I have recently completed writing a report about the younger sister, Portia, of my great great grandfather, who joined the Oneida Community in 1865 at age 23. She had been born in Missouri, travelled with her father and mother from there to PA and then back to NYS, before her mother died when she was age 8 in 1850. Her father remarried after seven months, and Portia soon went to live with her older brother for perhaps 15 years. While in Bath, Steuben County, NY she became close friends with an older woman whose interest in spiritualism, led to a group of 4 young girls in Bath meeting regularly, and all eventually joined the Oneida Community. It practiced "Bible Communism" and the founder taught "Complex Marriage" which discouraged monogamy as a form of "Idolatrous Attachment" between people. So, there was a community which lived as a commune, and allowed a kind of "Free Love" for the 300 members during the 30 years of its early existence. Eventually there were reforms that changed how the community lived. During its heyday (roughly 1848-1895) it was the largest tourist attraction in New York State, drawing as many as 2,000 people a weekend on the train who travelled to the Oneida Community for outdoor concerts, lectures, a meal with the community, and then returned to their homes. And this was a century before Haight Ashbury and Woodstock !!!