George Rapp came to the United States from Germany, in 1803, in search of a more tolerant home for the sect which he had founded. He purchased a tract of land in Butler County, Pennsylvania, and during the summer of 1804 six hundred of his followers, chiefly mechanics and laborers, joined him, and in the following year the community known as the Harmony Society was formally organized. The members were banded together in a Christian brotherhood, and were orthodox in all essentials. Property was held in common, and thought was directed away from mundane affairs to the second coming of the Lord, which Rapp believed to be imminent. The members experienced, in 1807, a great spiritual awakening, and one of its results was their acceptance of celibacy as an implied if not obligatory tenet of the sect.
In 1814, the community sold the greater part of its holdings of real estate in Pennsylvania and purchased 30,000 acres of land in Indiana, of which Harmony became the centre. The following year the Rappites moved to the lower Wabash and continued in a new wilderness their severe labors and ascetic practices. They marked out a village in squares, with broad streets, and built houses in which beauty was sacrificed to stability. It is a tribute to their excellent workmanship that many of these structures are still in use, having survived two communistic experiments and falling at last to the incidental needs of a Western village. The Rappites had been annoyed during their sojourn in Pennsylvania by unsympathetic neighbors, and fearing similar experiences with the rough characters that roamed the Wabash country in those days, they deemed it wise to prepare a defence. They thereupon built, of brick and stone, a substantial fortress which was used as a granary. The walls were three feet thick and the loopholes were barred. The story that this building was connected with Rapp’s house by an underground passage is authoritatively denied at New Harmony.
The Rappites had first used a frame building as a place of worship, but later they erected a large brick meeting-house, carving on the pediment above the main door a wreath and a rose, the date, 1822, and the inscription, “Mich IV, 8; in Memory of the Harmony Society; by George Rapp, 1805.” The colonists were industrious and thrifty. They cleared the land, planted vineyards, manufactured woollen and cotton goods and shoes, and found a ready market for all their products. The original population of the Pennsylvania settlement had been about six hundred persons; and during the community’s life in Indiana accessions of friends from Germany increased the number of members to between seven and eight hundred. In 1824 Rapp again decided to move, and appointed Richard Flower to negotiate a sale. Flower visited Scotland, sought Robert Owen, a manufacturer and social reformer, and sold him the Rappites’ land for $132,000. Subsequently there was an additional sale of live-stock, tools, and merchandise for $50,000, so that the total of Owen’s original investment at New Harmony was $182,000. The Rappites thereupon disappeared from Indiana, returning to Pennsylvania, where they established a new settlement called Economy, and prospered greatly.
Robert Owen was born in Wales, March 14, 1771. His father was a saddler, and Robert began his career under no favoring circumstances. He became interested in cotton spinning, for which he showed genius and at which he made a fortune. He married the daughter of David Dale, the owner of extensive cotton mills at New Lanark, on the Clyde, became Dale’s successor, and with growing fortune gave an increasing attention to social and political questions. He was a pioneer in the reform of factory abuses; and in his own establishment at New Lanark he made practical application of his theories. He visited the Continent, where he became acquainted with many persons of note, not the least of these being Pestalozzi and Fellenberg; he was much in London, usually in advocacy of some reform; he acquired skill in writing and speaking, and taken altogether his biography gives the impression of a strong, zealous, and indefatigable nature. He was intense and uncompromising, and, it must be confessed, sadly lacking in humor. He expected to find in the new world larger opportunities for the demonstration of his principles. The New Harmony incident illustrates a curious conflict between the ideal and the practical in Owen. It was quite like him to undertake the planting of a communistic settlement in America, and to invest his own money in it; but a natural business caution checked his generous impulses, and while he extended a sweeping invitation to the industrious and well-disposed of all creeds to join him, he was in no haste to divide his property.
Owen’s lectures in the hall of the House of Representatives at Washington, February 5 and March 27, 1825, before audiences composed of the famous men of the day, gave wide publicity to his views. He displayed a model of the ideal village which he proposed to found on the Wabash. The community buildings were to form a hollow square 1000 feet long. The material needs of his proposed colony were all provided for in the buildings of his model village; and he announced a comprehensive system of education in which the young of the community should be led from the lowest to the highest branches. Owen had announced that “these new proceedings,” as he called his plans, were to take effect at New Harmony—he gave the prefix to Rapp’s name for the place—in April, 1826. He spent the summer of 1825 in England, but returned to America in the fall, reaching New York November 7. His hospitable invitation had awakened the interest of a large number of persons, ranging from sincere converts to eccentric and irresponsible vagabonds, drawn from all parts of the United States and Europe. What is known in New Harmony literature as “the boat load of knowledge” set out from Pittsburg in December, 1825. About thirty people assembled on a keel boat, which they made comfortable for the voyage, and turned toward New Harmony. The ice closed upon them near Beaver, and they did not reach their destination until the middle of January. The passengers included Robert Owen and his sons, Robert Dale and William, William Maclure, Thomas Say, Charles A. Lesueur, Achilles Fretageot and wife, Captain Donald Macdonald, Dr. Gerard Troost, Phiquepal d’Arusmont, and Stedman Whitwell, a London architect.[40] Joseph Neef followed in the spring, and Frances Wright, of Nashoba fame, who married d’Arusmont, first appeared there in the second year of the community. Schoolcraft and Rafinesque were both visitors at New Harmony, but not during the life of the Owen community, though Rafinesque has been erroneously named as an original member.
The strength of the keel boat’s contribution to the community lay in special scientific knowledge; and if Owen’s inclination toward socialism had been increased by the success of Rapp’s submissive peasants, he erred gravely in his own choice of followers. William Maclure (1763-1840) was a wealthy Scotchman, who turned from a successful mercantile career to the natural sciences. He first visited the United States in the last years of the eighteenth century, and planned a geographical survey of the whole country. He explored at his own expense a vast territory, and prepared maps showing the result of his investigations. He was a founder of the Academy of Natural Sciences, at Philadelphia, to which he gave generously of his fortune, and was its president for more than twenty years. His friend, Thomas Say (1787-1834), called “the father of American zoölogy,” was also connected with the Academy in its formative years. The place of both is secure in the history of American science. Lesueur came to the United States from the West Indies. His scientific researches had included extensive investigations in Australia, and he was an early, if not indeed the first, student of the Mound-builders’ remains in Indiana. He was an artist of considerable merit, and some of his work may be seen in the New Harmony library. Troost (1776-1850) was a scientist of wide and exact knowledge, who went to Tennessee after the collapse of New Harmony, taught the sciences for many years in the University of Nashville, and was for eighteen years State geologist. Neef was a native of Alsace. He had been a teacher in Pestalozzi’s school, in Switzerland, and met there his wife, who was educated under the direction of Madame Pestalozzi. They removed to Philadelphia immediately after their marriage, and became acquainted with Maclure, who, like Owen, had been attracted by the Pestalozzi system, and who persuaded them to join the Owenites. Little is known of Macdonald, though there is a tradition at New Harmony that he returned to Scotland and inherited a title of nobility.
Owen’s followers moved into the houses that had been vacated by Rapp’s colonists, and set about organizing the new community. On April 27 Owen addressed them in the Rappite church, which had been preëmpted for sectarian uses and dedicated to liberal thought and free speech. He spoke with great enthusiasm, declaring that he had come to introduce a new and enlightened state of society, eliminate ignorance and selfishness, and remove all cause for contest between individuals; but the change from the new to the old could not be accomplished in a day, and he called New Harmony a halfway house between the evils he complained of and the ideal. In May, the modus vivendi of a preliminary society was promulgated, as a means of preparation for the perfect community to which Owen looked forward. Negroes were excluded from membership, though they might become “helpers,” or they might form an independent community. Age and experience alone were to confer precedence. For the first year a committee to be appointed by the founder was to have charge of affairs, and later the society might elect three representatives of this council. Members were required to provide their own household effects, to accept houses assigned to them, and to render their best services to the community. They were to receive credit at the community store for their labor, which was to be appraised by the committee of management. Members might be expelled for cause, or they might voluntarily retire by giving a week’s notice, receiving in merchandise any balance that remained to their credit. Persons wishing to live in the community as non-participants in its labors might do so by paying for the privilege, and the capital of any who cared to become investors would be received. American products were to have the preference in the purchase of supplies. The young were to be drilled in military tactics, to the end that they might be of service to their country in emergencies, until society had been reformed and war made unnecessary.
Within six months nearly one thousand persons had gathered at New Harmony, and a considerable proportion of these seem to have been incapable, either through inexperience or disinclination, of aiding in the success of Owen’s plans. Rapp’s industries had certainly not fallen into the hands of skilled or adaptable laborers. Many of the manufactories which he had made profitable were not operated under the new régime, and less than a hundred farm laborers volunteered for service in carrying on the plantations. Plans for education and social pleasure were received more kindly than those requiring skilled labor. All children between two and twelve were placed in a separate house, and clothed, lodged, and educated at the public expense. The fall of 1825 found 130 children so cared for, and there were also day and evening schools where old and young alike might receive elementary instruction. A band was organized to provide music, and Tuesday evenings were set apart for balls and Friday evenings for concerts. Wednesday evenings were reserved for the more serious business of discussing the purposes of the society. Military exercises, as proposed by Owen, were duly conducted, and companies of artillery and infantry were formed and drilled.
The senior Owen was absent in Scotland during the summer and fall of 1825, but returned January 18, 1826, and was received with great cordiality. He expressed his satisfaction with the progress that had been made during his absence, and in a few days announced that he felt justified in suspending the preparatory stage and inaugurating full equality. A new constitution was adopted February 5, after careful consideration in town meetings. It provided for community of property and business and social coöperation. The members were to dwell together as one family, and no discrimination was to be shown on account of occupation. Similar houses were to be provided for all, and no differences in food or clothing were to be permitted. The community was to be divided into departments of Agriculture, Manufactures and Mechanics, Literature and Science, Domestic and General Economy, Education and Commerce. Superintendents for these departments were to be chosen by an assembly consisting of all adult members of the community; but the individuals in the several departments might select their own foremen. A schism occurred before this constitution had been signed by the members of the preliminary society. The exact cause is not assigned in the Gazette, the official organ of the society, conducted by Robert Dale Owen, which announced, February 15, that a new community was about to be formed within two miles of the village “by some respectable families who were members of the preliminary society, but from conscientious motives have declined signing the new constitution.” Two new communities were, indeed, organized, one called Macluria and the other Feiba Peveli. This latter name was coined after an intricate system of geographical nomenclature, invented by a member of the society, by which the latitude and longitude of any place could be represented. The sole direction of the community was intrusted to Robert Owen two weeks after the reorganization, the inference from this fact being that the separation of the two branches had eliminated those who were antagonistic to the founder. At the end of the first year the population was distributed about as follows: the original New Harmony settlement, 800; Macluria, 120; Feiba Peveli, 60 or 70. The relations between Owen and the seceders were apparently friendly. In an address delivered at New Harmony, May 9, he spoke with satisfaction of the success of his undertaking, saying that his hopes had been surpassed, and mentioning both Macluria and Feiba Peveli with approval. At Macluria temporary cabins had been built and more land had been cultivated than was necessary to sustain the members. Spinning and weaving were practised by the women and children, who produced cloth in excess of their requirements. Feiba Peveli was a farming and gardening community, reported by Owen to be doing well.
At this time the first Rappite church was given up to carpentry and shoemaking. Boys received industrial training there and slept in the loft. The second and more pretentious edifice had become a town hall, used for lectures, open discussions, dances, and concerts. Rapp’s former home—the best residence in the place—was occupied by Maclure, who had given $45,000 to assist Owen in his enterprise. Owen lived at the tavern, which was conducted by the society. The rank and file were accommodated in four boarding-houses pending changes that would bring all together at a common table. A uniform dress for the members had been adopted, but it was not generally worn. Wide trousers, buttoned over a short collarless jacket, were prescribed for the men; the women wore a coat reaching to the knee, and pantalettes. Bernard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, who visited New Harmony in the spring of 1826, and wrote a most entertaining account of the community, described the costume and remarked that the members who had already donned it were of the higher social class, and that these did not, in the gatherings at the public hall, mingle with the ruder element. Previous conditions and employments were evidently remembered in the community, in spite of the founder’s insistence that there should be no discrimination. Many in the settlement found the practical details of community life exceedingly irksome; and one, a Russian lady, confided to the German nobleman her disgust with New Harmony, stating that “some of the society were too low, and the table was below all criticism.”