LAST of all, we must venture a sketch of the Associa-
tion in the bosom of which, this history has been written
and printed.

The Oneida Community belongs to the class of reli-
gious Socialisms, and, so far as we know, is the only
religious Community of American origin. Its founder
and most of its members are descendants of New
England Puritans, and were in early life converts and
laborers in the Revivals of the Congregational and
Presbyterian churches. As Unitarianism ripened into
Transcendentalism at Boston, and Transcendentalism
produced Brook Farm, so Orthodoxy ripened into Per-
fectionism at New Haven, and Perfectionism produced
the Oneida Community.

The story of the founder and foundations of the
Oneida Community, told in the fewest possible words,
is this:

John Humphrey Noyes was born at Brattleboro, Ver-
mont, in 1811. The great Finney Revival found him at
twenty years of age, a college graduate, studying law,
and sent him to study divinity, first at Andover and

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