WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: New Harmony 0:00:02.520 --> 0:00:07.600 Happy Saturday. This week, we talked about Narcisse Montreal's submarines, 0:00:07.800 --> 0:00:10.720 and we mentioned his affiliation with a man named Ettien 0:00:10.840 --> 0:00:13.800 Cab And there's probably going to be an episode on 0:00:13.880 --> 0:00:17.480 Etsian Caba in the near future unless something goes very 0:00:17.480 --> 0:00:22.200 wrong in my research. But Etienkab was also connected to 0:00:22.239 --> 0:00:24.680 somebody we have talked about on the show before, and 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:28.639 that was Robert Owen. We talked about Robert Owen in 0:00:28.720 --> 0:00:31.560 the later part of our episode on the communal settlements 0:00:31.600 --> 0:00:34.480 in New Harmony, Indiana, that was part of our live 0:00:34.479 --> 0:00:37.680 show at the Indiana Historical Society back in twenty nineteen. 0:00:38.240 --> 0:00:41.240 So this live episode originally came out July thirty first, 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:46.040 twenty nineteen. There's also mention of the boatload of knowledge 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:49.480 in this live episode. We did do a whole episode 0:00:49.520 --> 0:00:53.000 on that that came out on August fifth of twenty nineteen. 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:55.880 So enjoy. 0:00:57.280 --> 0:01:08.119 Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class of iHeartRadio. Hello, 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:10.600 and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm 0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:13.720 Tracy V. Wilson and Tracy we recently went on a 0:01:13.720 --> 0:01:18.120 little trip we did. We visited the Indiana Historical Society 0:01:18.160 --> 0:01:21.240 at their invitation, we did a live podcast there. We 0:01:21.280 --> 0:01:24.280 did that show actually took place the night before their 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:27.720 Midwestern Roots Conference began, and it was such an honor 0:01:27.760 --> 0:01:32.080 to kick off the festivities and they being in Indianapolis, 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:35.080 they asked us to do something Indiana related and we 0:01:35.160 --> 0:01:39.000 ended up talking about the village slash town of New 0:01:39.000 --> 0:01:42.440 Harmony and a couple of interesting communal living experiments that 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:45.120 were conducted there. Yes, we did not get to go 0:01:45.680 --> 0:01:47.319 to New Harmony while we were there. It was a 0:01:47.480 --> 0:01:50.720 very fast trip, but there are lots of things about 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:54.640 it online. You can have a lot of experience through 0:01:54.680 --> 0:01:59.880 all of these documents and records and pictures and cool stuff. Yeah, 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:04.960 the Indiana Historical Society has a really impressive digital archive online, 0:02:05.160 --> 0:02:07.440 including things not just about New Harmony, but about a 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:10.200 lot of different topics. So we encourage people to absolutely 0:02:10.280 --> 0:02:12.560 go explore. But for now, we'll hop it right into 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:17.639 our live show. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm 0:02:17.680 --> 0:02:22.240 Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Today we're talking 0:02:22.240 --> 0:02:24.760 about the town of New Harmony and in the window 0:02:24.919 --> 0:02:28.800 from eighteen fifteen to eighteen twenty seven, there were two 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:33.680 communal society attempts there in the town, one right after 0:02:33.720 --> 0:02:38.080 the other, one way more successful than the other. But 0:02:38.240 --> 0:02:41.280 to talk about all that, we actually have to start 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:45.400 in the eighteenth century in Germany and talk about George Rapp. 0:02:45.840 --> 0:02:49.680 George Rapp was born Johann George Rapp on November first, 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:53.720 seventeen fifty seven in Iptingen, which is in the Duchy 0:02:53.800 --> 0:02:55.560 of Wurtemberg, Germany. 0:02:55.960 --> 0:02:56.920 And as he was. 0:02:56.919 --> 0:02:59.760 Growing up he learned to be a weaver. He got 0:02:59.800 --> 0:03:02.840 me married to Christina Benzinger in seventeen eighty three, and 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:06.639 then they had a son named Johannes, who went more 0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:09.399 often by John later on, so we talk about John. 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:11.480 That's who that is. And they also had a daughter 0:03:11.600 --> 0:03:14.560 named Rosina. Yeah, unfortunately we don't know a whole lot 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:16.120 about Rosina. 0:03:16.200 --> 0:03:19.160 I can't imagine why. 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:22.880 Her One of her children shows up a little bit 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:25.000 later in the record. We won't talk about her in 0:03:25.040 --> 0:03:28.400 this podcast, but her offspring becomes a little bit more 0:03:28.840 --> 0:03:30.560 important to the story. But we really don't know much 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:33.720 about their daughter. But by the seventeen eighties Rap had 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:37.120 kind of moved away from textiles as a vocation and 0:03:37.200 --> 0:03:40.680 into his growing religious passion, and he had started preaching. 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:45.800 He was Lutheran in terms of his upbringing, but he 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:50.400 ended up becoming a Pietist, and in very simplistic terms, 0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:54.120 that is an ideology that focuses on the individual's religious 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:57.680 experience as guided by the Bible, and the movement of 0:03:57.720 --> 0:04:02.400 Pietism really began out of this perception of shortcomings of 0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:06.800 the Church and its doctrine and the formality of it 0:04:07.240 --> 0:04:11.200 and its followers. Pietism's followers really believed that there needed 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:14.360 to be reformation within the Church so that they centered 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:17.599 theology again on truly living a Christian life and looking 0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:20.560 to the Bible as the one true authority rather than 0:04:20.640 --> 0:04:22.800 any sort of hierarchy put together. 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:23.719 By the Church. Yeah. 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:27.279 So, because of this conflict between the established church and 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:30.839 his personal beliefs, Rap ultimately separated from the Lutherans in 0:04:30.880 --> 0:04:33.800 seventeen eighty five, and he didn't go by himself. He 0:04:33.839 --> 0:04:36.440 had a small group of followers who started meeting at 0:04:36.440 --> 0:04:40.000 his home, which this was the eighteenth century in Germany 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:43.800 that was not legal, and their numbers got bigger over time, 0:04:43.839 --> 0:04:48.400 even though they were having these illicit religious meetings. By 0:04:48.560 --> 0:04:54.279 the early seventeen nineties, the little their little gatherings as 0:04:54.279 --> 0:04:57.039 they had grown, had become very concerning to the church, 0:04:57.200 --> 0:05:01.159 and the church was worried about this separatist group and 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:04.520 the influence they were having, and they considered it to 0:05:04.560 --> 0:05:08.560 be undermining the social order. And Rapp also believed that 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:11.880 he was a prophet, something which he stated openly, and 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:16.000 that was essentially a pretty big piece of rebellion against 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:19.360 the established Lutheran Church, and he was actually brought before 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:22.600 a church commission in seventeen ninety one on charges of heresy, 0:05:23.160 --> 0:05:26.359 and in his testimony he said to them quite plainly, quote, 0:05:26.400 --> 0:05:28.920 I am a prophet and I am called to be one. 0:05:29.920 --> 0:05:32.440 He was imprisoned briefly, so that's how that worked out. 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:38.919 But this actually had the opposite of the commission's desired effect. 0:05:39.040 --> 0:05:43.000 In imprisoning him, more people started to take notice of him, 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:46.280 and as a consequence, his followers just grew in number. 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:49.880 So in an effort to control this problem, they told 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:52.320 rap in seventeen eighty nine that he needed to submit 0:05:52.880 --> 0:05:56.200 a formal statement of faith, and that instruction didn't actually 0:05:56.200 --> 0:05:59.320 come from the church, it came from the government of Wurtemberg. 0:05:59.560 --> 0:06:01.960 Because the church and the state were really deeply interconnected, 0:06:02.000 --> 0:06:04.000 as was the case in so much of Europe at 0:06:04.040 --> 0:06:06.640 that point. That was actually one of the things that 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:10.120 Rap and his followers really objected to. Yeah, the writing 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:13.279 that Rap submitted. He did make his formal declaration, but 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:16.160 it was really not what the government or the church 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:19.920 was looking for. Rap took advantage of this moment said 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:21.640 you want to know what I think, Here's what I think. 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:25.560 So he stated quite clearly that while he respected the government, 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:27.360 he was very respectful. He was like, I get it. 0:06:27.880 --> 0:06:31.520 But my followers and I who started calling themselves the Harmonists, 0:06:31.520 --> 0:06:34.440 you'll also see that mentioned as the Rappites, and we 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:39.040 use those two terms pretty interchangeably in this episode. They 0:06:39.040 --> 0:06:41.280 felt that people should just have freedom to form their 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:44.440 own congregations as they wished, without the involvement of any 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:48.480 civic body or rules from the government. And additionally, though 0:06:48.600 --> 0:06:52.200 his statement indicated that the Harmonists really didn't have a 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:54.839 whole lot of use for some pretty standard social norms 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:58.960 and customs that were part of government and church practice. 0:06:59.000 --> 0:07:02.000 So they didn't want to be baptized infants because they 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:03.400 believed in believer baptism. 0:07:03.480 --> 0:07:04.240 Later in life. 0:07:04.760 --> 0:07:07.040 They also did not believe in serving in the military, 0:07:07.160 --> 0:07:10.360 so that was another big problem. You can imagine how 0:07:10.400 --> 0:07:14.200 that went over Over the next four years, the relationship 0:07:14.200 --> 0:07:17.720 between the Lutheran government of Wurtemberg and George Ratt just 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:20.960 became increasingly tense. And then in eighteen oh three, Rapp 0:07:21.160 --> 0:07:25.080 was questioned one more time. This time the authorities told 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:28.160 him that he was not allowed to speak outside of 0:07:28.200 --> 0:07:31.680 his town. That seems like an odd instruction, but their 0:07:31.800 --> 0:07:35.000 thinking was that he had converted everybody that he was 0:07:35.040 --> 0:07:39.600 going to persuade within the town, so if they could 0:07:39.600 --> 0:07:42.400 just stop him from going to find new people, it 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:45.480 would at least stop the spread of this dangerous rhetoric. 0:07:46.080 --> 0:07:50.160 Yeah, it's an interesting it's a solutionisting, but he was 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:51.000 so defiant. 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:54.000 They kind of knew he wasn't going to stop now preaching, 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:56.000 so they were like, just don't go outside city limits. 0:07:57.880 --> 0:08:00.200 I feel like those were like rules my parents gave, 0:08:01.280 --> 0:08:05.520 and don't go outside city limits. We won't pick you 0:08:05.600 --> 0:08:06.440 up from the jail. 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:07.040 Anywhere but town. 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:13.240 Look, I was a wild child, but this was the 0:08:13.360 --> 0:08:15.880 end of life in Germany for rap so he set 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:19.440 out for the United States. He landed in Philadelphia in 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:22.360 October of eighteen oh three, and he had his son 0:08:22.440 --> 0:08:24.560 John with him as well as two other men who 0:08:24.560 --> 0:08:27.120 were part of his separatist group, kind of scouting the 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:31.280 situation out. So this show is about new Harmony here 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:34.520 in Indiana. But the village in Indiana was not the 0:08:34.520 --> 0:08:36.880 first rap Bite settlement in the United States. And this 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:40.559 precursor that they started with was the template that Raptness 0:08:40.640 --> 0:08:45.199 followers used to establish the Indiana Harmony. So we're going 0:08:45.240 --> 0:08:46.880 to talk about how it came to be founded and 0:08:46.920 --> 0:08:50.160 what those rules were, because then they carry over to 0:08:50.480 --> 0:08:54.080 new harmony here. And the choice of the US for 0:08:54.360 --> 0:08:57.640 this new settlement was based on raps interpretation of the Bible, 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:01.800 the passage in Revelation twelve, which reads quote and the 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:04.319 woman fled into the wilderness where she hath a place 0:09:04.400 --> 0:09:08.280 prepared for God had convinced him that the unsettled land 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:10.920 in North America was where he and his followers should 0:09:10.960 --> 0:09:14.240 make their new home. Rap had hoped that he could 0:09:14.280 --> 0:09:16.839 either get a land grant from the US government or 0:09:16.880 --> 0:09:21.080 a provision for the purchase of some discounted land. He 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:24.440 did not really understand the process involved. This was well 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:26.559 before things like the Homestead Act that made it a 0:09:26.600 --> 0:09:29.600 lot easier for people to get land Congress had to 0:09:29.720 --> 0:09:33.920 approve either of those options. Rap did not anticipate that 0:09:34.040 --> 0:09:37.319 as being part of it, and he wasn't really dissuaded 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:40.640 when he found it out. He had been hoping though, that, 0:09:40.880 --> 0:09:43.160 like even though people were telling him, no, Congress has 0:09:43.200 --> 0:09:46.720 to do that for you, honey, but he was hoping 0:09:47.040 --> 0:09:50.160 that he really had something special going on and that 0:09:50.240 --> 0:09:52.959 he could be given a parcel of land to start 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:55.400 his community without having to mess with all that red tape. 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:58.760 And so his big idea was that he was going 0:09:58.800 --> 0:10:02.200 to go straight to President Thomas Jefferson, which he did. 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:05.240 He went and spoke with Jefferson on July twelfth of 0:10:05.280 --> 0:10:07.640 eighteen oh four, and he explained his plans in the 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:11.360 situation and what he had come from. And while the 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:15.160 President thought this whole conversation was pretty compelling, he also 0:10:15.600 --> 0:10:19.120 deferred to Congress and he clarified for Rap that that 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:21.520 was the only governing body that could. 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:22.280 Grant him land. 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:26.080 Jefferson did, though, use his influence. He wrote some letters 0:10:26.120 --> 0:10:27.920 so that there would be an offer of land and 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:31.800 that offer would be protected. He had give it made 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:34.200 sure that Rap had this option to purchase a forty 0:10:34.240 --> 0:10:37.480 thousand acre township here in Indiana. Rap did not have 0:10:37.600 --> 0:10:40.160 enough money for that one at the time, so that 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:50.880 one did not happen. So part of the reason that 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:54.120 Rap was willing to take his request directly to the 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:56.960 President was because he needed to get things settled as 0:10:57.040 --> 0:11:00.800 quickly as possible. He had nothing to send back to Germany. 0:11:00.840 --> 0:11:03.719 He had nothing to return to there. His estate had 0:11:03.760 --> 0:11:07.000 been seized by the Wurtemberg government, and he was considered 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:09.120 to be a fugitive, so he could not just go. 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:10.960 Back, no, and he didn't want to. 0:11:11.920 --> 0:11:14.320 He only had those few people with him when he 0:11:14.360 --> 0:11:16.760 traveled to North America, but he had already written back 0:11:16.800 --> 0:11:18.880 to Germany that was like I am never coming back. 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:22.320 He didn't want to return to Europe at all. He 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:24.400 really thought like he was where God wanted him to be. 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:27.600 And he also in those letters spoke about the potential 0:11:27.600 --> 0:11:30.360 of the US settlement, and as a consequence, more of 0:11:30.400 --> 0:11:33.800 his followers were already on the way. They were ready 0:11:33.840 --> 0:11:37.320 to set up this new utopia, and they started arriving 0:11:37.360 --> 0:11:40.560 in Baltimore aboard the ship Aurora on July fourth of 0:11:40.600 --> 0:11:44.320 eighteen oh four, and two more groups of Harmonists followed 0:11:44.360 --> 0:11:47.559 in the next six weeks. Aboard the Atlantic and the Margaretta. 0:11:47.760 --> 0:11:49.760 So that meant he had an urgent need to have 0:11:49.800 --> 0:11:52.240 a home for all these new arrivals, and without the 0:11:52.280 --> 0:11:54.800 assistance that he was hoping for from the US government, 0:11:55.000 --> 0:11:59.520 so Rap wound up purchasing several thousand acres of land 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:03.200 north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in Butler County that cost him 0:12:03.200 --> 0:12:05.800 a little more than ten thousand dollars, and he had 0:12:05.840 --> 0:12:10.000 decided that Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, or Maryland would all be 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:12.520 good options for where they could set things up, but 0:12:12.640 --> 0:12:15.600 this particular piece of land was not his first choice 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:20.120 of location. Nevertheless, though, the Harmonists pulled all of their 0:12:20.160 --> 0:12:22.200 resources to try to make a go of it, and 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:25.040 they finalized that purchase on December twenty second of eighteen 0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:30.360 oh four. Not everybody was pleased with this particular Pennsylvania land, though, 0:12:30.400 --> 0:12:33.280 and some folks did leave Raps group and go strike 0:12:33.320 --> 0:12:36.959 out on their own. On February fifteenth of eighteen oh five, 0:12:37.200 --> 0:12:41.559 Rap officially founded the Harmony Society that became the governing 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:45.040 body of the town that he founded, Harmony, Pennsylvania, and 0:12:45.080 --> 0:12:48.240 the society maintained all of their documents in the official 0:12:48.320 --> 0:12:52.440 language of the society as designated by George Rapp, which 0:12:52.480 --> 0:12:56.360 was German. He was like, we'll talk about this morn 0:12:56.400 --> 0:12:58.600 a minute, but like christ is coming, you guys, you 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:02.720 don't have to learn another language, where literally, really he 0:13:02.880 --> 0:13:05.400 was like, don't, let's not waste time with that, Like, 0:13:05.880 --> 0:13:07.040 just let's keep what we know. 0:13:07.200 --> 0:13:08.400 This is going to be more efficient. 0:13:10.559 --> 0:13:14.680 He also established himself sort of in this document as 0:13:14.720 --> 0:13:18.479 the ultimate leader, and when you start looking at biographies 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:21.840 of rap and stories about him and how his society worked, 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:27.760 he is characterized in two very very different ways. There 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:30.400 are some where he is described as this very benevolent 0:13:30.440 --> 0:13:34.080 and loving father figure, you know, kind of like a 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:37.240 hippie love figure that wants to start a cool community everybody, 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:41.559 and then in others he's really represented much more as 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:44.600 a manipulative dictator who's like, well, I'm going to America 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:47.240 because Europe is not going to happen for us. 0:13:47.400 --> 0:13:48.800 You'll die if you stay, you should come. 0:13:50.320 --> 0:13:53.200 Probably those are two sides of the same coin, and 0:13:53.240 --> 0:13:55.160 he may have been both of those things depending on 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:58.080 who he was dealing with and what topic was at hand, 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:01.560 but in all matters, no matter whether they were just 0:14:01.840 --> 0:14:05.440 the logistics and finances of the community, or matters of faith, 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:08.640 or how members of the group would interact with outsiders, 0:14:08.679 --> 0:14:11.880 including how they voted. Later on, Rapp was deferred to. 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:15.720 He made all the decisions and his word was absolutely final. 0:14:16.640 --> 0:14:20.400 So if you signed on to Harmonies Articles of Association, 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:24.440 you relinquished all personal assets to the community and you 0:14:24.480 --> 0:14:27.720 promised to live by the community's rules. The number of 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:31.400 initial members who first signed on with this charter was 0:14:31.480 --> 0:14:35.720 first established. That estimate varies different accounts site anywhere from 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:38.280 thirty one to one hundred families, So that was as 0:14:38.320 --> 0:14:41.160 many as four hundred to five hundred people. Yeah, some 0:14:41.200 --> 0:14:43.480 were like tracking by families, some were trying to track 0:14:43.520 --> 0:14:46.760 by individuals, and I think that leads to some confusion 0:14:46.800 --> 0:14:49.520 in what those numbers really were. But after that initial 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:53.280 charter was established, any new prospective members had to agree 0:14:53.280 --> 0:14:55.440 to a trial period which is usually like six to 0:14:55.480 --> 0:14:58.880 eight weeks before they could become full members. And the 0:14:59.000 --> 0:15:03.160 charter initial included a provision for any members who left 0:15:03.160 --> 0:15:05.600 the group that were in good standing to be given 0:15:05.600 --> 0:15:08.000 a sum of cash when they left, so that they 0:15:08.000 --> 0:15:09.680 were getting a little something back of what they had 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:12.080 put in. And also they could start their life elsewhere 0:15:12.080 --> 0:15:14.520 without having to go from zero. We're going to talk 0:15:14.560 --> 0:15:17.320 about what happened to that little plan later because it 0:15:17.360 --> 0:15:18.480 didn't work out so good. 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:19.320 I bet you can get. 0:15:21.680 --> 0:15:24.800 So the group quickly set to work. They cleared about 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:27.000 one hundred and fifty acres of land in just the 0:15:27.040 --> 0:15:30.480 first year. They built an estimated fifty log homes, plus 0:15:30.560 --> 0:15:33.320 a mill, and of course a church. There was also 0:15:33.360 --> 0:15:36.240 a committee of elders hand chosen by Rap to help 0:15:36.320 --> 0:15:39.080 lead the adjustment into more communal living. I feel like 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:42.320 this is the first place that they really diverge from 0:15:42.400 --> 0:15:45.360 all the utopian communities that we have ever talked about 0:15:45.800 --> 0:15:50.000 in that they actually showed up and got some things done. Yeah, 0:15:50.040 --> 0:15:53.160 and there was a transition team. Like I like the 0:15:53.160 --> 0:15:55.800 idea that they recognized that these people were all part 0:15:55.920 --> 0:15:59.000 of a group in Germany, but they weren't accustomed to 0:15:59.040 --> 0:16:01.600 this idea of life we all lived together in one 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:02.640 big community. 0:16:02.240 --> 0:16:03.320 And share our resources. 0:16:03.480 --> 0:16:05.200 So he did have people that were like, here, we're 0:16:05.240 --> 0:16:08.120 going to get you through this transition, which is probably 0:16:08.160 --> 0:16:12.320 why his communities worked better than some others. Two years 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:16.120 into this communal living effort, the Harmonists in pace with 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:19.080 the second Great Awakening, which was sweeping through the US, 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:23.520 had their own reawakening. Beginning in eighteen oh seven, the 0:16:23.560 --> 0:16:26.800 belief among Rap's followers that Christ was soon to return 0:16:26.800 --> 0:16:31.160 to Earth took on a much more immediate tone. Rap 0:16:31.320 --> 0:16:35.280 had come to the conclusion that the Napoleonic Wars, which 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:37.800 had started in eighteen oh three, were a sign of 0:16:37.840 --> 0:16:40.000 the eminent return of the Son of God, and that 0:16:40.200 --> 0:16:44.480 was because he saw Napoleon Bonaparte as an anti Christ. 0:16:46.440 --> 0:16:48.600 I said this to Holly while we were planning this episode. 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:50.600 But we just got back from Paris not long ago 0:16:50.640 --> 0:16:57.040 and we saw Napoleon's tomb, and I was unprepared for Napoleon, 0:16:57.160 --> 0:16:59.440 who you know, we've always learned as a guy that 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:02.840 we had a lot of wars with in a giant's 0:17:02.960 --> 0:17:07.640 tomb surrounded by angel statues. France definitely did not think 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:12.800 he was an Antichrist. So Rap thought that this guy's 0:17:12.920 --> 0:17:15.520 rise to power really signaled the end of Europe in 0:17:15.560 --> 0:17:17.920 the world order. Yeah, that was one of the many 0:17:17.960 --> 0:17:20.280 reasons he was like, Europe is not going to exist 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:23.920 for long. Come on. Mysticism was also a huge part 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:27.720 of the Rapite interpretation of scripture, so George rapp and 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:32.080 his followers, but again he was always really leading the ideology, 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:34.760 were always watching world events. He was kind of a 0:17:34.760 --> 0:17:38.280 news junkie, and they were watching events closely to see 0:17:38.280 --> 0:17:40.879 what they might portend because he was always relating what 0:17:41.000 --> 0:17:43.760 was going on around them and throughout the world too, 0:17:43.920 --> 0:17:45.879 what was in the Bible, and trying to kind of 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:48.920 parse out any deeper meaning he could. And the group 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:51.840 often discussed these matters as part of their religious practice. 0:17:51.960 --> 0:17:54.720 It basically have like evening services and discussion where they 0:17:54.720 --> 0:17:56.600 would talk about, Hey, this thing happened over here, this 0:17:56.680 --> 0:18:01.080 might mean this tying all of these very events, like 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:05.000 we said to biblical prophecy. So the Rappites were millennialists. 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:07.240 They believed that the Son of God was going to 0:18:07.280 --> 0:18:09.800 appear once again in human form and then rule the 0:18:09.840 --> 0:18:12.919 world as his kingdom for a thousand years of peace, 0:18:13.080 --> 0:18:15.960 and that this was going to start at any moment. 0:18:16.640 --> 0:18:20.560 So they sought to purify themselves in preparation. So soon 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:24.600 there was no tobacco use in harmony, Rap's followers shifted 0:18:24.600 --> 0:18:28.199 to a celibate life. The end times are coming, you 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:31.960 don't need to have any babies prior to this decision. 0:18:31.960 --> 0:18:34.920 For celibacy. There had been a number of marriages in Harmony, 0:18:34.960 --> 0:18:37.520 and George's son John had actually been one of the 0:18:37.600 --> 0:18:41.200 last to get married in Harmony, but even married couples 0:18:41.200 --> 0:18:44.120 were encouraged to abstain from sexual activity and to live 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:48.520 as brothers and sisters of faith. So John rap incidentally 0:18:48.800 --> 0:18:59.679 clashed with his father during this time. The cartoon that 0:18:59.760 --> 0:19:02.800 just in my head was like if one of my 0:19:02.920 --> 0:19:06.040 parents pulled that, and I'd be like a world of 0:19:06.080 --> 0:19:06.920 no jan and Ron. 0:19:06.960 --> 0:19:08.080 This isn't gonna happen. 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:13.320 But yeah, So John and George had some problems and 0:19:13.440 --> 0:19:17.200 John left Harmony. He moved to Ohio, and he and 0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:20.399 his father, George later became embroiled in a legal battle 0:19:20.520 --> 0:19:23.919 over the money that John had contributed to Harmony to 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:28.040 the trust, which he wanted back, and several other members 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:30.639 that had decided that they were going to leave joined 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:34.360 this suit seeking their money as well. All of them 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:37.160 after kind of having this drag out for a while 0:19:37.440 --> 0:19:41.400 because it seemed like they were not in good standing 0:19:41.560 --> 0:19:45.000 per George's assessment, thus they were not entitled to that, 0:19:45.520 --> 0:19:48.040 but they eventually abandoned legal action. They just got tired 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:50.720 of fighting and they gave up on ever reclaiming their assets. 0:19:51.240 --> 0:19:54.800 But John did go back and rejoin his father's community, 0:19:54.920 --> 0:19:57.400 although it was not for terribly long because he died 0:19:57.400 --> 0:19:58.960 when he was still a very young man in his 0:19:59.040 --> 0:20:02.880 late twenties, and that happened in eighteen twelve. We will 0:20:02.880 --> 0:20:04.960 get right back to our New Harmony live show at 0:20:05.000 --> 0:20:07.720 the Indiana Historical Society in just a moment, but first 0:20:07.720 --> 0:20:10.280 we're going to pause and have a quick sponsor break. 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:22.399 So George Rapp was setting up this whole thing. The 0:20:22.480 --> 0:20:25.639 idea was that the millennium was coming, and there were 0:20:25.760 --> 0:20:29.919 naturally gonna be some expenses related to the second coming. 0:20:30.480 --> 0:20:32.840 Rap knew they might have to travel to New Jerusalem 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:35.120 with all of his followers so that they could meet 0:20:35.200 --> 0:20:38.959 Christ and present themselves, and that was just one for another, 0:20:39.400 --> 0:20:41.679 there were concerns that there was going to be global 0:20:41.680 --> 0:20:45.600 instability leading up to this prophesied return that might put 0:20:45.600 --> 0:20:48.359 them in a position where it would be pretty good 0:20:48.359 --> 0:20:51.000 to have some ready cash, a little financial liquidity to 0:20:51.000 --> 0:20:55.240 get through, and the Harmonists also wanted to have money 0:20:55.240 --> 0:20:58.880 to help support this new world order, so to that end, 0:20:58.920 --> 0:21:02.520 a fund was started for donations in coin, and that 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:06.280 was a fund that Rap managed almost entirely on his own. 0:21:06.920 --> 0:21:11.119 Uh So, while sexual activity and other pleasures were completely denounced, 0:21:11.400 --> 0:21:15.960 financial success was aoka seen in a completely different light, 0:21:16.280 --> 0:21:17.560 the logic being that it could be. 0:21:17.520 --> 0:21:18.639 Used in service of faith. 0:21:18.880 --> 0:21:21.280 And this is the second way that these folks are 0:21:21.359 --> 0:21:25.760 totally different from every other utopian experiment we've ever talked about. 0:21:26.160 --> 0:21:29.119 Like money's cool, gonna have a lot of it. So, 0:21:29.240 --> 0:21:31.600 even as the Harmonists became more and more settled in 0:21:31.720 --> 0:21:36.159 Butler County, there were some conflicts that arose. Rapp was 0:21:36.240 --> 0:21:39.359 really think of thinking of other locations that might be better, 0:21:39.560 --> 0:21:41.760 and as early as eighteen oh six he was submitting 0:21:41.800 --> 0:21:44.880 new requests to the government for different land. And one 0:21:44.920 --> 0:21:47.560 of the things that he and the Harmonists had wanted 0:21:47.640 --> 0:21:50.800 when they had emigrated from Germany to North America was 0:21:51.080 --> 0:21:55.119 to cultivate vineyards and orchards, and this Pennsylvania land that 0:21:55.160 --> 0:21:57.960 they were on was just not working out in that regard, 0:21:58.480 --> 0:22:01.359 and it was also not in a spot were exporting 0:22:01.440 --> 0:22:04.320 anything that they did grow could be done at the 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:07.200 level that they needed to keep growing. So they were 0:22:07.240 --> 0:22:10.680 just a little bit too geographically isolated, and he thought 0:22:10.720 --> 0:22:14.280 they weren't going to continue flourishing if they stayed there. Yeah, 0:22:14.320 --> 0:22:16.600 that land was near a river, but it was a 0:22:16.680 --> 0:22:19.359 very shallow river. It was not really like going to 0:22:19.400 --> 0:22:22.800 support heavy duty irrigation, and they couldn't start shipping things. 0:22:23.359 --> 0:22:26.959 And additionally, as the area around that settlement grew more populated, 0:22:27.680 --> 0:22:30.760 the Harmonists found that, for one, their new neighbors really 0:22:30.800 --> 0:22:34.440 did not understand their community, and they were particularly suspicious 0:22:34.840 --> 0:22:36.720 of how wealthy the Harmonists seemed to be. 0:22:38.320 --> 0:22:39.919 They did not live like poppers. 0:22:40.200 --> 0:22:43.200 They had nice things, you know, people that visited would 0:22:43.200 --> 0:22:45.919 comment on how beautiful everything was and how you know, 0:22:46.240 --> 0:22:50.080 well appointed the rooms were and stuff. So the Rabbites 0:22:50.119 --> 0:22:52.760 also had this little problem where they refused to participate 0:22:52.800 --> 0:22:56.240 in the War of eighteen twelve and they disregarded draft notices. 0:22:56.880 --> 0:22:59.200 They were fined for it, and they paid those fines, 0:22:59.240 --> 0:23:02.399 but other pole in the state really started to regard 0:23:02.440 --> 0:23:05.800 them with a lot of distrust. So in eighteen fourteen 0:23:05.960 --> 0:23:08.800 they made the decision to head west after Rapid sent 0:23:08.840 --> 0:23:11.600 a group out to scout for some possible new locations, 0:23:11.720 --> 0:23:15.000 and the Indiana Territory offered better climate for the crops 0:23:15.000 --> 0:23:17.160 that they wanted to grow. They could get a bigger 0:23:17.200 --> 0:23:19.960 piece of land than they had back in Butler County 0:23:20.920 --> 0:23:26.359 and Harmony, Pennsylvania. The whole thing was sold to a 0:23:26.400 --> 0:23:30.480 Mennonite named Abraham Ziggler, who paid one hundred thousand dollars 0:23:30.520 --> 0:23:35.280 for it in eighteen fourteen. Y'all, that's that was ten 0:23:35.359 --> 0:23:38.800 times more than he bought the land for. Yes, but 0:23:38.840 --> 0:23:42.120 he had improved it. I feel like we just did 0:23:42.200 --> 0:23:46.040 history property hunters, but. 0:23:46.080 --> 0:23:47.320 I don't like the color. 0:23:47.680 --> 0:23:50.159 I don't do you guys watch shows and get frustrated 0:23:50.160 --> 0:23:52.040 by those people that don't know that paint Israel. 0:23:54.720 --> 0:23:55.480 Just paint the room. 0:23:56.359 --> 0:24:01.880 It makes me crazy. So in eighteen fifteen, New Harmony, 0:24:01.960 --> 0:24:06.399 Indiana was officially founded on the Wabash River. As an aside, 0:24:06.480 --> 0:24:09.920 you will often see this discussed simply as Harmony without 0:24:09.960 --> 0:24:11.960 the new. That was Rap's intent to just call it 0:24:12.000 --> 0:24:14.879 Harmony again, but the new got added over time to 0:24:14.920 --> 0:24:18.600 distinguish between the two locations and in reference to both 0:24:18.600 --> 0:24:21.040 the first and second settlements. Depending on what document you 0:24:21.200 --> 0:24:24.040 look at, sometimes Harmony has a Y and sometimes an 0:24:24.040 --> 0:24:24.400 I e. 0:24:24.600 --> 0:24:26.320 Just FYI if you go looking. 0:24:26.680 --> 0:24:29.320 So wrap in. The Harmonists put a lot of work 0:24:29.440 --> 0:24:32.760 to turn this riverfront land, which at that point was 0:24:32.880 --> 0:24:34.520 unsettled into a village. 0:24:34.560 --> 0:24:35.800 They felled trees. 0:24:35.480 --> 0:24:37.920 Again and cut them into lumber to use for construction. 0:24:38.440 --> 0:24:40.720 They dug out clay from the ground to make bricks 0:24:40.760 --> 0:24:44.439 for the same purpose. It was really arduous work, and 0:24:44.680 --> 0:24:46.680 first they had to build kind of a pre settlement 0:24:46.720 --> 0:24:49.080 for everybody to live on. While they were building the 0:24:49.200 --> 0:24:52.840 larger village, they also established farmland, and they were able 0:24:52.880 --> 0:24:55.639 to cultivate that vineyard and the fruit crops that they 0:24:55.680 --> 0:24:59.240 had been wanting the whole time. So Father Rap's home 0:24:59.320 --> 0:25:01.680 was in the center town and everything kind of radiated 0:25:01.720 --> 0:25:05.320 out from it. There were four dormitories built adjacent to it, 0:25:05.840 --> 0:25:09.400 each of which could house sixty to eighty residents. There 0:25:09.400 --> 0:25:12.200 were also individual homes, and each street had a water 0:25:12.280 --> 0:25:14.840 well and an oven that were there for communal use. 0:25:15.320 --> 0:25:17.840 And there were common use plants like herbs that were 0:25:17.840 --> 0:25:20.119 grown in public spaces and anyone could just come and 0:25:20.160 --> 0:25:23.240 take them as needed. Of course, there were some difficulties 0:25:23.280 --> 0:25:26.320 in this move. Malaria was still really common in parts 0:25:26.359 --> 0:25:28.480 of the US at this point, so malaria and other 0:25:28.560 --> 0:25:32.280 disease claimed the lives of a significant number of harmonists 0:25:32.320 --> 0:25:35.000 in that first year, and then in the first years 0:25:35.000 --> 0:25:38.200 in Indiana, a cemetery had to be established a lot 0:25:38.280 --> 0:25:40.720 sooner than they were planning to have to deal with 0:25:40.800 --> 0:25:43.840 these mortalities. And a thing that's super fascinating to me 0:25:43.880 --> 0:25:46.439 about the cemetery is that it is on the site 0:25:46.480 --> 0:25:50.240 of native mounds that date back to the Middle Woodland period. 0:25:50.320 --> 0:25:53.480 So there was like two thousand year old mounds where 0:25:53.520 --> 0:25:57.000 the cemetery went. Yeah, we don't know what the logicalistic 0:25:57.040 --> 0:26:00.239 to the best of my knowledge, but as this new 0:26:00.240 --> 0:26:03.800 community began to grow, rap was pretty smart in that 0:26:04.240 --> 0:26:07.280 he knew that to survive they needed to diversify, and 0:26:08.000 --> 0:26:10.280 they wanted to do this so that they could ensure 0:26:10.320 --> 0:26:14.240 their ongoing financial stability as well. So this was a 0:26:14.320 --> 0:26:16.400 lesson that they had learned when they were in Pennsylvania, 0:26:16.440 --> 0:26:20.000 where he eventually saw that the growth and commerce potential 0:26:20.080 --> 0:26:21.560 of the settlement they had there was. 0:26:21.520 --> 0:26:23.199 Finite, and he did not want the same thing to 0:26:23.240 --> 0:26:23.800 happen again. 0:26:24.480 --> 0:26:28.320 So their agricultural efforts were geared not towards subsistence farming 0:26:28.320 --> 0:26:31.280 where they might sell any extra, but to both providing 0:26:31.320 --> 0:26:34.639 the food the community needed and having enough produce to sell. 0:26:34.960 --> 0:26:38.680 They also established mills to process cotton and wool, and 0:26:39.440 --> 0:26:42.280 again for their clothes, but also they were making enough 0:26:42.280 --> 0:26:46.360 to trade. These were essentially little factories, and this made Harmony, 0:26:46.440 --> 0:26:51.760 Indiana prosperous. Yeah, and this prosperity was really in part 0:26:51.840 --> 0:26:54.639 due to this new location. They weren't in a place 0:26:54.720 --> 0:26:57.280 that was heavily populated when they got there. This was 0:26:57.400 --> 0:27:01.359 essentially frontierland, which the US had gained possession of in 0:27:01.480 --> 0:27:04.520 the eighteen oh four Treaty of Vincennes, which read, in part, 0:27:05.040 --> 0:27:07.960 the said Delaware Tribe for the considerations here and after 0:27:08.080 --> 0:27:11.959 mentioned relinquishes to United States forever all their right and 0:27:12.000 --> 0:27:14.680 the title to the tract of country which lies between 0:27:14.720 --> 0:27:18.240 the Ohio and Wabash rivers and below the tracks seated 0:27:18.320 --> 0:27:20.800 by the Treaty of Fort Wayne and the road leading 0:27:20.840 --> 0:27:23.639 from Vincenz to the Falls of Ohio. So this, of 0:27:23.680 --> 0:27:27.959 course was all part of the larger series of treaties 0:27:28.000 --> 0:27:31.680 that affected this whole part of the US to let 0:27:31.720 --> 0:27:34.840 the government take land that had been previously inhabited by 0:27:35.000 --> 0:27:39.280 native peoples, which also continued long after we're talking about today. 0:27:39.280 --> 0:27:41.280 So this is all sort of going on at the 0:27:41.280 --> 0:27:43.600 same time as all the stuff that we're talking about. Yeah, 0:27:44.080 --> 0:27:45.919 So the nearest town at this point was more than 0:27:45.960 --> 0:27:48.320 thirty miles away, so there was not a lot of 0:27:48.320 --> 0:27:52.119 competition for traveler business when people moved through the area 0:27:52.680 --> 0:27:55.280 and might need a trade or purchase supplies to get 0:27:55.280 --> 0:27:58.560 them ready to keep going wherever they were headed. And additionally, 0:27:58.640 --> 0:28:01.320 the settlement was right there the river, so they started 0:28:01.320 --> 0:28:05.359 shipping their manufactured goods from that point of departure, establishing 0:28:05.440 --> 0:28:08.719 a very wide reaching retail business. All run on a 0:28:08.720 --> 0:28:12.960 communal model where everyone contributed. So while the men generally 0:28:13.080 --> 0:28:16.280 saw to the agricultural efforts, the women and children worked 0:28:16.280 --> 0:28:19.800 in the mills and workshops producing dry goods. So they 0:28:19.800 --> 0:28:22.800 had gotten to Indiana in eighteen fourteen, and that meant 0:28:22.800 --> 0:28:25.000 that the Rappites were really setting up their home and 0:28:25.040 --> 0:28:28.480 their business settlement at the same time that Indiana was 0:28:28.520 --> 0:28:32.040 transitioning to statehood. It became the nineteenth US state at 0:28:32.080 --> 0:28:34.960 the end of eighteen sixteen, so the residents of Harmony 0:28:35.000 --> 0:28:37.960 were basically able to get into the ground floor, so 0:28:38.080 --> 0:28:41.400 to speak, of this new state economy. In addition to 0:28:41.400 --> 0:28:44.320 the fruits and the vegetables that they were growing and selling, 0:28:44.600 --> 0:28:48.560 the town's general store had clothing and shoes. Cold cold 0:28:48.640 --> 0:28:53.479 weather gear, saddles and bridles, and plows and wagons, anything 0:28:53.480 --> 0:28:54.600 else that somebody might need. 0:28:55.160 --> 0:28:59.760 Yeah, it was pioneer target one hundred percent. 0:29:00.400 --> 0:29:02.480 And people went in they only needed shoes, but they 0:29:02.520 --> 0:29:06.600 came out with like so much stuff. They had somebody 0:29:06.600 --> 0:29:08.440 following you around, like do you need a cart? Do 0:29:08.480 --> 0:29:10.280 you need a No, I don't need a cart. If 0:29:10.280 --> 0:29:11.880 you give me a cart, I'm buying everything. 0:29:13.520 --> 0:29:14.520 Yeah. 0:29:14.560 --> 0:29:17.720 But the town also produced beer, wine, and whiskey, which 0:29:17.760 --> 0:29:19.880 could be purchased at the general store, or you could 0:29:19.920 --> 0:29:22.280 enjoy it in the town tavern, which they had also built. 0:29:23.080 --> 0:29:26.280 Harmonists were not anti alcohol, but they were very much 0:29:26.400 --> 0:29:30.000 anti drunkenness. The whiskey that they produced, for example, was 0:29:30.040 --> 0:29:33.320 not something any of them drank. It was for other people. 0:29:33.600 --> 0:29:36.360 They occasionally had wine, but the rest of the alcoholic 0:29:36.400 --> 0:29:40.440 beverages that they produced were strictly commercial. The Harmonists of 0:29:40.440 --> 0:29:43.080 the town could just ask for anything that they needed 0:29:43.120 --> 0:29:46.840 without paying for it, because their participation in the community 0:29:47.000 --> 0:29:49.840 entitled them to it. But really, at least in terms 0:29:49.880 --> 0:29:52.200 of food, there wasn't a whole lot that the Harmonist 0:29:52.240 --> 0:29:55.680 households needed at the general store. As part of the 0:29:55.760 --> 0:29:58.560 establishment of the community. Every home was set up to 0:29:58.560 --> 0:30:01.800 have its own gardens. There poultry and a cow for 0:30:01.840 --> 0:30:04.440 each household, and as we mentioned, there were also public 0:30:04.840 --> 0:30:08.960 access gardens near the dormitories. But outsiders, of course coming 0:30:09.000 --> 0:30:12.920 through you had to pay, and on occasion those outsiders 0:30:12.960 --> 0:30:14.680 found the prices a little bit high, and they were 0:30:14.760 --> 0:30:17.520 kind of resentful that not everybody had to pay for stuff. 0:30:18.240 --> 0:30:21.720 The idea of communal living in this way was completely alien, 0:30:21.760 --> 0:30:26.480 and they sometimes felt like they were being treated poorly. Additionally, 0:30:26.880 --> 0:30:30.480 people certainly noticed that while the harmonists were perfectly happy 0:30:30.520 --> 0:30:33.120 to sell hard liquor, they were not willing to drink it, 0:30:33.880 --> 0:30:37.000 and this led to some interesting discord because there were customers, 0:30:37.000 --> 0:30:38.720 like in the tavern that kind of just felt like 0:30:39.280 --> 0:30:42.440 they were being judged, like I'm going to sit here 0:30:42.480 --> 0:30:45.120 and have a whiskey and there would just be people 0:30:45.160 --> 0:30:49.920 staring at them, just not how I enjoy a vodka, 0:30:50.040 --> 0:30:54.480 so I understand. So all this commerce was largely the 0:30:54.480 --> 0:30:58.320 work of Frederick Reiker Rap, which was George George Rap's 0:30:58.360 --> 0:31:02.920 adopted son. George had understood the need for diversification, but 0:31:02.960 --> 0:31:06.040 it was really Frederick who managed all these various enterprises 0:31:06.080 --> 0:31:09.440 that was making the community really profitable. The profits were 0:31:09.520 --> 0:31:13.120 used to purchase additional land and expanding new Harmonies footprint 0:31:13.160 --> 0:31:15.960 and enabling more crops to be planted for future commerce. 0:31:17.080 --> 0:31:20.680 Frederick was Wrapp's right hand in all these business dealings, 0:31:20.680 --> 0:31:22.840 and it had been Frederick who had stayed behind in 0:31:22.880 --> 0:31:25.840 Harmony of Pennsylvania to wrap up the business affairs there 0:31:25.880 --> 0:31:28.840 after George had moved on and Indiana. He was in 0:31:28.920 --> 0:31:32.120 charge of both the commerce and the political rate relationships 0:31:32.120 --> 0:31:36.800 with outsiders. Yeah, so when county officials had asked rap 0:31:36.880 --> 0:31:39.720 to send a representative from his group to the state 0:31:39.800 --> 0:31:43.640 constitutional Convention in eighteen sixteen, it was naturally Frederick who 0:31:43.680 --> 0:31:46.080 was chosen. This was also in part because Frederick was 0:31:46.120 --> 0:31:47.680 one of the few people who had learned a bit 0:31:47.720 --> 0:31:52.120 of English truly, so he could go. His English was 0:31:52.160 --> 0:31:55.200 allegedly not fantastic, but he could get along, and he 0:31:55.360 --> 0:31:58.960 was assigned interestingly enough for a pacifist group to the 0:31:58.960 --> 0:32:01.960 committee that drafted section of the constitution that related to 0:32:02.000 --> 0:32:06.440 the militia. This actually really worked out, though, because it 0:32:06.480 --> 0:32:09.320 was due to his influence that wording was included at 0:32:09.320 --> 0:32:13.240 that point to allow conscientious objection to the bearing of 0:32:13.360 --> 0:32:16.600 arms with a provision to pay a fee for exclusion 0:32:16.640 --> 0:32:19.920 from the draft, and just as had been the case 0:32:19.960 --> 0:32:23.160 in Pennsylvania, the refusal of the Rappites to participate in 0:32:23.200 --> 0:32:27.160 military service kind of rankled their neighboring communities. Around the 0:32:27.160 --> 0:32:30.240 same time, New Harmony was growing pretty rapidly, and they 0:32:30.280 --> 0:32:34.480 needed more able bodies to run all these manufacturing enterprises, 0:32:34.520 --> 0:32:38.400 and to meet that demand, the requirements of religious devotions 0:32:38.440 --> 0:32:42.560 started relaxing a little bit. Frederick Rapp was appointed as 0:32:42.600 --> 0:32:45.960 one of the commissioners of the State Bank of Indiana, 0:32:46.040 --> 0:32:50.640 and this shift of focus to commerce was particularly upsetting 0:32:50.640 --> 0:32:53.600 for a number of the Harmonists. Their society had been 0:32:53.640 --> 0:32:58.040 founded entirely on their faith, with their commercial interests always 0:32:58.160 --> 0:33:01.400 framed as being necessary to sup that faith, but now 0:33:01.440 --> 0:33:03.960 it seemed less and less like that was the case. 0:33:04.440 --> 0:33:07.160 There was an ebb and flow in New Harmony's population 0:33:07.320 --> 0:33:09.960 in the late eighteen teens that the number of people left. 0:33:10.480 --> 0:33:14.680 New immigrants arrived from Germany and replaced them, but the 0:33:14.720 --> 0:33:18.600 acceptance of new members turned out to be completely unsuccessful. 0:33:19.160 --> 0:33:22.200 Rapp later wrote that the newcomers were quote too wild 0:33:22.320 --> 0:33:25.600 for our congregation, and that he was and this is 0:33:25.640 --> 0:33:30.080 a quote sick and tired of them, and he had 0:33:30.120 --> 0:33:33.200 actually been paying for the passage from Germany for some 0:33:33.320 --> 0:33:35.600 people who had written and said that they wanted to 0:33:35.680 --> 0:33:38.520 join the community, but he put an end to that practice. 0:33:38.880 --> 0:33:41.560 He also stopped the existing members of the community from 0:33:41.600 --> 0:33:44.000 writing home to Germany being like the US is great, 0:33:44.040 --> 0:33:48.680 you guys, because people were saying like, I have found 0:33:48.720 --> 0:33:50.440 a better life here. You can come and you know, 0:33:50.480 --> 0:33:52.200 to family members and friends, you could come and be 0:33:52.240 --> 0:33:54.239 part of this, and he was like, please stop doing that. 0:33:54.280 --> 0:33:57.760 We can't can't do that. He wanted people of faith, 0:33:58.000 --> 0:34:01.200 and most importantly, people so fit that they would obey 0:34:01.280 --> 0:34:04.320 him in whatever he said, and he just could not 0:34:04.680 --> 0:34:07.760 trust any newcomers to live up to his high standard 0:34:08.000 --> 0:34:10.680 of what exactly that meant. So even for the new 0:34:10.719 --> 0:34:13.920 members who were devout enough for George Rap's taste, it 0:34:13.960 --> 0:34:17.120 just wasn't easy. Members who had been with the Harmonists 0:34:17.120 --> 0:34:20.880 since eighteen oh five were pretty judgmental of the newer members, 0:34:20.920 --> 0:34:24.440 and factions started to form of the old and new groups. 0:34:25.360 --> 0:34:29.000 In eighteen eighteen, George Rapp revised those articles that had 0:34:29.040 --> 0:34:32.959 been established thirteen years prior when the Pennsylvania Settlement began 0:34:33.160 --> 0:34:36.240 in an effort to address the destabilization that was taking place, 0:34:36.560 --> 0:34:39.240 and two major changes came from this revision. So First, 0:34:39.880 --> 0:34:43.839 all records of how much any given person had contributed 0:34:43.840 --> 0:34:46.960 to the community upon their entry into it were destroyed. 0:34:47.440 --> 0:34:49.560 The intent was that the old and the new factions 0:34:49.560 --> 0:34:51.880 would stop bickering about who was more valuable to the 0:34:51.880 --> 0:34:56.200 community and who had given more and deserved more. Second, 0:34:56.480 --> 0:34:59.560 that provision for those choosing to leave to get a 0:34:59.600 --> 0:35:04.520 cash upon their exit was stricken from the charter because 0:35:04.560 --> 0:35:06.960 as people were wanting to leave, he was recognizing that 0:35:07.000 --> 0:35:09.840 he couldn't just keep giving bushels of money away. So 0:35:09.920 --> 0:35:12.960 at the same time as these internal issues were plaguing 0:35:13.040 --> 0:35:16.600 New Harmony, there was also mountain friction with their neighbors. 0:35:17.080 --> 0:35:19.279 At this point, immigrants who'd been in the US for 0:35:19.320 --> 0:35:22.360 a while and the first generation of European descendants to 0:35:22.400 --> 0:35:26.319 be born on US soil started to view immigrants new 0:35:26.480 --> 0:35:32.400 immigrants as potentially destructive to what they had built. Little 0:35:33.160 --> 0:35:38.120 ironic Yeah, and Rap's community had a number of things 0:35:38.160 --> 0:35:42.640 working against it as this settlement grew. So for one thing, 0:35:43.280 --> 0:35:46.319 or as this sentiment grew rather, I'm sorry for one thing, 0:35:46.360 --> 0:35:49.000 it was self isolating, so most of the members still 0:35:49.040 --> 0:35:53.640 only spoke German. They refused to bear arms, and that 0:35:53.680 --> 0:35:56.600 group was wealthy enough to pay the penalty required to 0:35:56.680 --> 0:35:59.600 exempt them from military service, whereas most people could not 0:35:59.640 --> 0:36:02.960 have afford it. They also commanded just a huge chunk 0:36:03.000 --> 0:36:06.319 of the area's financial capital, and they seemed impervious to 0:36:06.400 --> 0:36:09.440 the various shifts in the market that negatively impacted the 0:36:09.480 --> 0:36:13.359 communities around them. And they weren't having children, so they 0:36:13.400 --> 0:36:17.080 weren't helping to build the US population, just as had 0:36:17.080 --> 0:36:19.920 been the case back in Pennsylvania. Rap and the Harmonists 0:36:19.960 --> 0:36:23.560 were facing increasing resentment from the locals and dealing with 0:36:23.600 --> 0:36:26.920 their own fractures within the commune, so they decided to leave. 0:36:27.480 --> 0:36:29.640 They left all their hard work in New Harmony, Indiana, 0:36:29.800 --> 0:36:32.440 to start all over again. Raps still believed that the 0:36:32.480 --> 0:36:36.440 second coming was eminence. He wanted to regroup, reset the 0:36:36.440 --> 0:36:39.680 community with the focus of preparing for that, And in 0:36:39.719 --> 0:36:42.360 the decade that they spent here in Indiana, Rap and 0:36:42.440 --> 0:36:46.040 his people had really built something considerable. So they had 0:36:46.080 --> 0:36:50.080 not only raised such varied crops as sugarcane, wheat, hemp, cotton, 0:36:50.160 --> 0:36:53.920 and flax, among others, they had also built that general store, 0:36:53.960 --> 0:36:58.760 and in various specialty shops, textile mills, tanneries, and distilleries. 0:36:59.160 --> 0:37:03.040 They were producing three thousand gallons of whiskey for sale 0:37:03.080 --> 0:37:08.320 each year and harvesting thousands of bushels of things like potatoes, rye, 0:37:08.400 --> 0:37:11.720 and oats. And they had started importing sheep from Spain 0:37:11.840 --> 0:37:14.040 to make fine woolens, and they were able to get 0:37:14.040 --> 0:37:17.719 into a textile market that previously had only included wool 0:37:17.800 --> 0:37:21.360 fabric that was imported from Europe. But then in eighteen 0:37:21.400 --> 0:37:23.560 twenty four, New Harmony was sold to a man named 0:37:23.600 --> 0:37:26.279 Robert Owen for another selling of an entire town in 0:37:26.320 --> 0:37:31.440 this story, and the Harmonists left Indiana. Okay, So before 0:37:31.480 --> 0:37:34.320 we get into the next phase of New Harmony's history, 0:37:34.719 --> 0:37:36.839 we are going to take another little break and hear 0:37:36.880 --> 0:37:38.680 from one of the sponsors that keep stuff you missed 0:37:38.680 --> 0:37:50.160 in history class going. Robert Owen was born on May 0:37:50.200 --> 0:37:54.480 fourteenth of seventeen seventy one in Newtown, Montgomery, share Wales. 0:37:54.560 --> 0:37:57.000 I have probably said that incorrect for the Welsh people. 0:37:58.160 --> 0:38:01.279 His parents, Robert Owen and Anne Williams, had six other 0:38:01.400 --> 0:38:04.760 children in addition to Robert, and as a child, Owen 0:38:04.800 --> 0:38:07.200 moved to London and he became a clothe year's apprentice 0:38:07.239 --> 0:38:09.719 at the age of ten, and in that job he 0:38:09.760 --> 0:38:13.160 had access to his employer's vast library of books, which 0:38:13.200 --> 0:38:16.920 he loved. He also really excelled in the textile industry, 0:38:17.000 --> 0:38:20.240 and before age twenty he was already running a large 0:38:20.280 --> 0:38:24.319 Manchester cotton mill that went on to great success under 0:38:24.360 --> 0:38:27.480 his leadership. And through his success he started making little 0:38:27.520 --> 0:38:30.760 efforts into the idea of communal living, and his first 0:38:30.800 --> 0:38:34.000 such work started when he convinced his bosses to purchase 0:38:34.080 --> 0:38:38.280 some mills in the Scottish village of New Lanark, which 0:38:38.480 --> 0:38:42.279 was a really impoverished community, and Robert Owen wanted to 0:38:42.320 --> 0:38:45.360 improve the quality of life for everyone in New Lanark, 0:38:45.480 --> 0:38:48.439 so he worked on initiatives to make the housing there 0:38:48.560 --> 0:38:51.120 safer and cleaner, and to educate the children in the 0:38:51.160 --> 0:38:54.200 area as well as the adults, and he was mindful 0:38:54.280 --> 0:38:57.040 of the welfare of the workers in the mills he managed. 0:38:57.840 --> 0:39:00.160 When the mills closed for several months during the War 0:39:00.200 --> 0:39:02.680 of eighteen twelve, he actually made sure that the workers 0:39:02.719 --> 0:39:05.560 continued to get paid during that time. Naturally, things like 0:39:05.600 --> 0:39:09.200 this really endeared him to the people he employed, but 0:39:09.360 --> 0:39:13.920 his business partners not so much. Disagreements over this led 0:39:14.000 --> 0:39:17.000 Robert Owen to breaking from his established job and starting 0:39:17.000 --> 0:39:20.600 his own company in eighteen thirteen. The stockholders and his 0:39:20.719 --> 0:39:24.080 new adventure were pretty like minded. They were content to 0:39:24.120 --> 0:39:26.960 take a smaller share of the profits so that the 0:39:27.000 --> 0:39:31.360 money that was made could be put toward benevolent projects, 0:39:31.400 --> 0:39:35.759 and soon they bought out his old partners. Yeah, and 0:39:35.800 --> 0:39:38.600 one of the drivers in Owens's work was actually his 0:39:38.680 --> 0:39:42.520 attitude toward religion. He thought that all established religions were 0:39:42.560 --> 0:39:46.680 really problematic, and he thought that people's circumstances had greater 0:39:46.760 --> 0:39:50.160 influence over their behavior and their lives than any church 0:39:50.239 --> 0:39:54.040 ever could, and so he thought that if everyone's circumstances 0:39:54.080 --> 0:39:57.000 were improved, the world would just become a better place. 0:39:57.480 --> 0:39:59.960 And he was working to make New Lanark an example 0:40:00.160 --> 0:40:04.040 of how that ideology worked. And as a consequence, the village, 0:40:04.080 --> 0:40:07.440 which is pretty successful in his efforts, was visited and 0:40:07.480 --> 0:40:11.600 studied by everyone from royals to philosophers. He kept working 0:40:11.600 --> 0:40:14.920 on bettering the lives of people in the village, particularly 0:40:14.960 --> 0:40:18.320 the children, and he wanted to extend that beyond the town. 0:40:18.560 --> 0:40:22.040 He lobbied among manufacturers to reduce the number of hours 0:40:22.040 --> 0:40:26.880 that children worked that was initially voted down. He also 0:40:27.040 --> 0:40:30.880 opened Great Britain's first kindergarten in New Lanark in eighteen sixteen, 0:40:30.960 --> 0:40:34.520 called the Institution for the Formation of Character. And all 0:40:34.560 --> 0:40:37.480 of this was really like a slow burned build up 0:40:37.640 --> 0:40:41.040 to lead o into the idea of communal living. And 0:40:41.080 --> 0:40:45.000 he thought particularly that if unemployed workers displaced by machinery 0:40:45.080 --> 0:40:49.040 in the Industrial Revolution just had safety and security and 0:40:49.080 --> 0:40:52.240 a reasonable standard of living, a lot of the world's 0:40:52.239 --> 0:40:54.640 ills would be cured. Like he saw it as a 0:40:54.640 --> 0:40:57.319 pretty obvious chain of events, like people are without work, 0:40:57.360 --> 0:40:59.839 they don't have money, they turned to crime, or they 0:40:59.880 --> 0:41:01.880 just fall on hard times and they suffer, and we 0:41:01.920 --> 0:41:06.120 could prevent all of that. He envisioned these villages that 0:41:06.160 --> 0:41:10.400 were designed for this idea, where family oriented dormitories existed, 0:41:10.440 --> 0:41:13.880 that had commonery areas where people could cook and socialize, 0:41:14.160 --> 0:41:16.719 and children would stay with their parents the first three years, 0:41:16.760 --> 0:41:19.280 but then be raised by the collective and then everyone 0:41:19.320 --> 0:41:21.719 would work as they were able to keep the whole 0:41:21.760 --> 0:41:26.280 thing going, including agricultural work to provide food. So Owen 0:41:26.360 --> 0:41:30.000 had actually made contact with New Harmony four years before 0:41:30.040 --> 0:41:32.560 he took possession of it. He had written to George 0:41:32.640 --> 0:41:35.080 rap with this series of questions about how the rapp 0:41:35.080 --> 0:41:37.400 Bite Utopia was functioning. He had done that in eighteen 0:41:37.440 --> 0:41:41.759 twenty as his ideas of these communities to prevent poperism 0:41:41.800 --> 0:41:45.560 were forming in his head. So when George Raps Harmonists 0:41:45.600 --> 0:41:48.120 were ready to sell, Owen was ready to buy. And 0:41:48.160 --> 0:41:51.400 he already knew that the Harmonist village had been profitable 0:41:51.880 --> 0:41:54.719 after writing a number of essays about how communal society 0:41:54.760 --> 0:41:56.960 could succeed, he was ready to take possession of this 0:41:57.000 --> 0:42:00.680 whole town and prove it. And additionally, he his own 0:42:00.760 --> 0:42:04.000 problems that were making it pretty appealing to leave home and. 0:42:04.040 --> 0:42:05.360 Strike out in a new place. 0:42:06.800 --> 0:42:11.160 His outspoken anti religion stance had really strained relationships with 0:42:11.200 --> 0:42:13.759 his business partners as well as his wife, who was 0:42:14.000 --> 0:42:19.719 very religiously devout. I can't imagine that marriage. And his 0:42:19.800 --> 0:42:22.880 work in New Lanard was actually hitting some problems as well. 0:42:23.280 --> 0:42:25.960 There had been a typhoid outbreak, which was really kind 0:42:25.960 --> 0:42:28.560 of scandalous for a town that was touted as having 0:42:28.600 --> 0:42:32.440 impeccable cleanliness, and there was a dispute over pay rates 0:42:32.440 --> 0:42:35.600 that was brewing. And part of the problem was that 0:42:35.640 --> 0:42:38.080 as Owen had gotten more and more obsessed with creating 0:42:38.120 --> 0:42:40.800 a new utopia. He had grown more and more distant 0:42:40.800 --> 0:42:43.799 from that company town that was his first experiment in 0:42:43.960 --> 0:42:47.640 socialized society. Owen paid one hundred and thirty five thousand 0:42:47.719 --> 0:42:50.360 dollars for New Harmony, and that purchase was final in 0:42:50.400 --> 0:42:53.640 early January of eighteen twenty five. Robert Owen was really 0:42:53.680 --> 0:42:56.439 eager to get to work. Five of his children, which 0:42:56.480 --> 0:42:59.319 included four sons and a daughter, traveled to Indiana to 0:42:59.360 --> 0:43:03.160 help their fought and as spring arrived, Owen offered a 0:43:03.280 --> 0:43:06.160 life in the community to anyone who cared to join 0:43:06.360 --> 0:43:10.840 and then embrace its ideals of equality and communal living. 0:43:11.040 --> 0:43:16.359 Yep, open invitation. That sounds smart. What could go wrong? 0:43:16.920 --> 0:43:20.239 Also, we're going to return to the ideas of equality 0:43:20.280 --> 0:43:20.800 in a minute. 0:43:20.840 --> 0:43:22.520 Yeah, not so much so. 0:43:22.880 --> 0:43:25.400 His new town had come with one hundred and eighty buildings, 0:43:25.440 --> 0:43:27.600 but they were pretty quickly kind of packed to the 0:43:27.600 --> 0:43:30.359 guilds because a lot of people wanted in on this opportunity. 0:43:30.960 --> 0:43:33.839 But almost from the beginning things went wrong. For one, 0:43:34.040 --> 0:43:37.600 Owen continually bad mouthed established religion, which made a lot 0:43:37.640 --> 0:43:41.200 of the newcomers really uneasy. He was a dedicated follower 0:43:41.200 --> 0:43:44.200 of Enlightenment thinking, and he wanted to eschew tradition in 0:43:44.239 --> 0:43:47.400 favor of forging all new paths, which was another unpopular 0:43:47.440 --> 0:43:50.840 position that made people a little nervous. And he tended 0:43:50.880 --> 0:43:54.160 to appeal to the upper class for financing and support, 0:43:54.760 --> 0:43:57.760 and he misjudged the willingness of the US upper classes 0:43:57.800 --> 0:44:01.400 to participate in such an experiment tarticularly an experiment like 0:44:01.440 --> 0:44:04.240 this that had no ties whatsoever to religion. 0:44:04.160 --> 0:44:05.680 And spoke openly against it. 0:44:05.760 --> 0:44:08.680 In fact, he did find some help in the form 0:44:08.680 --> 0:44:12.000 of William McClure, who was a Scottish born merchant who 0:44:12.080 --> 0:44:15.600 also believed in social reform and ultimately did invest heavily 0:44:15.640 --> 0:44:19.000 in New Harmony. McClure offered his own funds to the 0:44:19.040 --> 0:44:22.160 development of New Harmonies schools and engaged some of the 0:44:22.160 --> 0:44:24.960 most respected educators of the day to teach there. I mean, 0:44:25.000 --> 0:44:28.960 the schools had a really amazing reputation. McClure also paid 0:44:29.040 --> 0:44:33.200 for the school's labs to have scientific equipment and other necessities. Yeah, 0:44:33.239 --> 0:44:34.839 I feel like there could be a whole side show 0:44:34.960 --> 0:44:37.640 just about the people that he brought. We don't talk 0:44:37.640 --> 0:44:39.839 about it nearly enough in this one because it's about 0:44:39.880 --> 0:44:42.879 the whole whole story, but there were some great people 0:44:42.960 --> 0:44:47.319 doing cool things. Owen had created a foundation document called 0:44:47.440 --> 0:44:50.319 Rules for a Good Community in nineteen twenty five that 0:44:50.400 --> 0:44:56.120 outlined what he thought was necessary to create inequality based society. Incidentally, 0:44:56.680 --> 0:45:00.680 our lovely hosts have this digitized online as well as 0:45:00.680 --> 0:45:05.040 many many other fabulous documents that are really really were 0:45:05.080 --> 0:45:06.840 really helpful to me and doing research for this, but 0:45:06.920 --> 0:45:10.560 also just are fascinating to look through. So Owen's is Owen's. 0:45:10.560 --> 0:45:12.279 I keep wanting to put an s on his name. 0:45:12.320 --> 0:45:15.680 He's just Owen. Owen's Rules were pretty lengthy, but they 0:45:15.680 --> 0:45:18.160 set up some very important ideas, including the fact that 0:45:18.200 --> 0:45:21.239 the financial accounts of the community should be maintained by 0:45:21.280 --> 0:45:24.920 a chosen treasurer who reported to a committee on all transactions, 0:45:25.239 --> 0:45:27.920 and that all of those financial records needed to be 0:45:27.960 --> 0:45:30.359 open for anyone in the community to go and. 0:45:30.239 --> 0:45:31.279 Review if they wanted to. 0:45:31.719 --> 0:45:35.200 Robert Owen's Rules also set up different departments to manage 0:45:35.200 --> 0:45:38.320 things like manufacture, policing, health, and education. 0:45:38.560 --> 0:45:40.120 Things like that these. 0:45:39.960 --> 0:45:44.399 Divisions would be run by subcommittees skillful practical men from 0:45:44.400 --> 0:45:46.919 the community with expertise in any of these areas could 0:45:46.960 --> 0:45:51.600 be engaged by the appropriate sub committee for assistance. But really, 0:45:51.640 --> 0:45:55.440 despite all these plans, Owen's utopia was a lot harder 0:45:55.640 --> 0:45:58.120 he found to execute in reality than it had been 0:45:58.160 --> 0:46:00.960 on paper. For one, even though it was going to 0:46:01.000 --> 0:46:03.399 be a society of equals, there were some pretty clear 0:46:03.520 --> 0:46:07.200 class distinctions. Wealthy people had moved there due to the 0:46:07.280 --> 0:46:11.120 draw of this life among the intelligentsia, and working people 0:46:11.200 --> 0:46:13.360 had moved there for a chance to have a better life, 0:46:13.400 --> 0:46:15.640 and everybody thought it was going to be equal, but 0:46:15.680 --> 0:46:18.680 the reality was that those two groups rarely mixed. They 0:46:18.800 --> 0:46:22.360 kind of chose instead to self segregate along wealth lines. 0:46:22.640 --> 0:46:26.839 There wasn't a relinquishing of personal wealth in Owen's group 0:46:26.920 --> 0:46:29.600 like there had been in Wraps, so this class structure 0:46:29.719 --> 0:46:33.920 had just followed everyone into new harmony. The working class 0:46:34.040 --> 0:46:37.560 was resentful of wealthier inhabitants and ability to contribute to 0:46:37.600 --> 0:46:40.120 the labor that was needed to sustain such a place. 0:46:40.840 --> 0:46:44.839 No structure was ever fully implemented. The community couldn't really 0:46:44.880 --> 0:46:48.840 become self sufficient, so the group was floundering, while Owen 0:46:48.920 --> 0:46:51.200 was continuing to put his own money into trying to 0:46:51.239 --> 0:46:52.280 keep it afloat. 0:46:52.640 --> 0:46:53.960 Even on uneven footing. 0:46:54.000 --> 0:46:55.880 I feel like we should mention that there were some 0:46:56.000 --> 0:47:00.760 efforts really to make new harmony into a community. Owen's children, 0:47:00.800 --> 0:47:03.120 in particular, did a lot of things. His son William 0:47:03.480 --> 0:47:06.720 started a Thespian Society so that they could have arts 0:47:07.040 --> 0:47:10.480 and people could go see plays whenever they wished. The 0:47:10.520 --> 0:47:13.640 school system is really what flourished though children had both 0:47:13.680 --> 0:47:17.960 academic curriculum and training in trades. But ultimately, when it 0:47:18.000 --> 0:47:20.360 came down to it and things really were obviously not 0:47:20.400 --> 0:47:23.920 going to work out, Owen blamed McClure and the educational 0:47:23.960 --> 0:47:28.160 setup for tanking the community. Owen gave one last address 0:47:28.200 --> 0:47:30.760 to the community on May sixth of eighteen twenty seven, 0:47:30.800 --> 0:47:33.680 and in it he said that McClure system only reinforced 0:47:33.680 --> 0:47:36.840 class distinctions instead of erasing him. There had been some 0:47:36.960 --> 0:47:39.640 debate over whether he was favoring children that were from 0:47:39.680 --> 0:47:44.840 wealthier families with better opportunities. Owen also thought there was 0:47:44.840 --> 0:47:48.960 too much creativity in the curriculum and not enough morality education, 0:47:49.480 --> 0:47:52.960 and he basically told everyone his school ideas had been 0:47:53.000 --> 0:47:55.759 superior to McClure's and if they had just done it 0:47:55.800 --> 0:48:00.279 had his way, they could have sustained the town. Long 0:48:00.320 --> 0:48:04.880 story Bless his heart. Long story short, this did not 0:48:05.080 --> 0:48:08.000 go all that well. By the time Robert Owen decided 0:48:08.000 --> 0:48:10.960 to end his involvement in this utopian dream, he had 0:48:11.000 --> 0:48:14.080 lost eighty percent of his personal fortune. He went on 0:48:14.200 --> 0:48:17.600 to participate, but in a much less central way and 0:48:17.760 --> 0:48:20.960 other utopian experiments, but he eventually focused a lot more 0:48:20.960 --> 0:48:24.040 on activism and the establishment of trade unions. Yeah, he 0:48:24.080 --> 0:48:26.800 really became like a labor activist, which kind of seemed 0:48:26.800 --> 0:48:28.600 like it should have been his thing from the get go, 0:48:28.719 --> 0:48:33.880 but he learned a lot in the process. If you 0:48:33.960 --> 0:48:36.799 are wondering what happened to the Rappites and their leader 0:48:36.840 --> 0:48:40.120 after they left Indiana, they moved as planned and started 0:48:40.120 --> 0:48:43.279 a new settlement, returning to Pennsylvania to do it. That 0:48:43.360 --> 0:48:46.319 new home was called Economy, and it was where George 0:48:46.400 --> 0:48:48.560 Rapp lived out the rest of his life. And just 0:48:48.640 --> 0:48:51.200 as they had grown New Harmony into a massive and 0:48:51.280 --> 0:48:56.120 profitable enterprise, Economy had investments in railroads and the oil industry, 0:48:56.680 --> 0:49:00.640 and their export business reached dozens of states and ten countries. 0:49:00.719 --> 0:49:02.879 So they just kept on going with that money thing. 0:49:03.000 --> 0:49:06.440 This fascinates me because so often the story is and 0:49:06.480 --> 0:49:08.520 then they ran out of money and everyone got sick 0:49:08.560 --> 0:49:14.520 and moved away. Even though they were very financially successful, 0:49:14.800 --> 0:49:18.200 it was not entirely smooth. Rap and his adopted son, Frederick, 0:49:18.239 --> 0:49:21.160 who he had relied on so heavily since the beginning 0:49:21.200 --> 0:49:23.279 of the Harmonist time in the United States, started to 0:49:23.320 --> 0:49:27.040 have disagreements about planning for the financial future of the community. 0:49:27.640 --> 0:49:30.000 That caused a lot of fracturing within the group and 0:49:30.080 --> 0:49:35.040 a lot of tension. Yeah, when they started to think 0:49:35.080 --> 0:49:38.600 about like there was also this problem where people were realizing, like. 0:49:41.200 --> 0:49:43.320 What about Christmas here yet y'all. 0:49:45.239 --> 0:49:49.400 We're not having kids and we're getting older and there's 0:49:49.440 --> 0:49:51.799 some problems. Like they started to realize this was not 0:49:51.960 --> 0:49:55.400 working out. Rap died in eighteen forty seven at the 0:49:55.400 --> 0:49:58.680 age of eighty nine. And remember that collection fun that 0:49:58.760 --> 0:50:02.160 he started the early years of his community because they 0:50:02.200 --> 0:50:04.320 wanted to have funds so they could deal with travel 0:50:04.360 --> 0:50:09.000 needs to Jerusalem and any chaos that ensued. When he died, 0:50:09.200 --> 0:50:12.120 he had amassed half a million dollars that he kept 0:50:12.120 --> 0:50:17.600 an a vault under his bedroom. He had withdrawn all 0:50:17.640 --> 0:50:20.640 of the Harmonists money from banks because he feared a 0:50:20.640 --> 0:50:23.680 banking collapse. So he was just literally sitting on top 0:50:23.719 --> 0:50:27.319 of a pile of money. I feel like that that 0:50:27.480 --> 0:50:31.359 wasn't an unjustified fear. But at the same time, that's 0:50:31.400 --> 0:50:33.120 a lot of money to have in a vault. 0:50:32.960 --> 0:50:35.520 Under your bedroom. Yeah, I would dig it. 0:50:35.880 --> 0:50:41.839 Yeah. The Rappike community continued, but without its charismatic leader, 0:50:41.880 --> 0:50:45.279 it couldn't really sustain things long term. Soon members of 0:50:45.280 --> 0:50:47.520 the group were questioning some of those things they had 0:50:47.520 --> 0:50:52.759 agreed to, in particular that celibacy situation. That also meant 0:50:52.760 --> 0:50:56.000 that they hadn't expanded their community by starting families, and 0:50:56.280 --> 0:50:59.879 without Wrap driving that whole ideology, they also weren't bringing 0:51:00.080 --> 0:51:03.080 in new members, so just the math was not in 0:51:03.120 --> 0:51:06.399 their favor long term. In the twenty years after rap died, 0:51:06.520 --> 0:51:09.160 the group shrank down to about two hundred and fifty members, 0:51:09.280 --> 0:51:12.080 and from there it continued to diminish right up until 0:51:12.120 --> 0:51:15.080 the dawn of the twentieth century. In nineteen oh three, 0:51:15.120 --> 0:51:17.799 the town of Economy was sold by a representative of 0:51:17.840 --> 0:51:22.200 the remaining Rapites for several million dollars. In nineteen oh five, 0:51:22.280 --> 0:51:24.840 the US Supreme Court issued judgments on the last of 0:51:24.840 --> 0:51:28.759 the disputed Rapite assets at Economy, and within a year 0:51:28.840 --> 0:51:32.520 the Harmonist movement was completely a matter of history. As 0:51:32.520 --> 0:51:35.400 for the people who had landed in the failed utopia 0:51:35.440 --> 0:51:38.560 of Robert Owen, one particular aspect of their efforts really 0:51:38.640 --> 0:51:41.960 did take hold and survived. The educators that McClure had 0:51:41.960 --> 0:51:45.560 brought in called the Boatloaders because the ship most of 0:51:45.600 --> 0:51:47.680 them traveled on to the United States had been nicknamed 0:51:47.680 --> 0:51:53.040 the Boatload of Knowledge, which I love. They I think 0:51:53.080 --> 0:51:55.560 that's a good T shirt. We should do that load 0:51:55.600 --> 0:51:57.280 of Knowledge shirt is a good one. 0:51:57.920 --> 0:51:58.840 They stayed. 0:51:59.200 --> 0:52:04.040 They created enclave of science and education that persisted for 0:52:04.400 --> 0:52:05.879 long after Owen was gone. 0:52:06.040 --> 0:52:06.239 Yeah. 0:52:06.320 --> 0:52:09.359 McClure, as you guys probably know because you're you live 0:52:09.400 --> 0:52:12.880 near here, was really known for his knowledge of geology, 0:52:12.920 --> 0:52:17.280 and he really started some interesting stuff in New Harmony 0:52:17.360 --> 0:52:21.319 in terms of like teaching geology and establishing labs there, 0:52:21.360 --> 0:52:26.520 and a pretty long tale for him of his legacy. 0:52:26.520 --> 0:52:30.200 As a consequence, in nineteen sixty five, New Harmony became 0:52:30.239 --> 0:52:33.400 a National Historic District. Many sections of the town have 0:52:33.480 --> 0:52:36.560 been restored to their Rappite era versions, and the village's 0:52:36.600 --> 0:52:40.040 famous hedge labyrinth was restored in nineteen forty, much to 0:52:40.120 --> 0:52:43.480 the to the delight and sometimes confusion of tourists who 0:52:43.560 --> 0:52:46.600 choose to enter, as so as people who go visit. 0:52:46.680 --> 0:52:48.880 That's I have not gotten to go to New Harmony. 0:52:48.920 --> 0:52:51.200 That's the one thing I want to see. I will 0:52:51.200 --> 0:52:53.319 get lost in that labyrinth and maybe never come out. 0:52:54.280 --> 0:53:03.440 But that is our New Harmony tale for the day. 0:53:05.480 --> 0:53:08.480 Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If 0:53:08.480 --> 0:53:10.640 you'd like to send us a note, our email addresses 0:53:10.800 --> 0:53:15.360 History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe 0:53:15.440 --> 0:53:18.480 to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or 0:53:18.560 --> 0:53:20.600 wherever you listen to your favorite shows.