Family Home of John Humphrey Noyes

Eldest son of a Putney family, John Noyes (1811-1886) became deeply religious after a revival meeting in 1831. Convinced that Christ's Second Coming had occurred in 70 A.D. and that all people could now be free of sin, he became a Perfectionist. Under Noyes' leadership, a small group of followers came together as the Putney Perfectionists. They lived communally, practiced Bible Communism, ran a press and published a paper called The Witness. When they extended the sharing of their financial resources and labor to the sharing of themselves in Complex Marriage, villagers pressured them to leave. Fearing legal action, they left Putney for Oneida, New York, in 1848. There in the Oneida Community they practiced their beliefs for the next 32 years.