The story of the Oneida community, a Christian utopian dream of John Humphrey Noyes, that transformed itself into a silverware empire, is a fascinating one. When Noyes, who thought that he was a prophet, and who believed in “Bible communism,” the tenets of which included free love, established his upstate New York community in the 1860s, he could not have imagined what it would become: a brand name associated with quality silverware. Given his beliefs on the role of women, he might be even more surprised to find that a descendant of his community, Ellen Wayland-Smith, would be the one to write such a definitive and detailed book about it.
Oneida: From Free Love Utopia to the Well Set Table takes us from Noyes’ early misfit days in Vermont through to the dissolution of the company, which could not survive globalization and cheaper imports from overseas. In each year of the history, Wayland-Smith provides a detailed examination of the overriding ethos of the community, from the belief in the power of sex to communicate with God, to the squeaky-clean messaging in Oneida’s advertisements during the early twentieth century, reinforcing traditional marriage to sell spoons. As in any story told by a person with a close connection, the most interesting parts of the book are when Wayland-Smith hints at her relationship to the community. Besides her last name, which she shares with one of the founders, and her casual reference to her “great-great-grandmothers” when discussing some of the women, she also relies upon interviews conducted by her father with some of confusingly interbred offspring of some of those original members.
In 2019, I toured the Mansion House, the home in which the original families lived. Signs posted in the house warned me away from the upper floors of the grand home because it was still occupied by descendants of the Oneida community. Wayland-Smith did not encounter any such barriers, indeed grew up playing in the house during the summers. Her in-depth history reflects that literal and figurative access, but it does not diminish her objectively thorough research into this fascinating fragment of American history.
May 30, 2020