Pierrepont Noyes

Pierrepont Burt Noyes (August 18, 1870 – April 15, 1959) was an American businessman and writer. He was brought up in the Oneida Community, a religious Utopian group. Noyes later became the head of Oneida Limited, a position he held for many years.

Pierrepont "P.B." Noyes was born in the Oneida Community (1848-1880), a group of religious perfectionists who lived communally in New York State. The Community was led by John Humphrey Noyes.

In the early years of the Community, members practiced birth control in order to keep the birthrate low. By the late 1860s, Noyes and other Community members developed an interest in selective breeding. They hoped that religious devotion might be inheritable, and that they could pass on their own strong sense of spirituality to another generation. They called their eugenics experiment “stirpiculture” and the children born in the experiment were known as stirpicults. Between 1869 and 1879, forty-five "stirpicults" were born. Pierrepoint was the son of John Humphrey Noyes and Harriet Maria Worden, and he was a product of their eugenic outlook.

Like all Community children, Noyes was raised in the children's wing of the group's home. He visited his mother occasionally, and in his autobiography recalled being closer to his mother than to his father: "I owe immensely more to my mother, in the warp and woof of character, than I do to my father. He never seemed a father to me in the ordinary sense. I revered him, but he was much too far away, too near to heaven and God."

After the Community voted to disband in 1880, Noyes lived with his mother.

After studying at Colgate University, followed by Harvard University, P.B. Noyes joined Oneida Limited, the company which emerged from the commune after his father's death. He went on to become president of the company, steering it towards specialising in silverware and stainless steel cutlery. In 1894, he married another stirpicult, Corinna Ackley Kinsley, and the couple had three children.

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