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Stuart Sopko ’24 Uses Interviews to Develop Exhibit on Oneida Limited

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Stuart Sopko speaks to tour participants
Stuart Sopko ’24 leads a group of Field School Fellows on a tour of the exhibit that he created with the Oneida Community Mansion House this summer.

Stuart Sopko ’24 is one of 26 student fellows conducting research with a community-based organization in upstate New York this summer as a part of the Upstate Institute Summer Field School.

This summer, I have had the pleasure of working at the Oneida Community Mansion House in Oneida, N.Y., as an Upstate Institute Summer Field School Fellow. The Mansion House was built in 1862 by the famous Oneida Community, a Perfectionist utopia that practiced Complex Marriage, Male Continence, and shared property ownership and believed in fairness, family, and hard work. The community transitioned to a joint-stock company in 1880 that grew into Oneida Limited, once one of the world’s largest and most well-known silverware producers, which unfortunately went bankrupt in the early 2000s.

Today, the Mansion House functions as a nonprofit organization with the mission of preserving the history surrounding the building, from the Oneida Community to Oneida Limited, and the legacy today. The Mansion House is a museum, a historic inn, and a residence to some individuals who descended from the original community or have a relationship with its history. In that sense, the Mansion House is a form of living history, not just another house museum.

Because the Mansion House has such a rich history, there is a wide array of individuals connected to it, from descendants of the original community to any one of the 3,000 employees of Oneida Limited. Some of these people still live in the area, either in the Mansion House, in Kenwood, the neighborhood surrounding the Mansion House, or in Sherrill, the city that Oneida Limited developed to be home to many of its employees. Even those who no longer live in the area come back to the Mansion House to see old friends or show their family where they grew up, and this speaks to the continued legacy of family and community dating back to community days.

The Mansion House also receives other visitors, such as those from the surrounding area who have heard about the history or others who are simply passing by and happened to stumble upon this gem. Therefore, the Mansion House provides a wide array of programming to fit the interests of all the populations. This includes guided and self-guided tours, lectures, and discussions, events from car shows to concerts, children’s programming, and even weekly yoga classes for residents. The Mansion House is also a strong community partner and engages with other local and regional historical and cultural institutions trying to preserve history and build community.

The project I have been working on all summer is the creation of a museum exhibit that will be on display in the Madison County Courthouse as part of their rotating local history exhibits program. This exhibit is inspired by the Mansion House’s Oneida Limited Oral History project, which seeks, through interviews conducted with former employees, to preserve the history of what it was like to work for Oneida Limited and live in the area. The research conducted for the exhibit has focused on the unique aspects of OL that led to its international success and fame, what made it such a great place to work, and what, eventually, led to its demise.

Using background research, information from the interviews, and the Mansion House collections, the exhibit has been curated to tell the narrative of Oneida from the community to the company to the Mansion House, attract attention and hopefully additional participants to the Oral History Project, and bring about a general awareness about the Mansion House and its unique history. The exhibit will be installed in early August in the lobby of the Madison County Complex in Wampsville and will be up through the fall, so go check it out!

My experience at the Mansion House this summer has been nothing but amazing. I sought out the Field School to have a summer job, and I was interested in the Mansion House because I thought working at the former home of a utopian society would be cool, but the experience has been so much more than that. Not only have I been able to work alongside a great staff, especially Tom Guiler, the director of museum affairs, but I have also been given a good deal of independence and freedom in conducting my research, searching the collections, and curating the exhibit. It has been humbling to realize the large amounts of time and care it takes to create an exhibit, and it has been a great experience in collaboration with Tom — and with Theresa Batty, who has helped greatly with graphic design.

I have also engaged with residents of the Mansion House, community descendants, and former Oneida Limited employees, and everyone has welcomed me with open arms. I truly feel that this experience has been more than just a summer job or a research position; I have taken a deep dive into a unique community, and I have been welcomed like I am part of the family.