Woman's Commonwealth

The Woman's Commonwealth (also Belton Sanctificationists and Sisters of Sanctification) was a women's land-based commune first established in Belton, Texas.[1] It was founded in the late 1870s to early 1880s by Martha McWhirter and her women's bible study group on land that was inherited when the women's husbands died or quit the home.

Members

Residents of the commune were women and their dependent children; many of the women fled abusive homes to join the community.[2] At one point, there were between 42 and 50 women members on record,[3][1] including at least one African American woman who is thought to have been a former slave.[1]

Ideology

The Sisters embraced first wave feminist ideologies, and sought spiritual, economic, and social equality for women.[3] To that end, they practiced celibacy as a way to liberate women from the spiritual degradation of heterosexual intercourse, the oppressive needs of children and child rearing, and male violence.[3][4] In the 1880s, the citizens of Belton blamed the Sanctificationists for rising separation and divorce rates, and of undermining the meaning of marriage through their practice of celibacy.[4][5]

History

The Sanctificationists were economically successful; they ran several boarding houses and two hotels, formed holding companies to manage their properties, and operated two farms to provide food for their multiple dining rooms. They started the first public library in Belton, the Woman's Wednesday Club Library, out of one of their boarding houses.[6]

In 1899, the entire commune moved to Washington, DC where they opened boarding houses and a hotel, and participated in urban feminist organizations.[3][4] In 1903, there were ten remaining members who purchased a farm in rural Maryland to provide food for their urban dining halls, and to provide a pastoral retreat for themselves in a rural landscape.[7] McWhirter died in 1904, and the commune began a slow decline.

The last member of the commune died in 1983 at the age of 101.[4]

Impact

The George and Martha McWhirter House at 400 North Pearl St., Belton, Texas, is on the National Register of Historic Places listings in Bell County, Texas. At the address, there is a historical marker dedicated to the Sanctificationists.[8][9] Jan Berliner Statman considers the Woman's Commonwealth to be one of the first women's shelters in the United States.[10]

A brief article published in the lesbian separatist periodical, Austindyke (alternately spelled as Austin Dyke), in 1979 and then reprinted in Sisters United in 1980 described the Woman's Commonwealth as a forerunner of the lesbian land movement.[11] It is unclear whether the Sanctificationists influenced the movement that flourished in the 1970s and 1980s.[12]

Further reading
  • Blevins, Don (September 2016). "Martha White McWhirter". A Priest, A Prostitute, and Some Other Early Texans: The Lives Of Fourteen Lone Star State Pioneers. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781493026159.
  • Fogarty, Robert S. (2003). All Things New: American Communes and Utopian Movements, 1860-1914. Lexington Books. ISBN 9780739105207.
  • Kitch, Sally (1989). Chaste Liberation: Celibacy and Female Cultural Status. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252016080.
  • McIlvain, Myra Hargrave (April 2017). "The Sanctified Sisters". Texas Tales: Stories That Shaped a Landscape and a People. Sunstone Press. pp. 109–111. ISBN 9781632931634.

References
  1. Lufburrow, Debra (2001). Set Apart: The Sanctified Sisters. Booklocker.com. ISBN 978-1929072712.
  2. Holley, Joe (May 11, 2013). "Sanctified Sisters of Belton brooked no nonsense". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved March 10, 2019.
  3. Kitch, Sally (Spring 1994). "The Woman's Commonwealth: Celibacy and Women's Rights". Communities (82): 40–44.
  4. Sokolow, Jayme A.; Lamanna, Mary Ann (April 1984). "Women and Utopia: The Woman's Commonwealth of Belton, Texas". The Southwestern Historical Quarterly. 87 (4): 371–392. JSTOR 30236969. OCLC 01766223.
  5. Kitch, Sally L. (1992). This Strange Society of Women: Reading the Letters and Lives of the Women's Commonwealth (1st ed.). Ohio State University Press. ISBN 978-0814205792.
  6. "History". Belton, Texas.
  7. Montgomery County Land Records, Liber TD 27 Folio 109, (October 5, 1903). Charles Collinsgru to Woman's Commonwealth of Washington, D.C.
  8. "Details for Belton Woman's Commonwealth". Texas Historical Commission. 2015.
  9. Big Q (September 8, 2016). "Downtown Belton is Home to Many, Many Texas Landmarks". KRock 1017.
  10. Statman, Jan Berliner (April 1995). The Battered Woman's Survival Guide: Breaking the Cycle. Taylor Trade Publishing. p. 6. ISBN 9781461625308.
  11. Peticolas, Anne. (1980). "Reclaiming hystory: The Belton Sanctificationists." Sisters United 20(6): 13.
  12. Anahita, Sine (2009). "Nestled into Niches: Prefigurative Communities on Lesbian Land". Journal of Homosexuality. 56 (6): 719–737. doi:10.1080/00918360903054186. ISSN 0091-8369. PMID 19657932. S2CID 28508292.
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