The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-09-03
FOR A MASONIC HOME.
WALLINGFORD COMMUNITY PRO-
 PERTY TO BE PURCHAsED.

New Haven Masons, in Common With
 Members of the Fraternity Throughout
 the State, Are nterested--sketch of the
 Building. Description of the Place and
 Story of the Community.
 From the Bristol Press.l
 In view of the fact that the Walling- ford Community property Is likely to be purchased soon for the Masonic Home the following description of the place and the story and history of an effort to establish a peculiar communistic sys- tenn will be read with much interest
 A meeting of the executive committee of the Masonic Charity foundation, with representatives from the different Ma sonlc lodges in the state. will be held at New Haven on September 27. The ex- ecutive committee of the Charity foun- dalton has reported favorably on the purchase of the Oneida property at Wallingford for Masonic home and 1t is expected that action favorable to the purchase will be taken at the New Ha- ven meeting.
 The property Is located in the east of Wallingford proper and contains eighty-eight acres. It overlooks Com munity lake and the Meriden electric road runs by the place. Community hall. the principal building in the place, has forty-two sleeping rooms and in addition there are four smaller buildings. The place last year yielded 3,200 bushels of apples. 1,S0O bushels of quinces and 1000 bushels of peas, and the committee has decided unanimous ly that 1t Is the most available place for a home. The executive committee of the Charity foundation and the del egates from the different lodges will visit it on the day of the New Haven meeting. The owners ask about $25, ,00O for the property.
 It is believed that after a few years ehS Pi oiitS ol tiiC WllI tuc SupplltS raised for the table, would carry on the families of destitute Masons and mem- bers of their families who might go there to live. It would be run much after the plan of the Odd Fellows home at Groton, which Is doing excellent work.
 To give an intelligent description of the community which formerly occu- pied the elevation to which the com munists gave the name of Mt. Tom, rising to the westward of a large pond formed by the dam across Quinnipiac river, built by the community to supply power for their factory at Wallingford, requires retrospective glance at the principles upon which it was founded, and brief account of the founder and the experiments in religious socialism which were made under his leadership.
 John Humphrey Moves was born at Brattleboro, Vermont, in 1911. He grad uated at Dartmouth, and studied law. The great Finney revival changed the course of his thoughts from law to the ology, which he studied at Andover and Yale, becoming a Congregational min ister in 1885, Becoming a believer in what was known as perfectionism, his license was revoked. At Putney, Yer mont, he conducted a small church and publishing house, and introduced his system of complex marriage" or free love, which so infuriated the citizens of conservative Putney that they drove them out of the place. The exiles found a refuge in Oneida county, N. Y., in 1S47, where the world-renowned Oneida Community was developed, and achieved financial success that made 1t remarkable In 1880 the community surrendered to the public sentiment ar rayed against its immoral sexual rela- tions. and the community became simply a joint-stock concern, allowing monogamic marriage. Moves himself was driven into forced retirement at Niagara Falls where he ended his days attended by @ few faithful followers. There were internal as we'll as extern al causes for the dismemberment of the Oneida Community. While beautiful pictures of communal life and heroic struggles in their early career were given in roseate tints by the gifted writers of the Oneida publications, which were of great literary merit, private confessions and accusations. as well as guarded admissions, revealed the fact that many skeletons inhabited the closets of the communal dwellings. Family ties were broken up, and the wounds refused to heal; attachments were formed between the young people which the stern philosophy of the sect could not suppress; higher education had it's influence upon the minds of the young men, causing even a son of Moves to lead in g. revolt; and the sense of shame attaching to their sexual system and the tyranny ofNoyes, in his abso- lute sway over the community, were some of the causes of the final over- throw of the system. .i |"
 The nucleus of the Wallingford Con- which was 8 branch of the Oneida Community, was a family named Allen. who, became converts first of perfectionism and then of Onei- da communism. Their valuable farm at Wallingford, on the old colony turn pike between New Haven and Hart ford, was ceded to the community, and was occupied by them in 1851. Market gardening was the first business of the o~~~~~~>~~~~ man with an ulcerated f