New Harmony

New Harmony, Indiana, was home to the nineteenth-century religious Harmonist and socialist Owenite communal utopias. The Harmonists, followers of the charismatic prophet George Rapp (1757–1847), founded the town in 1814. They had separated from the established Evangelical Lutheran Church in the German province of Württemberg and immigrated to the United States after 1803. Their pietistic sect, the Harmony Society, was named for the divine cosmic harmony lost in Adam's sin but regained in its members' hearts and in the promised millennial kingdom of God on earth. They practiced Pietism, perfectionism, pacificism, and community of goods in their villages of Harmony, Pennsylvania, and New Harmony. They abstained from sexual relations and tobacco to purify themselves for Christ's imminent return.

The devout Harmonists made New Harmony a cultural and economic oasis on the frontier, building two churches and composing poetry and music printed on their own press. They published George Rapp's Thoughts on the Destiny of Man (1824), one of the earliest philosophical works issued in Indiana. Their 360-book library was among the largest in the West. Nearly 100 of their boys and girls, born before they adopted celibacy, studied a broad curriculum in their school. In just ten years, 800 Rappites built 180 dwellings, mills, factories, and other structures on an efficient grid plan, farmed 2,000 acres and traded with twenty-two states and ten foreign countries under the direction of astute business manager Frederick Reichert Rapp, who was the adopted son of George Rapp. They founded a bank and loaned $5,000 to the new state of Indiana, whose 1816 constitution Frederick helped write to let pacifists pay a fee rather than do military service.

New Harmony's communal economic success drew the attention of Robert Owen (1771–1858), a wealthy cotton manufacturer and social reformer from New Lanark, Scotland. When the Harmony Society left New Harmony and returned to Pennsylvania in 1824, Owen purchased New Harmony to create a model of his own socialistic utopia. His “New Moral World” required forming superior character from birth through affection and education. Abundance would come through science, technology, and villages practicing mutual cooperation. William Maclure (1763–1840), a retired Scottish businessman and the “father of American geology,” became Owen's New Harmony partner and director of its schools.

While Owen urged anyone to join New Harmony, Maclure brought from Philadelphia noted scientists and Pestalozzian teachers, experts in the progressive learning-by-doing methods of Swiss educator Johann [Page 989]Heinrich Pestalozzi. The utopian experiment succeeded in founding early infant, Pestalozzian, and trade schools; in producing original research and publications in conchology, entomology, geology, ichthyology, mineralogy, and zoology; and in promoting women's rights, emancipation, and public education. The Workingmen's Institute, begun by funds from Maclure, functions to this day. However, the community failed to unite its lower and upper classes or to convert many to Owen's communal socialism, rational religion, or utopian vision. Owenite New Harmony failed to integrate its diverse population and dissolved in rancorous disputes over the administration of the schools and in personal infighting that even involved Owen and Maclure, who sued each other. However, under the leadership of Owen's children it continued as a scientific and cultural center for decades. New Harmony today is a living community that is home to more than twenty-five historic buildings as well as archives, museums, and galleries, with an active theater, cultural programs, and interpretive tours.

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