Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Stirpiculture : Science-Guided Human Propagation And The Oneida Community, Alexandra Leah Prince

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Between 1869 and 1879, the communal Christian group the Oneida Community undertook a pioneering eugenics experiment called "stirpiculture" by the group's leader, John Humphrey Noyes. Stirpiculture resulted in the planned conception, birth, and communal rearing of fifty-eight children, bred from selected members of the Oneida Community. This thesis concerns the scientific as well as the religious origins of the Oneida Community's stirpiculture experiment, and explores the ways in which the experiment changed the Community over time, especially as the "stirpicults," or children of the experiment matured and reoriented the Community away from the religious tenets on which it was founded. …