Publications

American Communal Societies Series, no. 17. 260 pages, 2024
ISBN: 978-1937370411 ($30)

Who was Dr. Alesha Sivartha, the visionary artist whose strange inscribed mind maps, occult diagrams, and painstaking anatomical drawings were printed in a variety of obscure books and pamphlets in the late nineteenth century?
Religious historian John Buescher here draws Dr. Sivartha out of mysterious obscurity and traces the story of his wild life, from his birth as Elisha Holmes Dodge in upstate New York in 1834, to his transformation, under the name of Arthur E. Merton, into a phrenologist, free-lover, utopian socialist, and cult leader. At the time of his death in 1915, he had assumed the name of Alesha Sivartha, and transformed himself into an occult documentarian who sought to map the structures of the “New Jerusalem” onto the biological and chemical world. This richly illustrated volume includes an extensive album of Sivartha’s drawings.

Dr. John B. Buescher is the author of books and articles on the history of nineteenth-century American Spiritualism. He is a co-director of the International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals (IAPSOP).

American Communal Societies Series, no. 15. 100 pages with illustrations, 2030
ISBN: 978-1-937370-36-7 ($20)

Description:
German Socialist Wilhelm Weitling visited eight American intentional communities during 1851-1852. He published accounts of these visits in his newspaper, Die Republik der Arbeiter. These accounts have been almost entirely unknown to scholars, until now. This volume contains Joscelyn Godwin’s translations; introduced, annotated, and illustrated by Peter Hoehnle, bringing Weitling’s descriptions of his communal odyssey to students of American communal societies who cannot read German. Communities visited include: the Shakers at Watervliet, New York; the Community of True Inspiration at Eben-Ezer, New York; the Society of Separatists at Zoar, Ohio; Communia, Iowa; the Icarian Community at Nauvoo, Illinois; Bishop Hill Colony, Illinois; the Harmony Society at Economy, Pennsylvania; and Bethel, Missouri.

American Communal Societies Series, no. 16. 154 pages with illustrations, 2030
ISBN: 978-1-937370-37-4 ($35)

Description:
Redware was the first locally made pottery made during the early years of Euro-American expansion across North America. Utilizing methods and stylistic conventions brought from Europe, redware potters made a variety of household wares such as pitchers, storage jars, jugs, plates, and mugs. Christoph Weber was the master potter of the Harmony Society, a German utopian group founded by religious dissenter Georg Rapp. Working from ca. 1808 to 1853, Weber’s pottery was distributed among the Society’s members and sold to their neighbors. Utilizing documentary sources, archaeological investigations, and analysis of surviving ceramics, this volume paints a detailed picture of Christoph Weber, the different types of pottery he manufactured, and his place in the early nineteenth century origins of the ceramics industry in the United States.

Michael Strezewski is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Southern Indiana. Dr. Strezewski has directed archaeological excavations in New Harmony since 2008, publishing numerous reports and articles on the Harmony Society.

American Communal Societies Series, no. 14. 126 pages with illustrations, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-937370-31-2 ($20)

Daughter colony of America's most successful utopian experiment (1848-1880), the Wallingford commune was the Oneida Community's pastoral getaway. It was also the place silverware was created, the industry that would support Oneida's successor organization, Oneida Ltd., through the twentieth century. Although a substantial part of Oneida's history, Wallingford's story has never been told. This first study features about a dozen accounts by the communards, nearly forty vintage photographs and other illustrations, and commentaries by the editor.

About the editor:
Anthropologist Anthony Wonderley worked for the Oneida Indian Nation in its cultural management and preservation program and for the Oneida Community Mansion House (Oneida, New York) as curator of collections and interpretation.

American Communal Societies Series, no. 13. 175 pages with illustrations, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-937370-24-4 ($25)

The first work of its kind, the Annotated Bibliography of Inspirationist Imprints catalogs the considerable body of literature published by the Community of True Inspiration during its three hundred year history, both in Europe and the United States of America. There are 312 separate imprints listed, many identified as Inspirationist for the first time, complete with English translations of their titles and notes about their contents. Sixty-seven illustrations provide visual evidence of the stunning typography, and iconography, employed by Inspirationist authors and printers.

About the author:
Lanny Haldy served from 1983 to 2016 as Executive Director of the Amana Heritage Society, a non-profit organization whose mission is to preserve and interpret the cultural heritage of the Amana Colonies National Historic Landmark. His roots in the community go back to 1748 when Christian Haldy, a minister from Westerich and Billigheim near Strasbourg, joined the Inspirationist community in Gelnhausen.

2nd ed. American Communal Societies Series, no. 12. 365 pages with 106 b/w illustrations + 1 folded map, 2016.
ISBN: 978-0-937370-19-0 ($50)

This work “dramatically expands our demographic knowledge of one of America’s most important communal utopian movements, the Harmony Society of George Rapp. This volume offers an indispensable resource for scholars, descendants, and those who interpret the Harmony Society for the public at its three historic towns of Harmony and Old Economy village in Pennsylvania and New Harmony, Indiana.” (Donald E. Pitzer)

About the author:
Eileen Aiken English is a volunteer researcher and historical interpreter at Old Economy Village. Her study of the Harmony Society began fourteen years ago, when she retired from the faculty of California University of Pennsylvania.

2nd ed.  American Communal Societies Series, no. 11. 597 pages, 2015.
ISBN: 978-1-937370-15-2 ($75)

Commune! The word conjures up images of a few isolated idealists, religious fanatics, and social misfits. A commune is a decidedly marginal blip on the American landscape. Nevertheless communes have studded American history — many thousands of them from the seventeenth century to the present. Although many have heard of the Shakers and (perhaps) the Hutterites and the Harmonists, communes — most of which now prefer to be known as intentional communities — represent a largely hidden slice of American history, despite the fact that they have been home to over a million Americans. Many small studies and surveys of American communal movements have been published over the last two hundred years, but the phenomenon of communal living in its fullness remains largely in the shadows. This work has been compiled to dispel those shadows by providing brief sketches of as many American intentional communities as I have been able to identify from the early days of European colonization down to the present [approximately 3,000]. The work also seeks to provide a few reliable references to primary and secondary sources of information on each community. This second edition contains descriptions of twenty additional communities, and additions and corrections to descriptions of over one hundred communities included in the first edition.

About the author:
Timothy Miller is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas. He studies new religious movements in the United States, with a special focus on groups in the past and present that practice communal living.

American Communal Societies Series, no. 9. 161 pages, with 19 b/w illustrations, 2014.
ISBN: 978-1-937370-14-5 ($15)

The first biography of Mary Purnell who along with her husband Benjamin, led the Israelite House of David in Benton Harbor, Michigan. Mary later formed her own community, Mary’s City of David. Both communities are functioning today. The communities are best known for their bearded baseball teams, but, as Frost’s book shows, they were only a small part of the story.

American Communal Societies Series, no. 8. 165 pages,  illustrations, 2012.
ISBN: 978-1-937370-04-6 ($20)

At the height of the prudish Victorian age, the utopian Oneida Community (1848-1880) openly practiced group marriage which, it was said, freed women from unwanted pregnancy, marital bondage, and household drudgery. This radically successful social experiment was based on the teachings of the commune's leader, John Humphrey Noyes, whose key writings on gender relations are assembled here for the first time.

About the author:
Anthony Wonderley is curator of collections and interpretation at the Oneida Community Mansion House, the museum of the famous nineteenth-century utopia in upstate New York.

American Communal Societies Series, no. 7. 239 pages with 214 b/w illustrations, 2012.
ISBN: 978-1-937370-03-9 ($30)

In 1936 the Index of American Design commissioned photographer Noel Vincentini to photograph the Shaker villages of Mount Lebanon, Hancock, and Watervliet. This book presents the 206 pictures taken by Vincentini. The identifications Vincentini provided were often erroneous. Edward and Faith Andrews, who were employed by the Index to work with Vincentini, corrected many of the identifications, but even those were incomplete. This book presents the complete set of photographs for the first time and with corrected identifications. An introduction by Lesley Herzberg, curator of collections at Hancock Shaker Village, describes the tumultuous series of events that surrounded the production of these images. The book is a companion to an exhibit at Hancock Shaker Village.

About the author:
Lesley Herzberg is curator of collections at Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.