Subj: Sewell Date: 1/18/01 10:15:14 AM Eastern Standard Time From: JAYCONN To: LesJaneB Another interesting Newhouse article relating to the Oneida Community at http://libwww.syr.edu/DigitalCollection/Oneida/first 100/ The packing of fruits and vegetables was always, for sentimental reasons, the favorite industry of the Community; but its chief support came from the manufacture of steel traps. When Noyes and his party moved from Putney to Oneida, they found a lank, long-jawed Vermonter named Sewell Newhouse established on the site of the old Indian Castle, two miles from Kenwood. Newhouse had a small blacksmith's shop in which every year he made a few traps and a rifle or two. The traps were bought mostly by the neighboring Indians. They cost sixty-two cents apiece, and in his most active years Newhouse might make between one and two thousand of them, but he generally interrupted his working season with at least one trip into the woods to do a little trapping on his own account. He was primarily a woodsman in manner and habits, and when he joined the Community a year after its start, though he was always a loyal member, he went pretty much his own way. No member, for instance, was supposed to keep a dog; but it was noticed that whenever Newhouse set off to get himself a rabbit, he would always be picked up by a pretty good hound at one or other of the neighboring farms. It was natural therefore for him to keep on with his small trap business which, after all, brought a few dollars into the Community every year. 8