Oneida silverware began with a 19th-century commune
The tableware company traces back to the Oneida Community, a religious commune founded in 1848 that became a joint-stock company in 1881.
By Tom Brezinski
Oneida Limited sells flatware, dinnerware and glassware around the world. Its roots are in a commune.
The Oneida Community was started in 1848 in Oneida by a small group of Christian Perfectionists led by John Humphrey Noyes. Members held property in common and lived together for more than 30 years. Over time the community supported itself through manufacturing.
In 1880 the members voted to hand most of their shared property to a joint-stock company, Oneida Community Ltd., which took over on January 1, 1881. It was one of the earliest joint-stock companies in the country, and former members of the community became its shareholders.
The company’s work stayed close to home in Oneida County for generations. Its factories were in Sherrill, the small city at the western end of the town of Vernon, which still goes by the nickname the Silver City. Oneida’s research work also led to a second local company: two of its chemists, William Stanley Murray and Daniel Gray, studied the metal indium, and that work grew into the Indium Corporation of America.
The Oneida Community Mansion House, the communal home built in Oneida, still stands.