ONEIDA — The Oneida Community Mansion House is teaming up with the Oneida Public Library to host Oneida Limited Day on Thursday, Sept. 8.

This event will celebrate the Oneida Community Mansion House’s ongoing Oneida Limited Oral History Project and will also be live-streamed through Zoom. Pre-registration is required at https://www.oneidacommunity.org/event.

This project aims to understand how the employees made Oneida Limited the largest silverware company in the world. Who and what drove its success? What was it like to work there? What made the company unique? How did the company change through the years?

Through audio recordings, OCMH seeks to tell the story of Oneida Limited and the day-to-day routines, notable events, and lives of its employees.

These narratives will expand the understanding of the connections between OL and the original Oneida Community while providing an important addition to the Oneida Community Mansion House’s collection of Oneida Community-related artifacts.

“Oneida Limited was unique in many ways,” Project Director Dave Hill said. “Given all that has happened to the company over the past years — both good and bad — I think it’s important to create a record of ‘the way it was.’ One way to preserve those memories is to collect first-person narratives from people who worked in the company’s various departments.”

This event will feature a lecture by Hill, who will report some of the initial findings of the project. In addition, volunteers will be on hand to help people sign up for interviews and learn more about how they can contribute to the project.

Furthermore, staff will be setting up a “listening station” where attendees can listen to selected clips from recorded interviews. Finally, there will be an opportunity for former employees to share their photos, advertising, and other memorabilia from their working days and have them digitized for Mansion House museum exhibits and researchers.

“We are incredibly excited to be sharing some of the amazing stories that have come out of this project, but we are also seeking more people to share their experiences at OL. That is a lot of the impetus for this event,” said Thomas Guiler, director of museum affairs at the Mansion House. “It has been great to partner with the library for this event to bring what we do at the Mansion House to another audience in downtown Oneida.”

This program has been made possible with the support of the Museum Association of New York’s Building Capacity Program.

The Oneida Community Mansion House is a 501c3 not-for-profit organization with an educational charter from the New York State Board of Regents. It was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1965 as part of the National Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings. This is the highest designation of historical significance that can be awarded by the United States government and is reserved for places that are exceptional because of their ability to illustrate U.S. heritage.

Today, there are less than 2,600 NHLs in the United States. The mission of the OCMH is to use the historic site and collection to share the story of the Oneida Community — one of the most radical and successful of the 19th-century social experiments — to explore pressing social issues that still confront audiences today.

The Mansion House is open for visitors for self-guided and guided tours by appointment. Landscaped gardens, grounds, and trails are free to the public year-round.

Oneida Community Mansion House is located at 170 Kenwood Ave., Oneida.