At the high tide of American utopianism, as Shakers, Fourierists, Icarians, Rappists, and hosts of other communitarians washed away, the Oneida community hit the sweet-spot. They lived their communal, collectivized lives while selling their excellent products to the outside world. Although mostly vegetarian, they made extraordinarily good animal traps. Their flatware, too, was famous—indeed, when the community voted to go public in 1881, it was as a joint-stock company that would grace many dinner tables with Oneida silverware.
Unsurprisingly, the transition to capitalism and monogamy was a difficult one. Not everyone was into it. (And what would a sect be without internal dissent?) A branch of the community, led by James W. Towner, “minister, abolitionist, lawyer, judge, Civil War captain, and decorated hero,” took their bible communism to California in the early 1880s. As Olin puts it:
The former communards resourcefully created a new life in California, prospering while remaining loyal to their radical communitarian heritage. Some became intellectual leaders, merchants, farmers, and ranchers, and many actively participated in civic affairs and in Democrat, Populist, and Socialist party politics.
Towner, who led the Berlin Heights Free Love community in Ohio before joining Oneida, was appointed by California’s governor to chair the organizing committee that created Orange County. The new county was carved out of the old Los Angeles County and incorporated in 1889. Noyes, apparently born without sin, became the country’s first Superior Court judge.
How did a bunch of “Bible communists” and sexual outlaws get so much respectability? The answer is land. By pooling their monies and acting in concert, the Townerites purchased large tracts of land. Indeed, Orange Country’s courthouse and municipal buildings in Santa Ana stand on land once owned by Townerites. “The acquisition of this land provided the Townerites a strong base from which to exercise economic, social, and political power in their new community,” Olin writes.