This document summarizes several 19th century American utopian communities: New Harmony, Indiana was founded in 1825 by Robert Owen with the goal of communal living and equality, but dissolved in 1827 due to conflict. Brook Farm, Massachusetts was started in 1841 by Transcendentalists seeking truth and cooperation, but collapsed in debt in 1846 after a fire. The Oneida Community in New York practiced complex marriage and eugenics from 1848-1879 before becoming a successful silverware company. The Shakers, founded in the 1700s, believed in simplicity, segregated sexes, and have nearly gone extinct due to their celibacy.

1. Utopian Communities

2. Emergence
• Utopias emerged from utopian spirit of the
age
• Various reformers from high-minded to
“lunatic fringe”

3. New Harmony, Indiana

4. New Harmony, Indiana
• Founded by Robert
Owen, 1825
• Communal society of
about one thousand
• Education and social
equality would flourish

5. The Result
• Little harmony prevailed
• Dissolved in 1827 with conflict and
inadequacies

6. Brook Farm, Massachusetts

7. Brook Farm, Massachusetts
• 200 acres of grudging soil
• Started in 1841
• Brotherly/sisterly cooperation of about 20
intellectuals

8. Committed to Transcendentalism
• Truth “transcends” senses
• Knowledge from inner light that illuminates
highest truth

9. Beliefs of Transcendentalism
• Social and religious individualism
• self-reliance, self-culture, self-discipline
• Bred hostility to authority, formal
institutions, conventional wisdom
• Dignity of the individual  humanitarian
reforms

10. The Result
• Prospered until 1846
• Large communal building lost by fire
• Collapsed in debt

11. Oneida Community, New York
• Established 1848
• Flourished for 30 years due to economic
foundation

12. Oneida: Basics
• Free love and “complex marriage”
• Birth control
• Eugenic selection of parents for superior
offspring

13. Founder John Humphrey Noyes
• Believed:
– Benign deity
– Sweetness of human
nature
– Possibility of perfect
Christian community on
Earth
• Contrasted with
Puritan doctrines

14. Noyes’s Doctrines
• Key to utopia/happiness: suppression of
selfishness
– No private property…

15. …no exclusive emotional relationships
• Which bred
jealousy, quarreling, covetousness…

16. …material things and sexual partners
shared
• free to love in “complex marriages”

17. Practices
• Men and Women shared all tasks
• Children raised communally after age 3
• Selective breeding program:
– Gave permission/orders to procreate (which
horrified neighbors)

18. Its Rise (1850s)
• Swell Newhouse, inventor of steel animal
traps
– Gave Oneida solid financial footing by…
– Manufacture of his traps and other products

19. Its “Fall”
• Horror from neighbors
over sexual practices
•  gave up “complex
marriage” in 1879
•  gradually gave up all
practices
•  shifted into a joint-stock silverware
company in 1880

20. Shakers
• Among longest-living sects
• Founded in England 1747
• Brought to America 1774 by Mother Ann Lee
(to New York)

21. Shakers: The Origin
• Name derived from ectastic form of worship
• Dissenting Quaker church

22. Shakers: Doctrines
• Personal communication w/ God (who was
both male and female)
• Simplicity and ingenuity
• Self-sufficiency

23. Shakers: Practices
• Segregated the sexes
• Came together to work and pray
• Practiced celibacy and prohibited marriage
• virtual extinction by 1940