For over 120 years, Oneida Limited was a business well known for its quality silverware. The company was an outgrowth of a religious sex cult.
Upstate New York during the mid-19th Century was coined the Burned Over District because the region was aflame, so to speak, with religious fervor. New sects sprang up all over, including Mormonism which Joseph Smith founded in Palmyra, NY near the Finger Lakes.
Oneida, New York, 1848: Local preacher John Humphrey Noyes created a commune based on his uncommon beliefs.
The Oneida Community believed in Christian perfectionism, the practice of pure holiness.
Noyes and his flock also believed that Christ had already returned ages ago, and therefore it was the duty of humans to create paradise on Earth, not just in Heaven.
That Earthly utopia included communal living, which was free from ownership, and group marriages in which men and women were encouraged to have consentual sex with one another.
Swapping partners was not only encouraged, it became mandatory. Remaining devoted to one person was considered a shameful act.
They called it complex marriage - all of the members were married to one another. Noyes supposedly coined the term ‘free love.’
Parenting was also a communal chore, and select adults cared for the children.
But one method of avoiding children and pregnancies was a strange practice of male continence. Men were taught to withdraw from the women at the moment of climax.
Some members wanted to become parents, however, so Noyes set up a committee to judge which people would breed the best children.
A substantial number of babies born into the commune, as it turned out, were Noyes’ offspring.
Work was also compulsory. Everyone had to contribute, whether by farming or cleaning or whatever was needed.
The commune sold products locally. They spun silk, canned fruits and vegetables, and created cutlery, including silverware.
Each enterprise was developed into a profitable business.
The community prospered for 30 years.
Noyes started satellite communes in New Jersey, Connecticut, and Vermont. They faded out.
In 1879, local clergymen who opposed the Oneida Community’s practices wanted to shut down the commune.
Noyes was forewarned that he was about to be arrested for statutory rape, so he escaped to Canada.
He wrote to his followers that they should abandon group marriage.
They did. The commune shrank, but those who remained entered into traditional marriages.
In the early 20th Century, the dwindling members sold off all of the businesses.
Except the silverware company.
Oneida Limited is still in operation.
However, as of 2005 its products are manufactured outside the United States.
The last of the Oneida Community members died in 1950.
The commune’s mansion and grounds were named historical landmarks in 1965. The property still exists and is open to visitors.
ALSO:
One infamous member of the Oneida Community was Charles Guiteau.
He lived on the commune for five years and then departed.
In 1881, he assassinated President James Garfield.
Nice summary, Dan. My Grandmother was an OC child, born into the community in 1875. She died in 1963 so the last member did not die in 1950. My daughter has done quite a lot of ancestry search work to find out her father's identity. Am sure there were quite a few more of those children that died after 1950. Chuck Goodwin