene reveal about Oneida
Community attitudes, beliefs, and values?
Possible responses would list:
26
-
diet,
dislike of routine,
a religion based on the Bible and the Community founder,
John Humphrey Noyes,
rejection of outside world characterized by savage competition to grab
things and slave labor,
free labor internally with options open to men and women,
men and women work together,
unusual appearance of women (short hair),
room rotation and door numbering,
identifying complex marriage with Christian principles of love, and
stress on selflessness.
2. Back in class, have students read the script or perform the skit. As they do so,
review responses to Question 1 (above) or pose a second question: What did
outsiders find most interesting about the Oneida Community?
Possible responses:
- sex--e.g., all sleep in same bed, questions about children’s parentage,
innuendos about numbering the doors;
- the clothing of women, (overdress and pantalettes) as variously judged
by the observers;
- women work and do so in the company of men;
- they find it difficult to take in implications of communal living e.g., do
all people eat the same thing? Or, here again, those numbers on
doors.
B. A Young Woman’s Oneida Community--a passage from the play, Special Love,
by Robert Schneider (2009).
The topic is a brief passage from a contemporary play in which a fictional
speaker (based on an actual character and actual circumstances) explains the
personal benefits of utopian life. Students are asked to formulate a comparable
list of disadvantages.
In Act Two of this play, Community member Mary Jones discusses the
advantages of belonging to this utopian group. Mary enumerates such benefits as
living well, never having to decide anything, and always having good company.
Note to instructors: The advantage most likely to capture your students’
attention is Mary’s casual comment about having sexual partners (chosen by an
older women) who wish to please her.
27
I was sixteen when I joined the Community. Emma came first, she was eighteen, then
me, then our father. He left our mother and our other brothers and sisters to join. That’s what he
wanted. As far as he was concerned, Mr. Noyes was salvation itself. Since I was sixteen I’ve
hardly ever handled money, never haggled over anything, never had to decide between buying the
one thing or buying the other thing or doing without. Never had to decide what to make for
dinner. I’ve never felt poor ’cause I’ve always had exactly as much as everybody else. I can make
traveling bags. I can spin and dye silk. I can preserve fruit. I can almost make animal traps all
by myself. I know how a printing press works, and a dairy farm, and a saw mill. Mr. Van Velzer
has made and fixed all my shoes since I got here.
At Wallingford [satellite community in Connecticut] there’s a canoe; I never have to look
far to find somebody to paddle with me; or hike up Mt. Tom with me; or have connection with me.
Mother Horton would tell me who’s interested and who she approved of. There’s a dance most
weeks and there’s always somebody to dance with—no wallflowers at all. The men may be old,
but they’re all trying to please me all of the time... not one man here can say I’m his alone. Not
one doesn’t have to shave or wash anymore because I’m his forever. And if all this is God’s
commandment to love each other and share everything like in the Primitive Church, so much the
better. Of course, if it’s my turn to wash the dishes, there’s gonna be hundreds of ‘em to wash,
but there’ll be lots of people to help me and big basins and lots of hot water. Do you see what I’m
saying?
Question (take-home assignment):
From your study of the Oneida Community, respond by listing the disadvantages
of being a member of such a group.
Possible Responses:
Work, companionship, free room and board, freedom from worldly concerns,
leisure and fun, a range of sexual partners, freedom from personal obligations-these might be judged good or bad.
If any of these activities or opportunities are judged to be good, what price
does Mary pay for them?
28
REFERENCES CITED
Barkun, Michael
1986
Crucible of the Millennium: The Burned-over District of New York in the 1840s. Syracuse:
Syracuse University Press.
Carden, Maren Lockwood
1998
Oneida: Utopian Community to Modern Corporation. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press
(originally published 1969).
Carmer, Carl
1995
Listen for a Lonesome Drum: A York State Chronicle. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press
(originally published 1936).
Crawford and Stearns, Architects and Preservation Planners
1997
“Historic Structure Report for the 1862 Building of the Oneida Community Mansion
House, Oneida, New York.” Syracuse.
Cross, Whitney R.
1950
The Burned-over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western
New York, 1800-1850. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Fox, Russell
2010
The Noyes Plays: The True History of John Humphrey Noyes and the Oneida Community, Parts
1 and 2. New York: iUniverse.
Hayden, Dolores
1976
Seven American Utopias: The Architecture of Communitarian Socialism, 1790-1975.
Cambridge: M.I.T. Press.
Johnson, Paul E.
1978
A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837. New
York: Hill and Wang.
Kern, Louis J.
1981
An Ordered Love: Sex Roles and Sexuality in Victorian Utopias--The Shakers, the Mormons, and
the Oneida Community. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Klee-Hartzell, Marilyn
1993
Introduction. Pp. 3-14 in Women in Spiritual and and Communitarian Societies in the United
States, edited by Wendy E. Chmielewski, Louis J. Kern, and Marilyn Klee-Hartzell.
Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
1994
“Mingling the Sexes”: The Gendered Organization of Work in the Oneida Community.
Pp. 61-85 in Oneida Community, a theme issue of Courier, Syracuse University Library
Associates (Vol. 28, No. 2) edited by Mark F. Weimer.
Nordhoff, Charles
1875
The Communistic Societies of the United States: Harmony, Oneida, the Shakers, and Others.
New York: Harper and Brothers.
Ryan, Mary P.
1981
Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Schneider, Robert
2009
“Special Love.” Unpublished manuscript for a play in archives of the Oneida Community
Mansion House.
Wilson, Edmund
1990
Upstate: Records and Recollections of Northern New York. Syracuse: Syracuse University
Press (originally published 1971)