The Story of Oneida

In 1848, John Humphrey Noyes and his followers arrived in the upstate New York town of Oneida to form one of the utopian societies then springing up throughout the Northeast and Midwest. Noyes based his community on a theology he called Perfectionism, an ethic the community followed in its commercial activities as well as personal and communal lives. To support itself, the Oneida Community sewed items out of silk, canned fruits and vegetables, and made traps, chains, traveling bags, straw hats, and mop sticks. Eventually the community learned to make silver knives, forks, and spoons. That skill led, in 1880, to incorporating the forerunner of the international company known today as Oneida, the world's largest manufacturer of stainless-steel and silver-plated flatware and a leading supplier of sterling-silver products, china dinnerware, crystal stemware, glassware, metal serveware, and kitchen tools.