Utopian Colonies

Amana Colony
        The Amana Colony of Iowa was established by German-speaking European settlers who belonged to the religious group called the Community of True Inspiration. The founders of the German group, the Community of True Inspiration, believed that the Lutheran Church had become too wrapped up in intellectual debate and formalized worship and thus neglected the spiritual needs of the congregation. By 1840, there were nearly a thousand members of the Community of True Inspiration, and because the Lutheran German government viewed the Community’s theology as a political threat, the leaders realized that they had to seek a new home for the Community in America. In September of 1842, a community led by Christian Metz traveled to America in search of land on which to relocate, eventually purchasing a 5,000 acre site in western New York. In 1846, a constitution was adopted which established a permanent communal system. They named the settlement “Ebenezer,” meaning “hitherto hath the Lord helped us,” and by 1854, the population reached 1,200 people. Today, the Community is approaching its 300th year of existence although the Amana of today differs from that of a century before. Members of the community now do not follow the strict life of early communalism, and this separation of the church from the economic functions of the community is still referred to by Amana residents as “the Great Change.”


Brook Farm
        Brook Farm, a 175 acre farm formerly located in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, was a short lived utopian experiment in communal living. George Ripley, former Unitarian minister and leader in the Transcendental Club,  organized and virtually directed an informal gathering of intellectuals in the Boston area to create the Brook Farm. The Farm was made to “combine the thinker and the worker, to guarantee the greatest mental freedom, and to prepare a society of liberal, cultivated persons.” It attracted not only intellectuals, but farmers and craftsmen as well. It paid one dollar  a day to men and women and provided housing, clothing, and food at actual cost to all members and their dependents. Most notably they had a modern educational theory of its excellent school, which sought to establish “perfect freedom of relations between students and teaching body.” There were no prescribed study hours and discipline consisted of a gentle attempt to instill the student with a sense of personal responsibility. Although the colony struggled on for a while, the enterprise gradually failed and the land and the buildings were sold in 1849. 
https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/amana/amana.htm


Oneida Colony
        The founder of the Oneida Community, John Humphrey Noyes, experienced a religious conversion during a revival in 1831, and he gave up his law studies and attended Andover Theological Seminary and Yale Divinity School. He founded the community in 1848, and the members within the community believed that Jesus had already returned in AD 70, making it possible for them to bring about Jesus’s millennial kingdom themselves, and be free of sin in this world. They also practiced communalism, complex marriage, male continence, mutual criticism, and ascending fellowship. The community flourished for about 30 years, but as hostilities mounted in the surrounding communities to the Perfectionists’ marriage arrangements, and in 1978 Noyes advised the group to abandon the system. As the reorganization of the community began, the entire Socialist organization of property in Oneida was also questioned. In late June 1879, Noyes fled the Oneida community Mansion House for Canada, and the community broke apart. The remaining members reorganized as a joint-stock company called the Oneida Community, Ltd.
https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/religious/the-oneida-community-1848-1880-a-utopian-community/