Why I'm Researching a 19th Century Cult This Month
Hi everyone! Sorry for the late send out- turns out it's hard to remember to send out my newsletter when I'm busy taking Starling Trick or Treating for the very first time. She was dressed as Kiki from Kiki's Delivery Service and it might be the cutest thing to ever happen in all of human history. Anyways, this is still October's newsletter. You'll still get another one this month!
Years ago I attended a family reunion with the less familiar side of my wife’s family, way out in the middle of nowhere, at gun range in rural Iowa- which is another story for another day. But crammed in the corner of the room was a little display made out of poster board and home-printed photos that caught my eye.
Apparently, one of my wife’s ancestors was a “community child” born to The Oneida Community in upstate New York. A great aunt sketched out a separatist cult, best known for their human breeding program and the excellent quality of the silverware they manufactured to fund their communes. You can still buy Oneida silverware, actually. I just saw some at Bed Bath and Beyond.
If you’ve read Secondhand Origin Stories, you probably remember that three of the characters; Solomon, Nodiah and Yael are either first or second generation products of a genetic modification cult. That was inspired in part by the research on the Onida community that I first saw at that reunion. People have asked me if subsequent books would be going into more about the Seven Holy Kings cult in subsequent books.
That was of course always the plan. But beyond a general desire to explore Solomon’s first family the plan was a bit hazy until just recently. Nailing down more specifics meant more research for more inspiration. So, this month, I read Oneida: From Free Love Utopia to the Well Set Table as part of that research.
It’s pretty gripping stuff, as long as you don’t mind bleakness. There’s something so engaging about seeing the far extremes people will go to to cope with the sharpest versions of common, relatable feelings like loneliness, insecurity, and guilt.
The author, Ellen Wayland-Smith, is another descendant of the community, and she pulled together the journals, community records and letters from the multiple communes and several hundred devotees the community boasted at it’s height.
The story begins with the birth of the group’s Patriarch, John Humphry Noyes, in 1811. This isn’t the first story about a cult I’ve read- for reference, there’s an estimated 2,000 - 3,000 cults operating in the US at any given time, most of them small and fleeting, but some massive and enduring. Generally I find that the narratives we get about these communities center the patriarch or, less commonly, the matriarch that founded the group. These charismatic but deeply unwell individuals are cast, not as the heroes, but nevertheless as the the stars of these stories. After all, it’s their whims, insecurities and passions that the rest of the community have to revolve around.
In Noyes’s case, the paralyzing social anxiety and jealous insecurity of his early life are stamped across every edict of the groups 30+ years. One of the main tenants of the group was that “sticky love”, which they defined as being too attached to any particular person, was an inferior form of love that held humanity back from divinity. Inside the community, showing evidence of being “too attached” to anyone would result in being separated from that person by community leaders until you learned to tow the line. This meant marriage was out, but also applied to parental or other types of family ties. As soon as children were weaned they were set to a separate building to be raised communally by a rotating cast of caregivers till they reached adolescence. Access to preferred adults could be revoked if they seemed too eager for it.
That is a classic cult tactic. People who have loyalties to individuals are less loyal to the leader and the community as a whole. So, some mechanism to interfere with individual relationships is key.
A couple decades into Noyes’s empire building he became enamored of the science of his day, which included research into electricity, magnets, and Mendelian genetics.
The idea of breeding humans for more desirable genes is a US staple. Read the most depressing and illuminating book I have ever read if you want a painfully comprehensive study on the history of American eugenics. But Noyes’s specific goal is what gained my attention and made the Oneida community the subject of my book-related research.
Noyes wasn’t breeding for health, or strength, or even intellect. Starting in 1869, he and his favored community leaders aimed at nothing less than breeding messiahs back into the world, to usher in a paradise on Earth and a new golden age. In a 180 from his original claim that spiritual perfection could be achieved through choice and labor, Noyes became convinced that spiritual aptitude was an inheritable trait. He even claimed that sufficient success in this program would grant it’s products, generations down the line, immortality itself. He called the process “stirpiculture”. My wife’s ancestor was born from a union dictated and approved by a counsel of elders and Noyes himself, with this explicit goal in mind.
In the end, 62 children were born as a result of his program. Noyes fathered 10 himself. Over half were related to at least 1 direct member of his family. Not showing favoritism to your family was only a problem, it seemed, for those who were not as innately superior as Noyes’s family.
Here’s the thing about centering the charismatic leaders in he stories of cults- you have to talk about them, because they control everything. But at the end of the day, they’re pretty much always generic petty tyrants with novel arguments about why everyone should just give them whatever they want when they want. They’re shallow, and selfish, and when you have the advantage of hindsight and a wide angle to view them through, their flimflam is pretty gimmicky. I even believe Noyes believed everything he was preaching. I think most of them do. But people who found cults are generally high level masters of mental contortionism. They find ways to justify why their urges are morally correct ones.
I don’t think cult leaders are actually that interesting. They want power, and sex, and admiration, and to be right. That’s not special. Anybody living through the Trump administration has seen how dim, inconsistent and blatantly self-serving someone can be and still attract fervent followers. I don’t want to write the stories of cult leaders.
There are plenty of stories told about the trials of the people who become ensnared in cults. These are more engaging- stories painful feelings, and desperate hope.
But the figures in this system that fascinated me were the children born from the stirpiculture program- like my wife’s ancestor. Children adored and revered, but denied attachments. Children born within the community, instead of coming to it with wounded hearts pleading for what Noyes was selling. Children told from birth that they’re carrying the weight of the world’s salvation on their tiny shoulders. That they’re special.
What did those children grow in to?
It turns out, a lot of them grew into cynical agnostics. When Noyes aged out of his role as a powerful patriarch, and his control over the community slipped, his own children lobbied to abandon the stirpiculture program and become a secular community. (One which was now utterly dependent on cheap outsourced labor for their prosperity, largely from poor people of color, lest we fall into putting them on a pedestal)
Noyes was a powerful figure in their eyes, but as a family patriarch, not a messiah. Without their parents desperation, they could more easily see his failings, his selfishness, and his hypocrisy.
Noyes own oldest son, who was supposed to have inherited such superior genetic proclivities, declined the role and became an outspoken advocate for the younger generations priorities. Once Noyes’s health and legal trouble displaced his role as ultimate authority the community collapsed within a couple of years. There was no bloody coup. No outside attack. Once the presumption of shared goals and philosophy fell apart, and with no authority to force past problems, people took what resources they could, and retreated into their own smaller units. Many left. Many left to marry and raise their children.
The company continued, with capitalism, family, labor and religion commingling generation after generation. Momentum was enough to keep those wheels turning when the theoretical underpinnings fell away.
This is all grist for the mill, and ties in neatly with what you’ll see of the Seven Holy Kings cult in Names in Their Blood, and even moreso in the as-yet-unnamed third book that I’m starting to outline now.
In the mean time, Ellen Wayland-Smith’s book is an interesting read. I will add the caveat that she seems a lot more willing to accept the records she used at face value than I would be. People who need to convince themselves that everything is still ok will claim to be fine with situations that are very much not ok. Especially when expressing your pain will be punished by people you trust to deliver you salvation. She covers a lot of potentially triggering trauma with a clinical and sometimes almost offhanded way that I find offputting. She even manages to cover the entire period of the US civil war and reconstruction without talking about race. Either the races of the members (white), or the races of the factory workers and domestic help that allowed the members to live in leisure and comfort, with plenty of time for religious studies. I couldn’t help but feel that even several generations later she felt an obligation to downplay some of the dysfunction to an outside audience. Please proceed with caution if you intend to read it yourself.
I hope you’ve enjoyed a glimpse into my current research deep dive. I always like reading or listening to other’s subjects of fascination. Is there something you’ve researched that you are always low key dying to expound upon in conversation? If so, feel free to write back and tell me all about it. I love this kind of thing. Tell me why you love learning about what you love to learn about!
Best Wishes,
Lee Brontide