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Community Conversations: The Oneida Legacy Series

Bring the history of the Oneida Community to your organization! The Oneida Community Mansion House offers engaging staff-led lectures designed for historical societies, libraries, and community groups.

Presentation Options:

In-Person: Available for locations within a 60-mile radius of Oneida, NY.
Virtual: Available via Zoom for groups anywhere.

Custom Travel:

Groups located beyond the 60-mile radius may be accommodated with advanced notice; please note that additional travel fees will apply.

Program Offerings:

History of the Oneida Community and its Legacy

Gain a comprehensive overview of the Oneida Community’s radical social practices, unique conceptions of family, and innovative industries. This session chronicles the Community's roots, its tumultuous breakup, and its eventual reorganization into a global leader in flatware production.

The Architecture of the Mansion House

The Oneida Community Mansion House remains one of the most iconic structures in American history. Built in stages over nearly 50 years, this talk examines how the Mansion House was communally designed to reflect evolving architectural styles while reinforcing the Community’s radical social ideology.

History and Material Culture of the Mansion House

Explore the lives of the people who lived, worked, and played within the Oneida Community Mansion House. This lecture connects the Community's religious and social principles to the tangible world, showing how their ideology was brought to life through architecture, furniture, textiles, and everyday objects.

The Three Harriets: Extraordinary Women in the Oneida Community

With radical views on sex, family, and gender, the Oneida Community afforded women opportunities far beyond those available to their counterparts in the outside world. This presentation explores women’s experiences in the Community through the biographies of three women named Harriet, whose lives both exemplify and complicate our understanding women’s lives in the Community.

The Braidings of Jessie Catherine Kinsley

This talk examines the life and art of Jessie Catherine Kinsley., who was raised amidst ideas of free-love, gender equality, and Perfectionism, by a group of people who believed they were bringing about heaven on earth. She lived through the tumultuous years of the Community breakup Community, entered into traditional family life, and became a regionally famous artist. Though she dabbled in many media including drawing, painting, poetry, and children’s books, she is most known for her “braidings”—a unique art form she invented using discarded dresses and fabric to create gigantic braided mosaics depicting scenes from literature, scripture, nature, and history.

About Our Speaker

Thomas A. Guiler, Ph.D. is the Director of Museum Affairs at the Oneida Community Mansion House. An expert in the history of utopian communities and 19th/20th-century cultural history, Dr. Guiler brings deep insight and academic rigor to every presentation.