Rumford, Isaac B. (b.1825)

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Isaac Rumford was a proponent of "the Edenic diet" or raw food veganism, arguing that cooking destroys the vitality of food. With his wife, Sarah, he established a small utopian community, Joyful, in Kern County, California in the early 1880s. It was short-lived, as was the journal they co-founded and edited, Joyful News Co-Operator. The journal indicates that he viewed dietary reform, dress reform, Temperance, and women’s rights as issues connected via humanity’s drive for perfection as a manifestation of the divine in human form. The community at Joyful banned the eating of meat, drinking alcohol, gambling, and cursing. In December 1883 he published “Constitution of the Association of Brotherly Co-operators. Organized March 1, 1883” in Marietta Stow's journal, The Woman’s Herald of Industry. The community disbanded in 1884.

IMAGE: Joyful News Co-Operator Vol. 1 (January 1884).

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