Nineteenth-century Quaker sex cults

March 6, 2018

An arti­cle in Port­land Month­ly is get­ting a lot of shares today, large­ly giv­en its breath­less head­line: How the Father of Ore­gon Agri­cul­ture Launched a Doomed Quak­er Sex Cult.

It pro­files Hen­der­son Luelling (1809 – 1878) and it’s not exact­ly an aca­d­e­m­ic source. Here’s a snippet:

Luelling had tak­en up with these groovy Free Lovers, whom he met in San Fran­cis­co. From the out­set, the jour­ney had com­pli­ca­tions. “Dr.” Tyler, it turned out, was actu­al­ly an ex-blacksmith who now pro­fessed exper­tise in water-cures and clair­voy­ance. One of the men was flee­ing finan­cial trou­bles, and when the ship was searched by police he hid under the hoop­skirt of a female passenger.

Luelling’s life fol­lows many com­mon themes of mid-nineteenth cen­tu­ry Quak­er life:

  • He was a hor­ti­cul­tur­al­ist, first mov­ing to the Port­land, Ore­gon, area and then to a small town near Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia. Friends had long been inter­est­ed in botan­i­cal affairs. Rough­ly a cen­tu­ry ear­li­er John Bar­tram was con­sid­ered one of the great­est botanists of his generation.
  • Luelling moved from Indi­ana to Salem, Iowa in the 1830s and became a staunch abo­li­tion­ist, even build­ing hide­outs for the Under­ground Rail­road in his house. Wikipedia reports he was expelled from his meet­ing for this.
  • He got Ore­gon fever and moved his oper­a­tion out there.
  • At some point in this he became inter­est­ed in Spir­i­tu­al­ism and its off­shoots like the Free Love move­ment. This was not a Quak­er move­ment but the mod­ern Amer­i­can move­ment start­ed with the Fox Sis­ters in Upstate New York and was heav­i­ly pro­mot­ed by Quak­er Hick­sites Amy and Isaac Post.

If you want to know more about Luelling’s “sex cults,” this arti­cle in Off­beat Ore­gon feels much bet­ter sourced: The father of Ore­gon’s nurs­ery indus­try and his “Free Love” cult:

The “free love” thing is far from new. Over the years, espe­cial­ly in the Amer­i­can West, at least half a dozen gen­er­a­tions have pro­duced at least one “dar­ing” philoso­pher who calls for a throwing-off of the age-old yoke of mar­riage and fam­i­ly and urges his or her fol­low­ers to revert to the myth­ic “noble sav­age” life of naked and unashamed peo­ple gath­er­ing freely and open­ly, men and women, liv­ing and eat­ing and sleep­ing togeth­er with no rules, no judg­ment and no squab­bles over paternity.

He’d also start­ed his very own free-love cult — “The Har­mo­ni­al Broth­er­hood.” Luelling’s group made free love the cen­ter­piece of a strict reg­i­men of self-denial that includ­ed an all-vegetarian, stimulant-free diet, cold-water “hydropa­thy” for any med­ical need, and a Utopi­an all-property-in-common social structure.

Port­land Friend Mitchel San­tine Gould has writ­ten about some of these cur­rents as well. His Leavesof​Grass​.org site used to have a ton of source mate­r­i­al. Dig­ging into one day it seemed pret­ty clear that the Free Love move­ment was also a refuge of sorts for those who did­n’t fit strict nineteenth-century het­ero­sex­u­al­i­ty or gen­der norms. Gould’s piece, Walt Whit­man’s Quak­er Para­dox has a bit of this, with talk of “life­long bachelors.”

Many of the Spir­i­tu­al­ist lead­ers were young women and their pub­lic lec­ture series were pret­ty much the only pub­lic lec­tures by young women any­where in Amer­i­ca. If you want to learn more about these devel­op­ments I rec­om­mend Ann Braud’s Rad­i­cal Spir­its: Spir­i­tu­al­ism and Wom­en’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century Amer­i­ca. These com­mu­ni­ties were very involved in abo­li­tion­ist and wom­en’s rights issues and often start­ed their own year­ly meet­ings after becom­ing too rad­i­cal for the Hicksites.

And lest we think all this was a West Coast phe­nom­e­non, my lit­tle unpre­pos­sess­ing South Jer­sey town of Ham­mon­ton was briefly a cen­ter of Free Love Spir­i­tu­al­ism (almost com­plete­ly scrubbed from our his­to­ry books) and the near­by town of Egg Har­bor City had exten­sive water san­i­tar­i­ums of the kind described in these articles.

Taking Jeanne’s social class quiz

November 2, 2007

I usu­al­ly skip out on meme games but I thought I’d try out Jean­ne’s class one. Bold are the priv­i­leges I can claim from my youth, ital­ics are ones that I’m unsure of or that are more “yes but” kind of priv­i­leges. My mom’s Luther­an pride kept her from want­i­ng us to look or feel poor. Yes, I did­n’t have second-hand clothes but the rich kids often did. While they might wear scrubs from their par­en­t’s doc­tor prac­tice or vin­tage clothes scored from a thrift-store out­ing, I was in striped button-down shirts from the respectable depart­ment store whose teen depart­ment was always emp­ty of teen cus­tomers. Yes, respectable peo­ple on TV sound like me but that’s because my mom dropped her child­hood Penn­syl­va­nia Dutch accent and was hyper-aware of non-standard accents (a trait I’ve unfor­tu­nate­ly picked up, I correct/mock Julie’s “wood­er” pro­nun­ci­a­tion for water before I can even think about it, it’s like I have a very speci­fic­Tourettes Syn­drome that only applies to non-standard accents). Julie tal­lied up and com­ment­ed on the quiz here in Jean­ne’s com­ments. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to real­ize that although I grew up sig­nif­i­cant­ly poor­er and have less than half Julie’s “steps” she’s much more cul­tur­al­ly work­ing class than I’ll ever be.

Father went to col­lege (he was secre­tive about past, he might have done a semes­ter at St Joe’s)
Father fin­ished col­lege
Moth­er went to col­lege (two year sec­re­tar­i­al pro­gram)
Moth­er fin­ished col­lege
Have any rel­a­tive who is an attor­ney, physi­cian, or pro­fes­sor.
Were the same or high­er class than your high school teach­ers
Had more than 50 books in your child­hood home
Had more than 500 books in your child­hood home
Were read chil­dren’s books by a par­ent
Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
The peo­ple in the media who dress and talk like me are por­trayed pos­i­tive­ly (because we’re good assim­i­la­tion­ists)
Had a cred­it card with your name on it before you turned 18
Had to take out less than $5000 in stu­dent loans in order to go to col­lege
Did­n’t need stu­dent loans to go to col­lege out of high school
Went to a pri­vate high school
Went to sum­mer camp (day camp at the Y for a few sum­mers)
Had a pri­vate tutor before you turned 18
Fam­i­ly vaca­tions involved stay­ing at hotels
Your cloth­ing was all bought new before you turned 18 (pride kept us out of second-hand stores until we lat­er crossed that class bound­ary where thrift­ing is cool pre­cise­ly because its not a neces­si­ty)
Your par­ents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
There was orig­i­nal art in your house when you were a child
Had a phone in your room before you turned 18
You and your fam­i­ly lived in a sin­gle fam­i­ly house
Your parent(s) owned their own house or apart­ment before you left home
You had your own room as a child (I was the only child at home after age 7)
Par­tic­i­pat­ed in an SAT/ACT prep course (my mom thought they were cheat­ing)
Had your own TV in your room in High School (most­ly as mon­i­tor for Radio Shack Col­or Com­put­er she bought me junior year of high school)
Owned a mutu­al fund or IRA in High School or Col­lege
Flew any­where on a com­mer­cial air­line before you turned 16
Went on a cruise with your fam­i­ly
Went on more than one cruise with your fam­i­ly
Your par­ents took you to muse­ums and art gal­leries as you grew up (we were more zoo/county fair/Independence Hall tour types (hey, they’re all free/low-cost!))
You were unaware of how much heat­ing bills were for your fam­i­ly (n/a: includ­ed in apt rent, besides my mom would nev­er let on that things were tight)

A list like this can nev­er be all inclu­sive but it seems there are some big omis­sions. Where’s any­thing about fam­i­ly struc­ture and finances, like “You had two parental fig­ures liv­ing in your house” and “Both par­ents con­tributed to fam­i­ly income” or “One par­ent stayed home or worked part-time”? In my own instance, my father had a secret oth­er fam­i­ly and nev­er paid for any­thing oth­er than the occa­sion­al trip to Roy Rogers (secret fam­i­ly to “Lit­tle Mar­ty” at least, the women and old­er chil­dren pre­sum­ably noitced he was only around half the time and con­struct­ed some men­tal run-around to explain it away).

The oth­er omis­sion is social net­works. I have no mem­o­ry of fam­i­ly friends. I can­not name one friend of my father and my moth­er’s friends were lim­it­ed to a hand­ful of “girls” at the office. By the time I got to high school I start­ed to see how cer­tain class­mates were able to work the sys­tem to get the best teach­ers and class­es and this was most­ly accom­plished by par­ents swap­ping notes after Hew­brew class or at church or at hock­ey prac­tice. Friends are right­ly not­ed for the strength of their social net­works and I sus­pect these pro­vide a social priv­i­lege that is far more valu­able than parental salary.

Jeanne promis­es to write a part two to her post explain­ing what this all means to Friends. I’m look­ing for­ward to it though I’m unsure just what easy gen­er­al­iza­tion can be made if we’re look­ing at ori­gins. One of the few sur­veys try­ing to be com­pre­hen­sive found Philadelphia-area Friends don’t reflect Amer­i­can aver­ages yet for many con­vinced Friends our par­tic­i­pa­tion has mir­rored (and per­haps been uncon­scious­ly moti­vat­ed by) an upward class mobil­i­ty. Keep an eye on Social Class & Quak­ers for more!

Call off the search parties

March 10, 2007

The retreat at the Carmelite Monastery was nice. Here’s some pic­tures, the first of those “long-remembered”:/if_i_dont_make_it_back.php tall stone walls and the rest of the beau­ti­ful chapel:
Carmelite Monastery, Philadelphia Carmelite Monastery, Philadelphia Carmelite Monastery, Philadelphia Carmelite Monastery, Philadelphia
It was a silent retreat – for us at least. There were three talks about “Tere­sa of Avila”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teresa_of_Avila giv­en by Father Tim Byer­ley, who also works with the “Col­legium Center”:http://www.collegiumcenter.org/about.php, a kind of reli­gious edu­ca­tion out­reach project for young adult Catholics in South Jer­sey (I men­tioned it “a few months ago”:https://www.quakerranter.org/teaching_quakerism_again.php as a mod­el of young adult youth out­reach that Friends might want to con­sid­er). Much of what Tere­sa has to say about prayer is uni­ver­sal and very applic­a­ble to Friends, though I have to admit I start­ed spac­ing out by around the fourth man­sion of the “Inte­ri­or Castle”:http://www.ccel.org/ccel/teresa/castle2.toc.html (I’ve nev­er been good with num­bered reli­gious steps!).
I’m in no dan­ger of fol­low­ing my wife Julie’s jour­ney from Friends to Catholi­cism, though as always I very much enjoyed being in the midst of a gath­ered group com­mit­ted to a spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. The idea of reli­gious life as self-abnegation is an impor­tant one for all Chris­tians in an age where “me-ism”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScWdek6_Ids&eurl has become the “sec­u­lar state religion”:http://www.walmart.com/ and I hope to return to it in the near future.