Posted on 03/01/2023 11:29:16 AM PST by DallasBiff
When President James Garfield was gunned down at the Washington, DC, train station in 1881, his assassination came at the hand of a man who was arguably one of history’s first incels: Charles Guiteau.
Guiteau wasn’t unable to find love only in the real world — he also failed to find it at the Oneida Community, an upstate New York colony that practiced “regulated promiscuity.” Traditional marriage was banned there, but the male and female members were all considered man and wife, meaning anyone could sleep with anyone who agreed. The problem for Guiteau is that not one woman at Oneida welcomed the short, excitable, redhead into her bed. Instead, the community’s fairer sex tagged Charles with a nickname: “Git out!”
“Sexual frustration . . . was the main cause of Guiteau’s misery,” writes Susan Wels in “An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a 19th-century Sex Cult and a President’s Murder” (Pegasus Crime)
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
ORANGE CAT BAD! /s
He may have been autistic or had some other mental/emotional condition. He seems not to have had any interest in other people.
That’s why there were houses of ill repute.
If you wanted it, you got it.
No, ask anyone who has done genealogy. Lots of marriage records in church and government records, even in early Colonial days, 1600s. And yes, Colonial records were excellent. Common law marriages were actually pretty rare.
“Newton died a virgin”
But I bet that was by choice, and not because no woman would have him. He was a man of rather high position in society, after all.
There’s probably no way to know. He lived during plague years so any contact may have been seen as dangerous. Marriage was almost a business transaction in those days and casual sex outside of marriage would not have been made public. He may have had a fling or two (or more) but there would not have been any record kept.
Agree - lots of marriage records.
When the government did not issue marriage licenses, the churches were the clearinghouse for marriages. Some states didn't get around to marriage licenses for a very long time - South Carolina didn't have them until after WWII. You can still track down marriages . . . thoughtful genealogists have tabulated marriage records from every church they could find. Of course they missed some . . . but the probate records will usually pick them up when one partner dies.
One could say that the Plymouth Colony was a commune until they realized that people will grow amd sell more crops with individual ownership land plots and bringing in Squanto as consultant.
True. You run into problems during and right after the Revolutionary War, when record keeping was understandably problematic, though. Once you get past that, Colonial records are pretty smooth sailing.
I’m still trying to untangle a couple of ancestors whose records are missing during the war. For generations, they named their first two sons John William and William John. And they always married women named Sarah or Elizabeth, so it was already tedious. Aargh!
Yes, probate records are so helpful. And land records.
“Git out!” that’s cold he didn’t even get a chance to be named Getoff or Stayoff.
I blame Boston Corbett.
This is a timely lesson… our culture is currently creating a generation of psychopaths…. When you surrender your culture and abandon God… you breed your own destruction.
As I recall he was a volcel.
Alfred Nobel would qualify though.
Guiteau - is the second t silent, as in Harlow?
Ok ?.
Sorry, I was trying to be funny.
I assume it’s GIT-tow. Maybe GEE-tow, with a hard g? There is no second t.
Knothead, most likely.
I learn something new every day
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