Oneida (Community) Limited

Oneida Ltd. grew out of the commercial remains of the Oneida Community, which was a religious/social experiment founded in Oneida, New York. It was active from 1848 to 1881.

John P. L. Hatcher, a great-grandson of one of the original community members and himself a longtime employee of Oneida Ltd., explores the history of the community and subsequent company in this robust history.

The community and the company achieved great things—and neither should be forgotten. Upon the break up of the religious community, many of its members remained to continue businesses, including animal traps and the table flatware that would make Oneida Ltd. a household name.

By the middle of the twentieth century, the company, then called Oneida Community Ltd., commanded twenty-five percent of the silver plated flatware market. The company kept true to the community’s social and wealth sharing ideals.

But the dominant success of Oneida Ltd in the manufacturing of stainless steel flatware brought low cost foreign competition and the company was bankrupt in 2006. It was a textbook case of insufficient management, poor judgement, and extravagance. Find out what happened and why in A Goodly Heritage Gone Wrong.