My Father's House: An Oneida Boyhood

by Pierrepont B. Noyes

312 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1965

Reviews

[Elizabeth Quinn]

This was part of my research for my novel-in-progress, Perfecting Eden, which is a fictional account of the lives of my ancestors in the Oneida Community. What a charming book! What a charming man P.B. Noyes must have been. Of course, I already knew that from my mother and her siblings who remembered his Christmas Eve visits when they were children. T. H. Noyes was the founder's son who helped devise the stock-holding solution that provided for the vulnerable women and old folks when the OC dissolved. P.B. Noyes was the founder's son who rescued that faltering company and set Oneida Ltd. on a path to prosperity that lasted almost 100 years. This memoir of his childhood presents a unique child's eye view of the OC and really fleshes out the place and the people. A must-read for anyone interested in the Oneida Community.

[Alyssa DeLeon]

I knew bits and pieces of the Oneida community story, but this insightful book was eye-opening and intriguing. Noyes was the son of the leader of the community, but his mother was not John Humphrey Noyes's wife. Starting with his toddlerhood and going up through his college years, this book explores the pros and cons of living in the community, being the son of the leader but not of the leader's wife, the social groups within the community, and much more. This is a unique insight through a child’s eyes into a queer, peculiar lifestyle.

[Glen Blesi]

Pierrepont Noyes’ story of his boyhood is both alike and different from similar books such as William Dean Howells’ “A Boy’s Town” or “Years of My Youth” and Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s “Story of a Bad Boy.” Noyes’s story is like the earlier ones in that it tells of mischief he got himself into with playmates. It is different because Pierrepont’s parents were not married and did not live together. He was raised in a separate house in the community by ladies who were in charge of bringing up children in each age group as he grew. He was allowed to spend time with his mother about once a week at first. After the dissolution of the community and abandonment of complex marriage, Pierrepont came to more and more treasure her companionship. He even inquired as to whom she would marry, not wanting her to be alone. As for his father, although Pierrepont saw him from day to day, John Humphrey Noyes was little involved in his upbringing. The elder Noyes was the leader of the Oneida community. All of Pierrepont’s eight (at least) siblings were half-siblings. Nonetheless, Pierrepont thrived and lived a normal life, marrying in the usual sense. He was the only one of the nine who is remembered today through his writing and his leadership of Oneida Limited, a seller of tableware and cutlery, a corporation which evolved from the industry started in the community.
The Oneida community foreshadowed Christian denominations and groups today that started out adhering to explicitly Christian principles. John Humphrey Noyes talked about sin and promoted Christian perfection, as he saw it, in their daily lives. Yet he came up with the idea of complex marriage with the understanding that traditional marriage was selfish. He must have conceived this from his knowledge of the Old Testament, with its concubines and multiple wives per husband. Even then, this wasn’t God’s plan, but He allowed it. It must have been lingering in New Testament times as well since Paul’s admonishment to Timothy was that a bishop in the church must be the husband of but one wife. Today so many Christian denominations which began with orthodox views on what was acceptable in Christian living have turned from their roots. Plural marriage hasn’t come back, but acceptance, even ordination, of those in unbiblical sexual relationships is rampant.
Both adults and children in the community predicted, after the abandonment of communal living, that children born in the “communist” society would suffer reproach throughout their lives from those adhering to Victorian morality. Although rampant illegitimate births would not be seen for another century, this did not seem to be correct for Pierrepont. He did very well in his adult life in a worldly sense. But the orthodox Biblical beliefs that John Humphrey Noyes got right seem to have provided Pierrepont much cause for doubt throughout his life. He questioned the “second coming of Christ” and “salvation from sin.”
The author tells of a camp meeting given by the Methodists when he lived at Niagara Falls that he, his brothers and cousins initially attended for the spiritual benefits. Shortly, against his father’s wishes, the boys began to notice the attractive girls in attendance and went solely to become better acquainted with them. J.H. Noyes did not approve of the boys fraternizing with “outside” girls.
He admitted that a diary of his brother, John “Humphrey” Noyes, revealed that “all felt that I was unconverted if not secretly rebellious.” Humphrey had commented that Pierrepont’s own diary “was quite edifying though not strictly instructive with regard to moral culture.”
I find it curious that Pierrepont does not touch on the subject of his famous close relatives in the outside world. His father was a first cousin through his mother, Polly Hayes Noyes, to Rutherford B. Hayes and Elinor Mead Howells, artist, architect and wife of William Dean Howells.