New Harmony, Indiana New Harmony, Indiana Downtown new harmony New Harmony is a historic town on the Wabash River in Harmony Township, Posey County, in the U.S.
Established by the Harmony Society in 1814, the town was originally known as Harmony (also called Harmonie, or New Harmony).
Bought at two dollars an acre, the 20,000-acre (8,100 ha) settlement was the brainchild of George Rapp and was home exclusively to German Lutherans in its early years. Here, the Harmonists assembled a new town in the wilderness, but in 1824 they decided to sell their property and return to Pennsylvania. Robert Owen, a Welsh industrialist and civil reformer, purchased the town in 1825 with the intention of creating a new utopian improve and retitled it New Harmony.
New Harmony became known as a center for advances in education and scientific research.
New Harmony's inhabitants established the first no-charge library, a civic drama club, and a enhance school fitness open to men and women.
Its prominent people encompassed Owen's sons, Indiana congressman and civil reformer Robert Dale Owen, who sponsored legislation to problematic the Smithsonian Institution; David Dale Owen, a noted state and federal geologist; William Owen; and Richard Owen, state geologist, Indiana University professor, and first president of Purdue University.
Geological Survey and various scientists and educators contributed to New Harmony's intellectual community, including William Maclure, Marie Louise Duclos Fretageot, Thomas Say, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, Joseph Neef, Frances Wright, and others.
These structures, along with the rest related to the Owenite community, are encompassed in the New Harmony Historic District.
Contemporary additions to the town include the Roofless Church and Atheneum. The New Harmony State Memorial is positioned there.
The town of Harmony, established by the Harmony Society in 1814 under the leadership of German immigrant George Rapp (actually Johann Georg Rapp), was the second of three suburbs assembled by the pietist, communal German theological group, known as Harmonists, Harmonites or Rappites.
In May 1815 the last of the Harmonists who had remained behind until the sale of their town in Pennsylvania was instead of departed for their new town along the Wabash River. By 1816, the same year that Indiana became a state, the Harmonists had acquired 20,000 acres (81 km2) of land, assembled 160 homes and other buildings, and cleared 2,000 acres (8.1 km2) for their new town. The settlement also began to attract new arrivals, including emigrants from Germany such as members of Rapp's congregation from Wurttemberg, many of whom expected the Harmonists to pay for their passage to America. However, the new arrivals "were more of a liability than an asset". On March 20, 1819, Rapp commented, "It is astonishing how much trouble the citizens who have appeared here have made, for they have no morals and do not know what it means to live a moral and well-mannered life, not to speak of true Christianity, of denying the world or yourself." Although the Harmonist improve continued to thrive amid the 1820s, correspondence from March 6, 1824, between Rapp and his adopted son, Frederick, indicates that the Harmonists prepared to sell their Indiana property and were already looking for a new location. In May, a decade after their arrival in Indiana, the Harmonists purchased territory along the Ohio River eighteen miles from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and were making arrangements to advertise the sale of their property in Indiana. The move, although it was made primarily for theological reasons, would furnish the Harmonists with easier access to easterly markets and a place where they could live more peacefully with the rest who shared their German language and culture. On May 24, 1824, a group of Harmonists boarded a steamboat and departed Indiana, bound for Pennsylvania, where they established the improve of Economy, now called Ambridge.
In May 1825 the last Harmonists left Indiana after the sale of their 20,000 acres (81 km2) of property, which encompassed the territory and buildings, to Robert Owen for $150,000. Owen hoped to establish a new improve on the Indiana frontier, one that would serve as a model improve for communal living and civil reform.
New Harmony as envisioned by Owen Owen, his twenty-two-year-old son, William, and his Scottish friend Donald Mc - Donald sailed to the United States in 1824 to purchase a site to implement Owen's vision for "a New Moral World" of happiness, enlightenment, and prosperity through education, science, technology, and communal living.
Owen's utopian improve would problematic a "superior social, intellectual and physical surrounding" based on his ideals of civil reform. Owen was persuaded to buy the town in order to prove his theories were viable and to correct the troubles that were affecting his mill-town improve New Lanark. The ready-built town of Harmony, Indiana, fit Owen's needs.
In January 1825 he signed the agreement to purchase the town, retitled it New Harmony, and invited "any and all" to join him there. While many of the town's new arrivals had a sincere interest in making it a success, the experiment also thriving "crackpots, free-loaders, and adventurers whose existence in the town made success unlikely." William Owen, who remained in New Harmony while his father returned east to recruit new residents, also expressed concern in his diary entry, dated March 24, 1825: "I doubt whether those who have been comfortable and content in their old mode of life, will find an increase of appreciatement when they come here.
When Robert Owen returned to New Harmony in April 1825 he found seven hundred to eight hundred inhabitants and a "chaotic" situation, much in need of leadership. By May 1825 the improve had adopted the "Constitution of the Preliminary Society," which loosely outlined its expectations and government.
Members would render services to the improve in exchange for credit at the town's store, but those who did not want to work could purchase credit at the store with cash payments made in advance. In addition, the town would be governed by a committee of four members chosen by Owen and the improve would elect three additional members. In June, Robert Owen left William in New Harmony while he traveled east to continue promoting his model improve and returned to Scotland, where he sold his interests in the New Lanark textile mills and arranged financial support for his wife and two daughters, who chose to remain in Scotland. Owen's four sons, Robert Dale, William, David Dale, and Richard, and a daughter, Jane Dale, later settled in New Harmony. While Owen was away recruiting new inhabitants for New Harmony, a number of factors that led to an early breakup of the socialist improve had already begun.
Owen spent only a several months in residence at New Harmony, where a shortage of skilled craftsmen and workers along with inadequate and inexperienced oversight and management contributed to its eventual failure. Even with the community's shortcomings, Owen was a passionate promoter of his vision for New Harmony.
(Maclure became Owen's financial partner.) On January 26, 1826, Fretegeot, Maclure, and a number of their colleagues, including Thomas Say, Josef Neef, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, and the rest aboard the keelboat Philanthropist (also called the "Boatload of Knowledge"), appeared in New Harmony to help Owen establish his new experiment in socialism. On February 5, 1826, the town adopted a new constitution, "The New Harmony Community of Equality", whose objective was to achieve happiness based on principles of equal rights and equality of duties.
Cooperation, common property, economic benefit, freedom of speech and action, kindness and courtesy, order, preservation of health, acquisition of knowledge, and obedience to the country's laws were encompassed as part of the constitution. The constitution laid out the life of a citizen in New Harmony as follows; from one to five, kids were to be cared for and encouraged to exercise and from six to nine they were to be lightly working and given education via observation directed by skilled teachers.
Although the constitution contained worthy ideals, it did not clearly address how the improve would function and was never fully established.Individualist anarchist Josiah Warren, who was one of the initial participants in the New Harmony Society, asserted that the improve was doomed to failure due to a lack of individual sovereignty and private property.
Part of New Harmony's failings rested upon three activities that Owen brought in from Scotland and which floundered in America.
Robert Dale Owen would say of the floundered socialism experiment that the citizens at New Harmony were "a heterogeneous compilation of radicals, enthusiastic devotees to principle, honest latitudinarians, and lazy theorists, with a sprinkling of unprincipled sharpers thrown in," and that "all cooperative schemes which furnish equal remuneration to the skilled and industrious and the ignorant and idle must work their own downfall, for by this unjust plan, they must of necessity eliminate the valuable members and retain only the improvident, unskilled, and vicious." In 1826 splinter groups dissatisfied with the accomplishments of the larger improve broke away from the chief group and prompted a reorganization. In New Harmony work was divided into six departments, each with its own superintendent.
New Harmony was dissolved in 1829 due to constant quarrels as parcels of territory and property were returned to private use. To dissolve the community, Owen spent $200,000 of his own funds to purchase New Harmony property and pay off the community's debts.
His sons, Robert Dale and William, gave up their shares of the New Lanark mills in exchange for shares in New Harmony.
Later, Owen "conveyed the entire New Harmony property to his sons in return for an annuity of $1,500 for the remainder of his life." Owen left New Harmony in June 1827 and concentrated his interests elsewhere.
New Harmony, a utopian attempt; depicted as proposed by Robert Owen Although Robert Owen's vision of New Harmony as an advance in civil reform was not realized, the town did turn into a scientific center of nationwide significance, especially in the natural sciences, most prominently geology.
William Maclure (1763 1840), president of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia from 1817 to 1840, came to New Harmony amid the winter of 1825 26. Maclure brought a group of artists, educators, and fellow scientists, including naturalists Thomas Say and Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, to New Harmony from Philadelphia aboard the Philanthropist (also known as the "Boatload of Knowledge"). His definitive studies of shells and insects, various contributions to scientific journals, and scientific expeditions to Florida, Georgia, the Rocky Mountains, Mexico, and elsewhere made him an internationally known naturalist. Say has been called the father of American descriptive entomology and American conchology. Prior to his arrival at New Harmony, he served as librarian for the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, curator at the American Philosophical Society, and professor of natural history at the University of Pennsylvania. Say died in New Harmony in 1834. Charles-Alexandre Lesueur (1778 1846), a naturalist and artist, came to New Harmony aboard the Philanthropist.
His sketches of New Harmony furnish a visual record of the town amid the Owenite period.
However, after returning to New Harmony, David Dale Owen was influenced by the work of Maclure and Gerhard Troost, a Dutch geologist, mineralogist, zoologist, and chemist who appeared in New Harmony in 1825 and later became the state geologist of Tennessee from 1831 to 1830. Owen went on to turn into a noted geologist himself.
Headquartered at New Harmony, Owen conducted the first official geological survey of Indiana (1837 39), and, after his appointment as U.S.
In 1846 Owen sampled a number of possible building stones for the Smithsonian "Castle" and recommended the distinct ive Seneca Creek Sandstone of which that building is constructed. The following year he identified a quarry at Bull Run, twenty-three miles from nation's capital, that provided the contemporary for the massive building. Owen became the first state geologist of three states: Kentucky (1854 57), Arkansas (1857 59), and Indiana (1850 1860). Owen's exhibition and laboratory in New Harmony was known as the biggest west of the Allegheny Mountains. At the time of Owen's death in 1860, his exhibition encompassed some 85,000 items. Of Owen's many publications, perhaps the most momentous is his 638-page Report of a Geological Survey of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota and Incidentally of a Portion of Nebraska Territory, including colored maps and drawings of fossils, presented in Philadelphia in 1852. Runnels; Amos Henry Worthen was the second state geologist of Illinois and the first curator of the Illinois State Museum; and Fielding Bradford Meek became the first full-time paleontologist in lieu of full time pay at the Smithsonian Institution. Joseph Granville Norwood, one of David Dale Owen's colleagues and coauthors, also a medical doctor, became the first state geologist of Illinois (1851 1858). From 1851 to 1854, the Illinois State Geological Survey was headquartered in New Harmony.
Richard Owen (1810 1890), Robert Owen's youngest son, came to New Harmony in 1828 and taught school there. Richard Owen assisted his brother, David Dale Owen, and became Indiana's second state geologist.
At New Harmony, Robert Dale Owen taught school and presented the New Harmony Gazette with Frances Wright. Owen later moved to New York.
In 1830 he presented "Moral Philosophy," the first treatise in the United States to support birth control, and returned to New Harmony in 1834. From 1836 to 1838, and in 1851, Owen served in the Indiana council and was also a delegate to the state's constitutional convention of 1850. Owen was an promote for women's rights, no-charge enhance education, and opposed slavery.
Among his critics in the Boston Investigator and at home in the New Harmony Advertiser were John and Margaret Chappellsmith, he formerly an artist for David Dale Owen's geological publications, and she a former Owenite lecturer. Robert Dales Owen died at Lake George, New York, in 1877. Frances Wright (1795 1852) came to New Harmony in 1824, where she edited and wrote for the New Harmony Gazette.
Wright and Robert Dale Owen moved their journal to New York City in 1829 and presented it as the Free Enquirer. Wright married William Philquepal d'Arusmont, a Pestalozzian educator she met in New Harmony, and the couple lived in Paris, France, and in Cincinnati, Ohio, where they divorced in 1850.
The history of education at New Harmony involves a several teachers who were already well-established in their fields before they moved to New Harmony, largely through the accomplishments of William Maclure.
By the time Maclure appeared in New Harmony he had already established the first Pestalozzian school in America.
Under Maclure's direction and using his philosophy of education, New Harmony schools became the first enhance schools in the United States open to boys and girls.
At New Harmony Maclure also established one of the first industrialized or trade schools in the country. He also had his extensive library and geological compilation shipped to New Harmony from Philadelphia and, in 1838, established The Working Men's Institute, a society for "mutual instruction". It includes the earliest continuously operating library in the state of Indiana, as well as a small exhibition.
The vault in the library contains many historic manuscripts, letters, and documents pertaining to the history of New Harmony.
Marie Duclos Fretageot managed Pestalozzian schools that Maclure organized in France and Philadelphia before coming to New Harmony aboard the Philanthropist.
In New Harmony she was responsible for the infant's school (for kids under age five), supervised a several young women she had brought with her from Philadelphia, ran a store, and was Maclure's administrator amid his residence in Mexico. Fretageot remained in New Harmony until 1831, returned to France, and later joined Maclure in Mexico, where she died in 1833. Correspondence of Maclure and Fretageot from 1820 to 1833 was extensive and is documented in Partnership for Posterity. In 1826 Neef, his wife, and kids came to New Harmony to run the schools under Maclure's direction. Neef, following Maclure's curriculum, became superintendent of the schools in New Harmony, where as many as 200 students, ranging in age from five to twelve, were enrolled. Jane Dale Owen Fauntleroy (1806 1861), daughter of Robert Owen, appeared in New Harmony in 1833.
He became a company partner of David Dale and Robert Dale Owen while she established a seminary for young women in their New Harmony home.
1773 1832) was an artist, printer, and engraver of considerable fame when he joined the New Harmony improve in September 1826.
There he taught printing and presented a bimonthly newspaper, Disseminator of Useful Knowledge, and books using the town's printing press. Tiebout died in New Harmony in 1832. Publications from New Harmony's press include William Maclure's Essay on the Formation of Rocks, or an Inquiry into the Probably Origin of their Present Form and Structure and Observations on the Geology of the West India Islands; from Barbadoes to Santa Cruz, Inclusive, both presented in 1832; Thomas Say's Description of New Species of North American Insects, and Observations on Some of the Species Already Described; Descriptions of Some New Terrestrial and Fluviatile Shells of North America; and American Conchology, or Descriptions of the Shells of North America.
Lucy Sistare Say was an apprentice at Fretageot's Pestalozzian school in Philadelphia before accompanying her to New Harmony aboard the Philanthropist.
En route, Sistare met Thomas Say; the two were married in Mount Vernon, near New Harmony, on January 4, 1827.
An accomplished artist, Say colored 66 of the 68 illustrations in her husband's book, American Conchology, of which parts one through six were presented in New Harmony between 1830 and 1834; part seven was presented in Philadelphia in 1836. The history of New Harmony includes the work of the New Harmony historian and resident, Josephine Mirabella Elliott.
William Owen (1802 1842), Robert Owen's second earliest son, was involved in New Harmony's company and improve affairs.
He was among the leaders who established New Harmony's Thespian Society and acted in some of the group's performances. Owen also helped establish the Posey County Agricultural Society and, in 1834, became director of the State Bank of Indiana, Evansville Branch.
He died in New Harmony in 1842. Main article: New Harmony Historic District More than 30 structures from the Harmonist and Owenite utopian communities remain as part of the New Harmony Historic District, which is a National Historic Landmark. In addition, architect Richard Meier designed New Harmony's Atheneum, which serves as the Visitors Center for Historic New Harmony, and depicts the history of the community.
New Harmony is positioned at 38 7 43 N 87 56 3 W (38.128583, 87.934122). The Wabash River forms the boundary of New Harmony.
According to the 2010 census, New Harmony has a total region of 0.65 square miles (1.68 km2), of which 0.64 square miles (1.66 km2) (or 98.46%) is territory and 0.01 square miles (0.03 km2) (or 1.54%) is water. According to the Koppen Climate Classification system, New Harmony has a humid subtropical climate, abbreviated "Cfa" on climate maps. Bust of Paul Johannes Tillich by James Rosati in New Harmony Indiana 66.svg Indiana State Road 66, ends at New Harmony Toll Bridge.
Indiana 68.svg Indiana State Road 68, ends just north of New Harmony Indiana 69.svg Indiana State Road 69, used to end at New Harmony, now goes around town and ends at close-by Griffin.
New Harmony is the setting for the season three finale of The CW tv series Supernatural.
New Harmony figures prominently in the premier novel by Eric Durchholz, The Promise of Eden.
List of enhance art in New Harmony, Indiana "New Harmony, Indiana".
New Harmony Then and Now.
Arndt, A Documentary History of the Indiana Decade of the Harmony Society, 1814 1824 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1975) 1:xi.
Boomhower, "New Harmony: Home to Indiana's Communal Societies," Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History 14(4):36 37.
Arndt, George Rapp's Harmony Society, p.
Arndt, A Documentary History of the Indiana Decade of the Harmony Society, 1:8.
Arndt, George Rapp's Harmony Society, p.
Arndt, George Rapp's Harmony Society, p.
Arndt, George Rapp's Harmony Society, p.
Arndt, George Rapp's Harmony Society, p.
Arndt, A Documentary History of the Indiana Decade of the Harmony Society, 1:674.
Arndt, A Documentary History of the Indiana Decade of the Harmony Society, 1:744.
Arndt, A Documentary History of the Indiana Decade of the Harmony Society, 1:784.
Arndt, A Documentary History of the Indiana Decade of the Harmony Society, 2:131 32.
Arndt, George Rapp's Harmony Society, p.
Arndt, A Documentary History of the Indiana Decade of the Harmony Society, 1:837, 871 74.
Arndt, A Documentary History of the Indiana Decade of the Harmony Society, 1:837, 871.
"New Harmony, Indiana: Robert Owen's Seedbed for Utopia," Indiana Magazine of History 76, no.
Carmony and Elliott indicate that Owen paid $125,000 for New Harmony, and cite other sources that state varying amounts.
"New Harmony as envisioned by Owen" was originally captioned by Stedman Whitwell, the architect who drew the figure, as "Design for a Community of 2000 Person established upon a principle Commended by Plato, Lord Bacon and Sir Thomas More" in Description of an Architectural Model From a Design by Stedman Whitwell, Exq.
Whitwell (1784 1840) lived in New Harmony amid 1825.
In Edward Royle's Robert Owen and the Commencement of the Millennium, (Manchester University Press, 1998), Whitwell's figure is presented in a chapter on Harmony, the name of Owen's improve in Hampshire, England, dating from 1841, although the figure was presented in 1830 and almost certainly existed as early as 1825.
Wilson, The Angel and the Serpent: The Story of New Harmony (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1967, 2nd ed.), p.
Several of Robert Owen's kids were given the middle name Dale with respect to Owen's father-in-law, David Dale.
The New Harmony Movement.
New Harmony Then and Now.
Walker, Wonder Workers on the Wabash (New Harmony, IN: Historic New Harmony, 1999), p.
Clark Kimberling, "David Dale Owen and Joseph Granville Norwood: Pioneer Geologists in Indiana and Illinois", Indiana Magazine of History 92, no.
Indiana Historical Society, "New Harmony Collection, 1814 1884" compilation guide.
On March 23, 1837, an unusual triple marriage took place at New Harmony, when Neef's daughter, Anne Eliza, married Richard Owen, Neef's daughter, Caroline, married David Dale Owen, and Mary Bouton married William Owen.
New Harmony Historic District, National Historic Landmarks Program, National Park Service.
Climate Summary for New Harmony, Indiana Don Blair, The New Harmony Story, The New Harmony Publication Committee, 1967.
Thomas James De la Hunt, ed., History of the New Harmony Workingmen's Institute, New Harmony, Indiana, Evansville, 1927.
Jeffrey Douglas, "William Maclure and the New Harmony Working Men's Institute", Libraries and Culture 26 (1991): 402 414.
Elfrieda Lang, "The Inhabitants of New Harmony According to the Federal Enumeration of 1850", Indiana Magazine of History 42, no.
Richard William Leopold, Robert Dale Owen: A Biography, Harvard University Press, 1940; reprinted by Octagon Books, New York, 1969.
Lockwood, The New Harmony Communities, New York, 1905.
Ruediger Reitz, Paul Tillich und New Harmony, Evangelisches Verlagswerk Stuttgart/Germany, 1970.
William Ressl and Penny Taylor, Excerpts from The Paul Tillich Archive of New Harmony, Indiana from the Collection of Mrs.
Jane Blaffer Owen: Part Two, Paul Tillich and New Harmony, Indiana, Why Paul Tillich and New Harmony, Indiana?, Book, World - Cat OCLC 1807 - 67473, 2007.
The Atheneum in New Harmony, Indiana, United States.
The Atheneum at New Harmony, Indiana." "Richard Meier, Creator of a New Harmony: An Architect Builds a Classic Meeting Hall for the Nations Heartland." "La via storica: L'Atheneum di New harmony nell' Indiana di Richard Meier." "Emblematic Edifice: The Atheneum, New Harmony, Indiana." by Arthur Cohen; "The Atheneum, New Harmony, Ind.
"The Atheneum, New Harmony, Indiana.
"New Harmony und das Athenaeum von Richard Meier." "Harmonious Museum for New Harmony." "Comments on The Atheneum, New Harmony, Indiana; Manchester Civic Center, Manchester, New Hampshire." Wikimedia Commons has media related to New Harmony, Indiana, United States.
Wikisource has the text of the 1905 New International Encyclopedia article New Harmony.
Historic New Harmony, administered by the University of Southern Indiana and the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites.
Equitable Commerce by Josiah Warren The individualist anarchist who participated in the New Harmony universal discusses the reasons for its failure New Harmony Scientists, Educators, Writers & Artists New Harmony Town Government
Categories:
New Harmony, Indiana - Towns in Posey County, Indiana - Towns in Indiana - Utopian communities - Radical Pietism - Utopian socialism - German-American culture in Indiana - Populated places established in 1814 - Indiana culture - Evansville urbane region - Communities of Southwestern Indiana - Indiana State Historic Sites - Christian communities - 1814 establishments in Indiana Territory
|