Camden High School -

On Friday, November 21st, students in Mrs. Harney’s MVCC History 111 Classes stepped out of their own modern reality, and into someone else’s. The group took a journey of approximately 25 miles, to a destination that transported them over 100 years back in time in the blink of an eye.

That destination was the Oneida Community Mansion House, a National Historic Landmark. The Mansion was the hub of the Oneida Community, a historical utopian society and social experiment that continues to be studied into the present day. It left a lasting socioeconomic legacy that reverberates across Central New York, and the globe.

Starting in the mid 1800s, preacher John Humphrey Noyes brought his followers from Vermont to Central New York in pursuit of creating an earthbound utopia rooted in the ideal of religious Perfectionism, or the idea that a life free of sin was possible on earth. Heavily influenced by the Second Great Awakening and numerous social reform movements, they created the Oneida Community as a place where they could collectively realize their ambitions. It grew to about 300 people at its peak, and lasted approximately three decades.

The Oneida Community often operated well outside of the social norms of American Society at the time, with communal living at the forefront of its activities. The community was also on the cutting edge of industrial innovation, and used a wide range of business activities to fund daily life.

Among their enterprises, the Community became one of the nation’s foremost manufacturers of wildlife traps, and a powerhouse cutlery manufacturing division that endured long after the community’s decline around 1880. The manufacturing businesses, called Oneida LTD, were spun off into a joint-stock company that went on to become a household name as the world’s largest silverware manufacturer. It employed people across the region, prompted the growth and development of nearby Sherrill, NY, and had a sizable contingent of employees residing in Camden. Many of the Camden-based workers were settlers from Ireland. The company also stood among the first companies in the nation to appoint a woman on its Board of Directors.

As part of the day’s events, students toured the mansion, and took on the role of historian through a primary source inquiry workshop, and a public history investigation. The students also had the opportunity to view oral history recordings from former Oneida LTD employees. From those recordings, students were able to make connections about how the community’s ideals shaped the company’s modern era.

Hosting the students was Tom Guiler, the Director of Museum Affairs for the Oneida Community Mansion House. He showed students some rare and unique artifacts not currently on exhibit to the public, while also discussing artifact care and the nuances of working at a museum. He recently published a book on an adjacent topic to his daily work, entitled The Handcrafted Utopia: Arts and Crafts Communities in America’s Progressive Era.

This opportunity was funded through the Madison-Oneida BOCES Exploratory Enrichment CoSer. This marks the third consecutive year that Camden High School students have visited.