New Harmony
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a community in Posey County, Indiana. The community was founded by a Wurtemberg sect, followers of George Rapp, a weaver. In 1803 these Rappists migrated to Pennsylvania to escape persecution and founded the town of Harmony in Butler County. In 1813 they bought 30,000 acres of rich land in Posey County and founded New Harmony. Property was held in common. After a time marriage was forbidden; marriages in existence were dissolved. The people were quiet, industrious, economical, and thrifty. Their creed enjoined plain living, plain dress. They were Bible readers. They excelled in agriculture and in manufactures. After making New Harmony famous the Rappists sold in 1823 to Robert Owen and returned to Beaver County, Pennsylvania, where they founded the village of Economy. We may say in passing that the Rappist system of celibacy reduced the membership of the society to old people. Abundance of property did not prove a sufficient incentive to recruits. The community dissolved. Mr. Owen and his Scottish associates aimed likewise to establish a society based on community of property. There was to be no religious test for membership. Educational facilities were planned to develop thinking power. The essentials for membership were declared to be honesty of purpose, temperance, industry, cleanliness, and carefulness. The Owenites came into possession of a well laid out town, with streets at right angles and a public square surrounded by large brick buildings built by the industrious Rappists for schools, churches, and other public purposes. Surrounding the village they had 30,000 acres of the richest land in America. Over 3,000 acres with a vineyard and orchards were in excellent order. Inside of ninety days, about 900 persons gathered at the call. Scotch, English, and Americans, as they were, dissension was evident from the start. Inside of four years, despite the earnest efforts of Mr. Owen and proffered financial aid on a large scale, the society broke into fragments and the effort to establish a socialistic community under seemingly ideal circumstances came to an end. Writers allude to the "unsuccessful New Harmony venture." The village still exists and is now an ordinary Indiana market town of about 2,000 inhabitants.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 description of "an ordinary Indiana market town of about 2,000 inhabitants" no longer holds: New Harmony has shrunk to fewer than 800 residents, and far from being ordinary it now lives largely on its utopian past. The Rappite and Owenite buildings were designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1965, and from the 1940s onward Jane Blaffer Owen, who married into the Owen family, financed restoration and commissioned modern architecture for the town, including Philip Johnson's open-air Roofless Church (1960) and Richard Meier's Atheneum visitor center (1979). Historians now stress what Aiton passed over: after the commune collapsed the town became a serious scientific center, home to geologist David Dale Owen and to the Working Men's Institute of 1838, still operating as a library and museum. Modern accounts also date Rapp's Indiana purchase to 1814 and Owen's to 1825, rather than the 1813 and 1823 given here.
Written for this edition, 2026.