Professor Sharon

While at our Shaker Seminar (see previous week’s postings), we visited the museum of another communal society: the Oneida Community. While there I picked up a couple of books.

I’ve just finished reading My Father’s House: An Oneida Boyhood by Pierrepont B. Noyes. It was written as a memoir – I expect it might be selling more now than when first published as it seems memoirs are all I see in bookstores these days (I’m much fonder of reading biographies.)

You find out in the Afterword that it was written when he was 67. Mr. Noyes was born in 1870, and was about 10 when the communal experiment broke up. Although I was surprised to discover in this book, and during our visit, that members continued to live in the Mansion house, and descendants still do.

It is a sweet book, written, as memoirs always seem to be, with hindsight and a bit of romanticism about the past. We all, I think, remember the best of our childhood first, don’t we? But as a first exposure to the community, I enjoyed it and look forward to reading more.  What is interestingly missing, for me, is that Mr. Noyes does not discuss at all the experiment of stirpiculture of which he was one of the offspring.  At least as far I could find, he does not mention it at all.

At this link you’ll find another interesting review of it – actually if you Google it, there does seem to be quite a few of academic reviews not accessible without going through a library.

If you’re interesting in communal societies, or just want a quick memoir to read, it’s worth your time.