Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. This week, we talked about Narcisse Montreal's submarines,
Speaker 1: and we mentioned his affiliation with a man named Ettien
Speaker 1: Cab And there's probably going to be an episode on
Speaker 1: Etsian Caba in the near future unless something goes very
Speaker 1: wrong in my research. But Etienkab was also connected to
Speaker 1: somebody we have talked about on the show before, and
Speaker 1: that was Robert Owen. We talked about Robert Owen in
Speaker 1: the later part of our episode on the communal settlements
Speaker 1: in New Harmony, Indiana, that was part of our live
Speaker 1: show at the Indiana Historical Society back in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: So this live episode originally came out July thirty first,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. There's also mention of the boatload of knowledge
Speaker 1: in this live episode. We did do a whole episode
Speaker 1: on that that came out on August fifth of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: So enjoy.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class of iHeartRadio. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm
Speaker 1: Tracy V. Wilson and Tracy we recently went on a
Speaker 1: little trip we did. We visited the Indiana Historical Society
Speaker 1: at their invitation, we did a live podcast there. We
Speaker 1: did that show actually took place the night before their
Speaker 1: Midwestern Roots Conference began, and it was such an honor
Speaker 1: to kick off the festivities and they being in Indianapolis,
Speaker 1: they asked us to do something Indiana related and we
Speaker 1: ended up talking about the village slash town of New
Speaker 1: Harmony and a couple of interesting communal living experiments that
Speaker 1: were conducted there. Yes, we did not get to go
Speaker 1: to New Harmony while we were there. It was a
Speaker 1: very fast trip, but there are lots of things about
Speaker 1: it online. You can have a lot of experience through
Speaker 1: all of these documents and records and pictures and cool stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Indiana Historical Society has a really impressive digital archive online,
Speaker 1: including things not just about New Harmony, but about a
Speaker 1: lot of different topics. So we encourage people to absolutely
Speaker 1: go explore. But for now, we'll hop it right into
Speaker 1: our live show. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Today we're talking
Speaker 1: about the town of New Harmony and in the window
Speaker 1: from eighteen fifteen to eighteen twenty seven, there were two
Speaker 1: communal society attempts there in the town, one right after
Speaker 1: the other, one way more successful than the other. But
Speaker 1: to talk about all that, we actually have to start
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century in Germany and talk about George Rapp.
Speaker 1: George Rapp was born Johann George Rapp on November first,
Speaker 1: seventeen fifty seven in Iptingen, which is in the Duchy
Speaker 1: of Wurtemberg, Germany.
Speaker 2: And as he was.
Speaker 1: Growing up he learned to be a weaver. He got
Speaker 1: me married to Christina Benzinger in seventeen eighty three, and
Speaker 1: then they had a son named Johannes, who went more
Speaker 1: often by John later on, so we talk about John.
Speaker 1: That's who that is. And they also had a daughter
Speaker 1: named Rosina. Yeah, unfortunately we don't know a whole lot
Speaker 1: about Rosina.
Speaker 2: I can't imagine why.
Speaker 1: Her One of her children shows up a little bit
Speaker 1: later in the record. We won't talk about her in
Speaker 1: this podcast, but her offspring becomes a little bit more
Speaker 1: important to the story. But we really don't know much
Speaker 1: about their daughter. But by the seventeen eighties Rap had
Speaker 1: kind of moved away from textiles as a vocation and
Speaker 1: into his growing religious passion, and he had started preaching.
Speaker 1: He was Lutheran in terms of his upbringing, but he
Speaker 1: ended up becoming a Pietist, and in very simplistic terms,
Speaker 1: that is an ideology that focuses on the individual's religious
Speaker 1: experience as guided by the Bible, and the movement of
Speaker 1: Pietism really began out of this perception of shortcomings of
Speaker 1: the Church and its doctrine and the formality of it
Speaker 1: and its followers. Pietism's followers really believed that there needed
Speaker 1: to be reformation within the Church so that they centered
Speaker 1: theology again on truly living a Christian life and looking
Speaker 1: to the Bible as the one true authority rather than
Speaker 1: any sort of hierarchy put together.
Speaker 2: By the Church. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, because of this conflict between the established church and
Speaker 1: his personal beliefs, Rap ultimately separated from the Lutherans in
Speaker 1: seventeen eighty five, and he didn't go by himself. He
Speaker 1: had a small group of followers who started meeting at
Speaker 1: his home, which this was the eighteenth century in Germany
Speaker 1: that was not legal, and their numbers got bigger over time,
Speaker 1: even though they were having these illicit religious meetings. By
Speaker 1: the early seventeen nineties, the little their little gatherings as
Speaker 1: they had grown, had become very concerning to the church,
Speaker 1: and the church was worried about this separatist group and
Speaker 1: the influence they were having, and they considered it to
Speaker 1: be undermining the social order. And Rapp also believed that
Speaker 1: he was a prophet, something which he stated openly, and
Speaker 1: that was essentially a pretty big piece of rebellion against
Speaker 1: the established Lutheran Church, and he was actually brought before
Speaker 1: a church commission in seventeen ninety one on charges of heresy,
Speaker 1: and in his testimony he said to them quite plainly, quote,
Speaker 1: I am a prophet and I am called to be one.
Speaker 1: He was imprisoned briefly, so that's how that worked out.
Speaker 1: But this actually had the opposite of the commission's desired effect.
Speaker 1: In imprisoning him, more people started to take notice of him,
Speaker 1: and as a consequence, his followers just grew in number.
Speaker 1: So in an effort to control this problem, they told
Speaker 1: rap in seventeen eighty nine that he needed to submit
Speaker 1: a formal statement of faith, and that instruction didn't actually
Speaker 1: come from the church, it came from the government of Wurtemberg.
Speaker 1: Because the church and the state were really deeply interconnected,
Speaker 1: as was the case in so much of Europe at
Speaker 1: that point. That was actually one of the things that
Speaker 1: Rap and his followers really objected to. Yeah, the writing
Speaker 1: that Rap submitted. He did make his formal declaration, but
Speaker 1: it was really not what the government or the church
Speaker 1: was looking for. Rap took advantage of this moment said
Speaker 1: you want to know what I think, Here's what I think.
Speaker 1: So he stated quite clearly that while he respected the government,
Speaker 1: he was very respectful. He was like, I get it.
Speaker 1: But my followers and I who started calling themselves the Harmonists,
Speaker 1: you'll also see that mentioned as the Rappites, and we
Speaker 1: use those two terms pretty interchangeably in this episode. They
Speaker 1: felt that people should just have freedom to form their
Speaker 1: own congregations as they wished, without the involvement of any
Speaker 1: civic body or rules from the government. And additionally, though
Speaker 1: his statement indicated that the Harmonists really didn't have a
Speaker 1: whole lot of use for some pretty standard social norms
Speaker 1: and customs that were part of government and church practice.
Speaker 1: So they didn't want to be baptized infants because they
Speaker 1: believed in believer baptism.
Speaker 2: Later in life.
Speaker 1: They also did not believe in serving in the military,
Speaker 1: so that was another big problem. You can imagine how
Speaker 1: that went over Over the next four years, the relationship
Speaker 1: between the Lutheran government of Wurtemberg and George Ratt just
Speaker 1: became increasingly tense. And then in eighteen oh three, Rapp
Speaker 1: was questioned one more time. This time the authorities told
Speaker 1: him that he was not allowed to speak outside of
Speaker 1: his town. That seems like an odd instruction, but their
Speaker 1: thinking was that he had converted everybody that he was
Speaker 1: going to persuade within the town, so if they could
Speaker 1: just stop him from going to find new people, it
Speaker 1: would at least stop the spread of this dangerous rhetoric.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an interesting it's a solutionisting, but he was
Speaker 2: so defiant.
Speaker 1: They kind of knew he wasn't going to stop now preaching,
Speaker 1: so they were like, just don't go outside city limits.
Speaker 1: I feel like those were like rules my parents gave,
Speaker 1: and don't go outside city limits. We won't pick you
Speaker 1: up from the jail.
Speaker 2: Anywhere but town.
Speaker 1: Look, I was a wild child, but this was the
Speaker 1: end of life in Germany for rap so he set
Speaker 1: out for the United States. He landed in Philadelphia in
Speaker 1: October of eighteen oh three, and he had his son
Speaker 1: John with him as well as two other men who
Speaker 1: were part of his separatist group, kind of scouting the
Speaker 1: situation out. So this show is about new Harmony here
Speaker 1: in Indiana. But the village in Indiana was not the
Speaker 1: first rap Bite settlement in the United States. And this
Speaker 1: precursor that they started with was the template that Raptness
Speaker 1: followers used to establish the Indiana Harmony. So we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about how it came to be founded and
Speaker 1: what those rules were, because then they carry over to
Speaker 1: new harmony here. And the choice of the US for
Speaker 1: this new settlement was based on raps interpretation of the Bible,
Speaker 1: the passage in Revelation twelve, which reads quote and the
Speaker 1: woman fled into the wilderness where she hath a place
Speaker 1: prepared for God had convinced him that the unsettled land
Speaker 1: in North America was where he and his followers should
Speaker 1: make their new home. Rap had hoped that he could
Speaker 1: either get a land grant from the US government or
Speaker 1: a provision for the purchase of some discounted land. He
Speaker 1: did not really understand the process involved. This was well
Speaker 1: before things like the Homestead Act that made it a
Speaker 1: lot easier for people to get land Congress had to
Speaker 1: approve either of those options. Rap did not anticipate that
Speaker 1: as being part of it, and he wasn't really dissuaded
Speaker 1: when he found it out. He had been hoping though, that,
Speaker 1: like even though people were telling him, no, Congress has
Speaker 1: to do that for you, honey, but he was hoping
Speaker 1: that he really had something special going on and that
Speaker 1: he could be given a parcel of land to start
Speaker 1: his community without having to mess with all that red tape.
Speaker 1: And so his big idea was that he was going
Speaker 1: to go straight to President Thomas Jefferson, which he did.
Speaker 1: He went and spoke with Jefferson on July twelfth of
Speaker 1: eighteen oh four, and he explained his plans in the
Speaker 1: situation and what he had come from. And while the
Speaker 1: President thought this whole conversation was pretty compelling, he also
Speaker 1: deferred to Congress and he clarified for Rap that that
Speaker 1: was the only governing body that could.
Speaker 2: Grant him land.
Speaker 1: Jefferson did, though, use his influence. He wrote some letters
Speaker 1: so that there would be an offer of land and
Speaker 1: that offer would be protected. He had give it made
Speaker 1: sure that Rap had this option to purchase a forty
Speaker 1: thousand acre township here in Indiana. Rap did not have
Speaker 1: enough money for that one at the time, so that
Speaker 1: one did not happen. So part of the reason that
Speaker 1: Rap was willing to take his request directly to the
Speaker 1: President was because he needed to get things settled as
Speaker 1: quickly as possible. He had nothing to send back to Germany.
Speaker 1: He had nothing to return to there. His estate had
Speaker 1: been seized by the Wurtemberg government, and he was considered
Speaker 1: to be a fugitive, so he could not just go.
Speaker 2: Back, no, and he didn't want to.
Speaker 1: He only had those few people with him when he
Speaker 1: traveled to North America, but he had already written back
Speaker 1: to Germany that was like I am never coming back.
Speaker 1: He didn't want to return to Europe at all. He
Speaker 1: really thought like he was where God wanted him to be.
Speaker 1: And he also in those letters spoke about the potential
Speaker 1: of the US settlement, and as a consequence, more of
Speaker 1: his followers were already on the way. They were ready
Speaker 1: to set up this new utopia, and they started arriving
Speaker 1: in Baltimore aboard the ship Aurora on July fourth of
Speaker 1: eighteen oh four, and two more groups of Harmonists followed
Speaker 1: in the next six weeks. Aboard the Atlantic and the Margaretta.
Speaker 1: So that meant he had an urgent need to have
Speaker 1: a home for all these new arrivals, and without the
Speaker 1: assistance that he was hoping for from the US government,
Speaker 1: so Rap wound up purchasing several thousand acres of land
Speaker 1: north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in Butler County that cost him
Speaker 1: a little more than ten thousand dollars, and he had
Speaker 1: decided that Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, or Maryland would all be
Speaker 1: good options for where they could set things up, but
Speaker 1: this particular piece of land was not his first choice
Speaker 1: of location. Nevertheless, though, the Harmonists pulled all of their
Speaker 1: resources to try to make a go of it, and
Speaker 1: they finalized that purchase on December twenty second of eighteen
Speaker 1: oh four. Not everybody was pleased with this particular Pennsylvania land, though,
Speaker 1: and some folks did leave Raps group and go strike
Speaker 1: out on their own. On February fifteenth of eighteen oh five,
Speaker 1: Rap officially founded the Harmony Society that became the governing
Speaker 1: body of the town that he founded, Harmony, Pennsylvania, and
Speaker 1: the society maintained all of their documents in the official
Speaker 1: language of the society as designated by George Rapp, which
Speaker 1: was German. He was like, we'll talk about this morn
Speaker 1: a minute, but like christ is coming, you guys, you
Speaker 1: don't have to learn another language, where literally, really he
Speaker 1: was like, don't, let's not waste time with that, Like,
Speaker 1: just let's keep what we know.
Speaker 2: This is going to be more efficient.
Speaker 1: He also established himself sort of in this document as
Speaker 1: the ultimate leader, and when you start looking at biographies
Speaker 1: of rap and stories about him and how his society worked,
Speaker 1: he is characterized in two very very different ways. There
Speaker 1: are some where he is described as this very benevolent
Speaker 1: and loving father figure, you know, kind of like a
Speaker 1: hippie love figure that wants to start a cool community everybody,
Speaker 1: and then in others he's really represented much more as
Speaker 1: a manipulative dictator who's like, well, I'm going to America
Speaker 1: because Europe is not going to happen for us.
Speaker 2: You'll die if you stay, you should come.
Speaker 1: Probably those are two sides of the same coin, and
Speaker 1: he may have been both of those things depending on
Speaker 1: who he was dealing with and what topic was at hand,
Speaker 1: but in all matters, no matter whether they were just
Speaker 1: the logistics and finances of the community, or matters of faith,
Speaker 1: or how members of the group would interact with outsiders,
Speaker 1: including how they voted. Later on, Rapp was deferred to.
Speaker 1: He made all the decisions and his word was absolutely final.
Speaker 1: So if you signed on to Harmonies Articles of Association,
Speaker 1: you relinquished all personal assets to the community and you
Speaker 1: promised to live by the community's rules. The number of
Speaker 1: initial members who first signed on with this charter was
Speaker 1: first established. That estimate varies different accounts site anywhere from
Speaker 1: thirty one to one hundred families, So that was as
Speaker 1: many as four hundred to five hundred people. Yeah, some
Speaker 1: were like tracking by families, some were trying to track
Speaker 1: by individuals, and I think that leads to some confusion
Speaker 1: in what those numbers really were. But after that initial
Speaker 1: charter was established, any new prospective members had to agree
Speaker 1: to a trial period which is usually like six to
Speaker 1: eight weeks before they could become full members. And the
Speaker 1: charter initial included a provision for any members who left
Speaker 1: the group that were in good standing to be given
Speaker 1: a sum of cash when they left, so that they
Speaker 1: were getting a little something back of what they had
Speaker 1: put in. And also they could start their life elsewhere
Speaker 1: without having to go from zero. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about what happened to that little plan later because it
Speaker 1: didn't work out so good.
Speaker 2: I bet you can get.
Speaker 1: So the group quickly set to work. They cleared about
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty acres of land in just the
Speaker 1: first year. They built an estimated fifty log homes, plus
Speaker 1: a mill, and of course a church. There was also
Speaker 1: a committee of elders hand chosen by Rap to help
Speaker 1: lead the adjustment into more communal living. I feel like
Speaker 1: this is the first place that they really diverge from
Speaker 1: all the utopian communities that we have ever talked about
Speaker 1: in that they actually showed up and got some things done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there was a transition team. Like I like the
Speaker 1: idea that they recognized that these people were all part
Speaker 1: of a group in Germany, but they weren't accustomed to
Speaker 1: this idea of life we all lived together in one
Speaker 1: big community.
Speaker 2: And share our resources.
Speaker 1: So he did have people that were like, here, we're
Speaker 1: going to get you through this transition, which is probably
Speaker 1: why his communities worked better than some others. Two years
Speaker 1: into this communal living effort, the Harmonists in pace with
Speaker 1: the second Great Awakening, which was sweeping through the US,
Speaker 1: had their own reawakening. Beginning in eighteen oh seven, the
Speaker 1: belief among Rap's followers that Christ was soon to return
Speaker 1: to Earth took on a much more immediate tone. Rap
Speaker 1: had come to the conclusion that the Napoleonic Wars, which
Speaker 1: had started in eighteen oh three, were a sign of
Speaker 1: the eminent return of the Son of God, and that
Speaker 1: was because he saw Napoleon Bonaparte as an anti Christ.
Speaker 1: I said this to Holly while we were planning this episode.
Speaker 1: But we just got back from Paris not long ago
Speaker 1: and we saw Napoleon's tomb, and I was unprepared for Napoleon,
Speaker 1: who you know, we've always learned as a guy that
Speaker 1: we had a lot of wars with in a giant's
Speaker 1: tomb surrounded by angel statues. France definitely did not think
Speaker 1: he was an Antichrist. So Rap thought that this guy's
Speaker 1: rise to power really signaled the end of Europe in
Speaker 1: the world order. Yeah, that was one of the many
Speaker 1: reasons he was like, Europe is not going to exist
Speaker 1: for long. Come on. Mysticism was also a huge part
Speaker 1: of the Rapite interpretation of scripture, so George rapp and
Speaker 1: his followers, but again he was always really leading the ideology,
Speaker 1: were always watching world events. He was kind of a
Speaker 1: news junkie, and they were watching events closely to see
Speaker 1: what they might portend because he was always relating what
Speaker 1: was going on around them and throughout the world too,
Speaker 1: what was in the Bible, and trying to kind of
Speaker 1: parse out any deeper meaning he could. And the group
Speaker 1: often discussed these matters as part of their religious practice.
Speaker 1: It basically have like evening services and discussion where they
Speaker 1: would talk about, Hey, this thing happened over here, this
Speaker 1: might mean this tying all of these very events, like
Speaker 1: we said to biblical prophecy. So the Rappites were millennialists.
Speaker 1: They believed that the Son of God was going to
Speaker 1: appear once again in human form and then rule the
Speaker 1: world as his kingdom for a thousand years of peace,
Speaker 1: and that this was going to start at any moment.
Speaker 1: So they sought to purify themselves in preparation. So soon
Speaker 1: there was no tobacco use in harmony, Rap's followers shifted
Speaker 1: to a celibate life. The end times are coming, you
Speaker 1: don't need to have any babies prior to this decision.
Speaker 1: For celibacy. There had been a number of marriages in Harmony,
Speaker 1: and George's son John had actually been one of the
Speaker 1: last to get married in Harmony, but even married couples
Speaker 1: were encouraged to abstain from sexual activity and to live
Speaker 1: as brothers and sisters of faith. So John rap incidentally
Speaker 1: clashed with his father during this time. The cartoon that
Speaker 1: just in my head was like if one of my
Speaker 1: parents pulled that, and I'd be like a world of
Speaker 1: no jan and Ron.
Speaker 2: This isn't gonna happen.
Speaker 1: But yeah, So John and George had some problems and
Speaker 1: John left Harmony. He moved to Ohio, and he and
Speaker 1: his father, George later became embroiled in a legal battle
Speaker 1: over the money that John had contributed to Harmony to
Speaker 1: the trust, which he wanted back, and several other members
Speaker 1: that had decided that they were going to leave joined
Speaker 1: this suit seeking their money as well. All of them
Speaker 1: after kind of having this drag out for a while
Speaker 1: because it seemed like they were not in good standing
Speaker 1: per George's assessment, thus they were not entitled to that,
Speaker 1: but they eventually abandoned legal action. They just got tired
Speaker 1: of fighting and they gave up on ever reclaiming their assets.
Speaker 1: But John did go back and rejoin his father's community,
Speaker 1: although it was not for terribly long because he died
Speaker 1: when he was still a very young man in his
Speaker 1: late twenties, and that happened in eighteen twelve. We will
Speaker 1: get right back to our New Harmony live show at
Speaker 1: the Indiana Historical Society in just a moment, but first
Speaker 1: we're going to pause and have a quick sponsor break.
Speaker 1: So George Rapp was setting up this whole thing. The
Speaker 1: idea was that the millennium was coming, and there were
Speaker 1: naturally gonna be some expenses related to the second coming.
Speaker 1: Rap knew they might have to travel to New Jerusalem
Speaker 1: with all of his followers so that they could meet
Speaker 1: Christ and present themselves, and that was just one for another,
Speaker 1: there were concerns that there was going to be global
Speaker 1: instability leading up to this prophesied return that might put
Speaker 1: them in a position where it would be pretty good
Speaker 1: to have some ready cash, a little financial liquidity to
Speaker 1: get through, and the Harmonists also wanted to have money
Speaker 1: to help support this new world order, so to that end,
Speaker 1: a fund was started for donations in coin, and that
Speaker 1: was a fund that Rap managed almost entirely on his own.
Speaker 1: Uh So, while sexual activity and other pleasures were completely denounced,
Speaker 1: financial success was aoka seen in a completely different light,
Speaker 1: the logic being that it could be.
Speaker 2: Used in service of faith.
Speaker 1: And this is the second way that these folks are
Speaker 1: totally different from every other utopian experiment we've ever talked about.
Speaker 1: Like money's cool, gonna have a lot of it. So,
Speaker 1: even as the Harmonists became more and more settled in
Speaker 1: Butler County, there were some conflicts that arose. Rapp was
Speaker 1: really think of thinking of other locations that might be better,
Speaker 1: and as early as eighteen oh six he was submitting
Speaker 1: new requests to the government for different land. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that he and the Harmonists had wanted
Speaker 1: when they had emigrated from Germany to North America was
Speaker 1: to cultivate vineyards and orchards, and this Pennsylvania land that
Speaker 1: they were on was just not working out in that regard,
Speaker 1: and it was also not in a spot were exporting
Speaker 1: anything that they did grow could be done at the
Speaker 1: level that they needed to keep growing. So they were
Speaker 1: just a little bit too geographically isolated, and he thought
Speaker 1: they weren't going to continue flourishing if they stayed there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that land was near a river, but it was a
Speaker 1: very shallow river. It was not really like going to
Speaker 1: support heavy duty irrigation, and they couldn't start shipping things.
Speaker 1: And additionally, as the area around that settlement grew more populated,
Speaker 1: the Harmonists found that, for one, their new neighbors really
Speaker 1: did not understand their community, and they were particularly suspicious
Speaker 1: of how wealthy the Harmonists seemed to be.
Speaker 2: They did not live like poppers.
Speaker 1: They had nice things, you know, people that visited would
Speaker 1: comment on how beautiful everything was and how you know,
Speaker 1: well appointed the rooms were and stuff. So the Rabbites
Speaker 1: also had this little problem where they refused to participate
Speaker 1: in the War of eighteen twelve and they disregarded draft notices.
Speaker 1: They were fined for it, and they paid those fines,
Speaker 1: but other pole in the state really started to regard
Speaker 1: them with a lot of distrust. So in eighteen fourteen
Speaker 1: they made the decision to head west after Rapid sent
Speaker 1: a group out to scout for some possible new locations,
Speaker 1: and the Indiana Territory offered better climate for the crops
Speaker 1: that they wanted to grow. They could get a bigger
Speaker 1: piece of land than they had back in Butler County
Speaker 1: and Harmony, Pennsylvania. The whole thing was sold to a
Speaker 1: Mennonite named Abraham Ziggler, who paid one hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: for it in eighteen fourteen. Y'all, that's that was ten
Speaker 1: times more than he bought the land for. Yes, but
Speaker 1: he had improved it. I feel like we just did
Speaker 1: history property hunters, but.
Speaker 2: I don't like the color.
Speaker 1: I don't do you guys watch shows and get frustrated
Speaker 1: by those people that don't know that paint Israel.
Speaker 2: Just paint the room.
Speaker 1: It makes me crazy. So in eighteen fifteen, New Harmony,
Speaker 1: Indiana was officially founded on the Wabash River. As an aside,
Speaker 1: you will often see this discussed simply as Harmony without
Speaker 1: the new. That was Rap's intent to just call it
Speaker 1: Harmony again, but the new got added over time to
Speaker 1: distinguish between the two locations and in reference to both
Speaker 1: the first and second settlements. Depending on what document you
Speaker 1: look at, sometimes Harmony has a Y and sometimes an
Speaker 1: I e.
Speaker 2: Just FYI if you go looking.
Speaker 1: So wrap in. The Harmonists put a lot of work
Speaker 1: to turn this riverfront land, which at that point was
Speaker 1: unsettled into a village.
Speaker 2: They felled trees.
Speaker 1: Again and cut them into lumber to use for construction.
Speaker 1: They dug out clay from the ground to make bricks
Speaker 1: for the same purpose. It was really arduous work, and
Speaker 1: first they had to build kind of a pre settlement
Speaker 1: for everybody to live on. While they were building the
Speaker 1: larger village, they also established farmland, and they were able
Speaker 1: to cultivate that vineyard and the fruit crops that they
Speaker 1: had been wanting the whole time. So Father Rap's home
Speaker 1: was in the center town and everything kind of radiated
Speaker 1: out from it. There were four dormitories built adjacent to it,
Speaker 1: each of which could house sixty to eighty residents. There
Speaker 1: were also individual homes, and each street had a water
Speaker 1: well and an oven that were there for communal use.
Speaker 1: And there were common use plants like herbs that were
Speaker 1: grown in public spaces and anyone could just come and
Speaker 1: take them as needed. Of course, there were some difficulties
Speaker 1: in this move. Malaria was still really common in parts
Speaker 1: of the US at this point, so malaria and other
Speaker 1: disease claimed the lives of a significant number of harmonists
Speaker 1: in that first year, and then in the first years
Speaker 1: in Indiana, a cemetery had to be established a lot
Speaker 1: sooner than they were planning to have to deal with
Speaker 1: these mortalities. And a thing that's super fascinating to me
Speaker 1: about the cemetery is that it is on the site
Speaker 1: of native mounds that date back to the Middle Woodland period.
Speaker 1: So there was like two thousand year old mounds where
Speaker 1: the cemetery went. Yeah, we don't know what the logicalistic
Speaker 1: to the best of my knowledge, but as this new
Speaker 1: community began to grow, rap was pretty smart in that
Speaker 1: he knew that to survive they needed to diversify, and
Speaker 1: they wanted to do this so that they could ensure
Speaker 1: their ongoing financial stability as well. So this was a
Speaker 1: lesson that they had learned when they were in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: where he eventually saw that the growth and commerce potential
Speaker 1: of the settlement they had there was.
Speaker 2: Finite, and he did not want the same thing to
Speaker 2: happen again.
Speaker 1: So their agricultural efforts were geared not towards subsistence farming
Speaker 1: where they might sell any extra, but to both providing
Speaker 1: the food the community needed and having enough produce to sell.
Speaker 1: They also established mills to process cotton and wool, and
Speaker 1: again for their clothes, but also they were making enough
Speaker 1: to trade. These were essentially little factories, and this made Harmony,
Speaker 1: Indiana prosperous. Yeah, and this prosperity was really in part
Speaker 1: due to this new location. They weren't in a place
Speaker 1: that was heavily populated when they got there. This was
Speaker 1: essentially frontierland, which the US had gained possession of in
Speaker 1: the eighteen oh four Treaty of Vincennes, which read, in part,
Speaker 1: the said Delaware Tribe for the considerations here and after
Speaker 1: mentioned relinquishes to United States forever all their right and
Speaker 1: the title to the tract of country which lies between
Speaker 1: the Ohio and Wabash rivers and below the tracks seated
Speaker 1: by the Treaty of Fort Wayne and the road leading
Speaker 1: from Vincenz to the Falls of Ohio. So this, of
Speaker 1: course was all part of the larger series of treaties
Speaker 1: that affected this whole part of the US to let
Speaker 1: the government take land that had been previously inhabited by
Speaker 1: native peoples, which also continued long after we're talking about today.
Speaker 1: So this is all sort of going on at the
Speaker 1: same time as all the stuff that we're talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the nearest town at this point was more than
Speaker 1: thirty miles away, so there was not a lot of
Speaker 1: competition for traveler business when people moved through the area
Speaker 1: and might need a trade or purchase supplies to get
Speaker 1: them ready to keep going wherever they were headed. And additionally,
Speaker 1: the settlement was right there the river, so they started
Speaker 1: shipping their manufactured goods from that point of departure, establishing
Speaker 1: a very wide reaching retail business. All run on a
Speaker 1: communal model where everyone contributed. So while the men generally
Speaker 1: saw to the agricultural efforts, the women and children worked
Speaker 1: in the mills and workshops producing dry goods. So they
Speaker 1: had gotten to Indiana in eighteen fourteen, and that meant
Speaker 1: that the Rappites were really setting up their home and
Speaker 1: their business settlement at the same time that Indiana was
Speaker 1: transitioning to statehood. It became the nineteenth US state at
Speaker 1: the end of eighteen sixteen, so the residents of Harmony
Speaker 1: were basically able to get into the ground floor, so
Speaker 1: to speak, of this new state economy. In addition to
Speaker 1: the fruits and the vegetables that they were growing and selling,
Speaker 1: the town's general store had clothing and shoes. Cold cold
Speaker 1: weather gear, saddles and bridles, and plows and wagons, anything
Speaker 1: else that somebody might need.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was pioneer target one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: And people went in they only needed shoes, but they
Speaker 1: came out with like so much stuff. They had somebody
Speaker 1: following you around, like do you need a cart? Do
Speaker 1: you need a No, I don't need a cart. If
Speaker 1: you give me a cart, I'm buying everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the town also produced beer, wine, and whiskey, which
Speaker 1: could be purchased at the general store, or you could
Speaker 1: enjoy it in the town tavern, which they had also built.
Speaker 1: Harmonists were not anti alcohol, but they were very much
Speaker 1: anti drunkenness. The whiskey that they produced, for example, was
Speaker 1: not something any of them drank. It was for other people.
Speaker 1: They occasionally had wine, but the rest of the alcoholic
Speaker 1: beverages that they produced were strictly commercial. The Harmonists of
Speaker 1: the town could just ask for anything that they needed
Speaker 1: without paying for it, because their participation in the community
Speaker 1: entitled them to it. But really, at least in terms
Speaker 1: of food, there wasn't a whole lot that the Harmonist
Speaker 1: households needed at the general store. As part of the
Speaker 1: establishment of the community. Every home was set up to
Speaker 1: have its own gardens. There poultry and a cow for
Speaker 1: each household, and as we mentioned, there were also public
Speaker 1: access gardens near the dormitories. But outsiders, of course coming
Speaker 1: through you had to pay, and on occasion those outsiders
Speaker 1: found the prices a little bit high, and they were
Speaker 1: kind of resentful that not everybody had to pay for stuff.
Speaker 1: The idea of communal living in this way was completely alien,
Speaker 1: and they sometimes felt like they were being treated poorly. Additionally,
Speaker 1: people certainly noticed that while the harmonists were perfectly happy
Speaker 1: to sell hard liquor, they were not willing to drink it,
Speaker 1: and this led to some interesting discord because there were customers,
Speaker 1: like in the tavern that kind of just felt like
Speaker 1: they were being judged, like I'm going to sit here
Speaker 1: and have a whiskey and there would just be people
Speaker 1: staring at them, just not how I enjoy a vodka,
Speaker 1: so I understand. So all this commerce was largely the
Speaker 1: work of Frederick Reiker Rap, which was George George Rap's
Speaker 1: adopted son. George had understood the need for diversification, but
Speaker 1: it was really Frederick who managed all these various enterprises
Speaker 1: that was making the community really profitable. The profits were
Speaker 1: used to purchase additional land and expanding new Harmonies footprint
Speaker 1: and enabling more crops to be planted for future commerce.
Speaker 1: Frederick was Wrapp's right hand in all these business dealings,
Speaker 1: and it had been Frederick who had stayed behind in
Speaker 1: Harmony of Pennsylvania to wrap up the business affairs there
Speaker 1: after George had moved on and Indiana. He was in
Speaker 1: charge of both the commerce and the political rate relationships
Speaker 1: with outsiders. Yeah, so when county officials had asked rap
Speaker 1: to send a representative from his group to the state
Speaker 1: constitutional Convention in eighteen sixteen, it was naturally Frederick who
Speaker 1: was chosen. This was also in part because Frederick was
Speaker 1: one of the few people who had learned a bit
Speaker 1: of English truly, so he could go. His English was
Speaker 1: allegedly not fantastic, but he could get along, and he
Speaker 1: was assigned interestingly enough for a pacifist group to the
Speaker 1: committee that drafted section of the constitution that related to
Speaker 1: the militia. This actually really worked out, though, because it
Speaker 1: was due to his influence that wording was included at
Speaker 1: that point to allow conscientious objection to the bearing of
Speaker 1: arms with a provision to pay a fee for exclusion
Speaker 1: from the draft, and just as had been the case
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania, the refusal of the Rappites to participate in
Speaker 1: military service kind of rankled their neighboring communities. Around the
Speaker 1: same time, New Harmony was growing pretty rapidly, and they
Speaker 1: needed more able bodies to run all these manufacturing enterprises,
Speaker 1: and to meet that demand, the requirements of religious devotions
Speaker 1: started relaxing a little bit. Frederick Rapp was appointed as
Speaker 1: one of the commissioners of the State Bank of Indiana,
Speaker 1: and this shift of focus to commerce was particularly upsetting
Speaker 1: for a number of the Harmonists. Their society had been
Speaker 1: founded entirely on their faith, with their commercial interests always
Speaker 1: framed as being necessary to sup that faith, but now
Speaker 1: it seemed less and less like that was the case.
Speaker 1: There was an ebb and flow in New Harmony's population
Speaker 1: in the late eighteen teens that the number of people left.
Speaker 1: New immigrants arrived from Germany and replaced them, but the
Speaker 1: acceptance of new members turned out to be completely unsuccessful.
Speaker 1: Rapp later wrote that the newcomers were quote too wild
Speaker 1: for our congregation, and that he was and this is
Speaker 1: a quote sick and tired of them, and he had
Speaker 1: actually been paying for the passage from Germany for some
Speaker 1: people who had written and said that they wanted to
Speaker 1: join the community, but he put an end to that practice.
Speaker 1: He also stopped the existing members of the community from
Speaker 1: writing home to Germany being like the US is great,
Speaker 1: you guys, because people were saying like, I have found
Speaker 1: a better life here. You can come and you know,
Speaker 1: to family members and friends, you could come and be
Speaker 1: part of this, and he was like, please stop doing that.
Speaker 1: We can't can't do that. He wanted people of faith,
Speaker 1: and most importantly, people so fit that they would obey
Speaker 1: him in whatever he said, and he just could not
Speaker 1: trust any newcomers to live up to his high standard
Speaker 1: of what exactly that meant. So even for the new
Speaker 1: members who were devout enough for George Rap's taste, it
Speaker 1: just wasn't easy. Members who had been with the Harmonists
Speaker 1: since eighteen oh five were pretty judgmental of the newer members,
Speaker 1: and factions started to form of the old and new groups.
Speaker 1: In eighteen eighteen, George Rapp revised those articles that had
Speaker 1: been established thirteen years prior when the Pennsylvania Settlement began
Speaker 1: in an effort to address the destabilization that was taking place,
Speaker 1: and two major changes came from this revision. So First,
Speaker 1: all records of how much any given person had contributed
Speaker 1: to the community upon their entry into it were destroyed.
Speaker 1: The intent was that the old and the new factions
Speaker 1: would stop bickering about who was more valuable to the
Speaker 1: community and who had given more and deserved more. Second,
Speaker 1: that provision for those choosing to leave to get a
Speaker 1: cash upon their exit was stricken from the charter because
Speaker 1: as people were wanting to leave, he was recognizing that
Speaker 1: he couldn't just keep giving bushels of money away. So
Speaker 1: at the same time as these internal issues were plaguing
Speaker 1: New Harmony, there was also mountain friction with their neighbors.
Speaker 1: At this point, immigrants who'd been in the US for
Speaker 1: a while and the first generation of European descendants to
Speaker 1: be born on US soil started to view immigrants new
Speaker 1: immigrants as potentially destructive to what they had built. Little
Speaker 1: ironic Yeah, and Rap's community had a number of things
Speaker 1: working against it as this settlement grew. So for one thing,
Speaker 1: or as this sentiment grew rather, I'm sorry for one thing,
Speaker 1: it was self isolating, so most of the members still
Speaker 1: only spoke German. They refused to bear arms, and that
Speaker 1: group was wealthy enough to pay the penalty required to
Speaker 1: exempt them from military service, whereas most people could not
Speaker 1: have afford it. They also commanded just a huge chunk
Speaker 1: of the area's financial capital, and they seemed impervious to
Speaker 1: the various shifts in the market that negatively impacted the
Speaker 1: communities around them. And they weren't having children, so they
Speaker 1: weren't helping to build the US population, just as had
Speaker 1: been the case back in Pennsylvania. Rap and the Harmonists
Speaker 1: were facing increasing resentment from the locals and dealing with
Speaker 1: their own fractures within the commune, so they decided to leave.
Speaker 1: They left all their hard work in New Harmony, Indiana,
Speaker 1: to start all over again. Raps still believed that the
Speaker 1: second coming was eminence. He wanted to regroup, reset the
Speaker 1: community with the focus of preparing for that, And in
Speaker 1: the decade that they spent here in Indiana, Rap and
Speaker 1: his people had really built something considerable. So they had
Speaker 1: not only raised such varied crops as sugarcane, wheat, hemp, cotton,
Speaker 1: and flax, among others, they had also built that general store,
Speaker 1: and in various specialty shops, textile mills, tanneries, and distilleries.
Speaker 1: They were producing three thousand gallons of whiskey for sale
Speaker 1: each year and harvesting thousands of bushels of things like potatoes, rye,
Speaker 1: and oats. And they had started importing sheep from Spain
Speaker 1: to make fine woolens, and they were able to get
Speaker 1: into a textile market that previously had only included wool
Speaker 1: fabric that was imported from Europe. But then in eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty four, New Harmony was sold to a man named
Speaker 1: Robert Owen for another selling of an entire town in
Speaker 1: this story, and the Harmonists left Indiana. Okay, So before
Speaker 1: we get into the next phase of New Harmony's history,
Speaker 1: we are going to take another little break and hear
Speaker 1: from one of the sponsors that keep stuff you missed
Speaker 1: in history class going. Robert Owen was born on May
Speaker 1: fourteenth of seventeen seventy one in Newtown, Montgomery, share Wales.
Speaker 1: I have probably said that incorrect for the Welsh people.
Speaker 1: His parents, Robert Owen and Anne Williams, had six other
Speaker 1: children in addition to Robert, and as a child, Owen
Speaker 1: moved to London and he became a clothe year's apprentice
Speaker 1: at the age of ten, and in that job he
Speaker 1: had access to his employer's vast library of books, which
Speaker 1: he loved. He also really excelled in the textile industry,
Speaker 1: and before age twenty he was already running a large
Speaker 1: Manchester cotton mill that went on to great success under
Speaker 1: his leadership. And through his success he started making little
Speaker 1: efforts into the idea of communal living, and his first
Speaker 1: such work started when he convinced his bosses to purchase
Speaker 1: some mills in the Scottish village of New Lanark, which
Speaker 1: was a really impoverished community, and Robert Owen wanted to
Speaker 1: improve the quality of life for everyone in New Lanark,
Speaker 1: so he worked on initiatives to make the housing there
Speaker 1: safer and cleaner, and to educate the children in the
Speaker 1: area as well as the adults, and he was mindful
Speaker 1: of the welfare of the workers in the mills he managed.
Speaker 1: When the mills closed for several months during the War
Speaker 1: of eighteen twelve, he actually made sure that the workers
Speaker 1: continued to get paid during that time. Naturally, things like
Speaker 1: this really endeared him to the people he employed, but
Speaker 1: his business partners not so much. Disagreements over this led
Speaker 1: Robert Owen to breaking from his established job and starting
Speaker 1: his own company in eighteen thirteen. The stockholders and his
Speaker 1: new adventure were pretty like minded. They were content to
Speaker 1: take a smaller share of the profits so that the
Speaker 1: money that was made could be put toward benevolent projects,
Speaker 1: and soon they bought out his old partners. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: one of the drivers in Owens's work was actually his
Speaker 1: attitude toward religion. He thought that all established religions were
Speaker 1: really problematic, and he thought that people's circumstances had greater
Speaker 1: influence over their behavior and their lives than any church
Speaker 1: ever could, and so he thought that if everyone's circumstances
Speaker 1: were improved, the world would just become a better place.
Speaker 1: And he was working to make New Lanark an example
Speaker 1: of how that ideology worked. And as a consequence, the village,
Speaker 1: which is pretty successful in his efforts, was visited and
Speaker 1: studied by everyone from royals to philosophers. He kept working
Speaker 1: on bettering the lives of people in the village, particularly
Speaker 1: the children, and he wanted to extend that beyond the town.
Speaker 1: He lobbied among manufacturers to reduce the number of hours
Speaker 1: that children worked that was initially voted down. He also
Speaker 1: opened Great Britain's first kindergarten in New Lanark in eighteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: called the Institution for the Formation of Character. And all
Speaker 1: of this was really like a slow burned build up
Speaker 1: to lead o into the idea of communal living. And
Speaker 1: he thought particularly that if unemployed workers displaced by machinery
Speaker 1: in the Industrial Revolution just had safety and security and
Speaker 1: a reasonable standard of living, a lot of the world's
Speaker 1: ills would be cured. Like he saw it as a
Speaker 1: pretty obvious chain of events, like people are without work,
Speaker 1: they don't have money, they turned to crime, or they
Speaker 1: just fall on hard times and they suffer, and we
Speaker 1: could prevent all of that. He envisioned these villages that
Speaker 1: were designed for this idea, where family oriented dormitories existed,
Speaker 1: that had commonery areas where people could cook and socialize,
Speaker 1: and children would stay with their parents the first three years,
Speaker 1: but then be raised by the collective and then everyone
Speaker 1: would work as they were able to keep the whole
Speaker 1: thing going, including agricultural work to provide food. So Owen
Speaker 1: had actually made contact with New Harmony four years before
Speaker 1: he took possession of it. He had written to George
Speaker 1: rap with this series of questions about how the rapp
Speaker 1: Bite Utopia was functioning. He had done that in eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty as his ideas of these communities to prevent poperism
Speaker 1: were forming in his head. So when George Raps Harmonists
Speaker 1: were ready to sell, Owen was ready to buy. And
Speaker 1: he already knew that the Harmonist village had been profitable
Speaker 1: after writing a number of essays about how communal society
Speaker 1: could succeed, he was ready to take possession of this
Speaker 1: whole town and prove it. And additionally, he his own
Speaker 1: problems that were making it pretty appealing to leave home and.
Speaker 2: Strike out in a new place.
Speaker 1: His outspoken anti religion stance had really strained relationships with
Speaker 1: his business partners as well as his wife, who was
Speaker 1: very religiously devout. I can't imagine that marriage. And his
Speaker 1: work in New Lanard was actually hitting some problems as well.
Speaker 1: There had been a typhoid outbreak, which was really kind
Speaker 1: of scandalous for a town that was touted as having
Speaker 1: impeccable cleanliness, and there was a dispute over pay rates
Speaker 1: that was brewing. And part of the problem was that
Speaker 1: as Owen had gotten more and more obsessed with creating
Speaker 1: a new utopia. He had grown more and more distant
Speaker 1: from that company town that was his first experiment in
Speaker 1: socialized society. Owen paid one hundred and thirty five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars for New Harmony, and that purchase was final in
Speaker 1: early January of eighteen twenty five. Robert Owen was really
Speaker 1: eager to get to work. Five of his children, which
Speaker 1: included four sons and a daughter, traveled to Indiana to
Speaker 1: help their fought and as spring arrived, Owen offered a
Speaker 1: life in the community to anyone who cared to join
Speaker 1: and then embrace its ideals of equality and communal living.
Speaker 2: Yep, open invitation. That sounds smart. What could go wrong?
Speaker 1: Also, we're going to return to the ideas of equality
Speaker 1: in a minute.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not so much so.
Speaker 1: His new town had come with one hundred and eighty buildings,
Speaker 1: but they were pretty quickly kind of packed to the
Speaker 1: guilds because a lot of people wanted in on this opportunity.
Speaker 1: But almost from the beginning things went wrong. For one,
Speaker 1: Owen continually bad mouthed established religion, which made a lot
Speaker 1: of the newcomers really uneasy. He was a dedicated follower
Speaker 1: of Enlightenment thinking, and he wanted to eschew tradition in
Speaker 1: favor of forging all new paths, which was another unpopular
Speaker 1: position that made people a little nervous. And he tended
Speaker 1: to appeal to the upper class for financing and support,
Speaker 1: and he misjudged the willingness of the US upper classes
Speaker 1: to participate in such an experiment tarticularly an experiment like
Speaker 1: this that had no ties whatsoever to religion.
Speaker 2: And spoke openly against it.
Speaker 1: In fact, he did find some help in the form
Speaker 1: of William McClure, who was a Scottish born merchant who
Speaker 1: also believed in social reform and ultimately did invest heavily
Speaker 1: in New Harmony. McClure offered his own funds to the
Speaker 1: development of New Harmonies schools and engaged some of the
Speaker 1: most respected educators of the day to teach there. I mean,
Speaker 1: the schools had a really amazing reputation. McClure also paid
Speaker 1: for the school's labs to have scientific equipment and other necessities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like there could be a whole side show
Speaker 1: just about the people that he brought. We don't talk
Speaker 1: about it nearly enough in this one because it's about
Speaker 1: the whole whole story, but there were some great people
Speaker 1: doing cool things. Owen had created a foundation document called
Speaker 1: Rules for a Good Community in nineteen twenty five that
Speaker 1: outlined what he thought was necessary to create inequality based society. Incidentally,
Speaker 1: our lovely hosts have this digitized online as well as
Speaker 1: many many other fabulous documents that are really really were
Speaker 1: really helpful to me and doing research for this, but
Speaker 1: also just are fascinating to look through. So Owen's is Owen's.
Speaker 1: I keep wanting to put an s on his name.
Speaker 1: He's just Owen. Owen's Rules were pretty lengthy, but they
Speaker 1: set up some very important ideas, including the fact that
Speaker 1: the financial accounts of the community should be maintained by
Speaker 1: a chosen treasurer who reported to a committee on all transactions,
Speaker 1: and that all of those financial records needed to be
Speaker 1: open for anyone in the community to go and.
Speaker 2: Review if they wanted to.
Speaker 1: Robert Owen's Rules also set up different departments to manage
Speaker 1: things like manufacture, policing, health, and education.
Speaker 2: Things like that these.
Speaker 1: Divisions would be run by subcommittees skillful practical men from
Speaker 1: the community with expertise in any of these areas could
Speaker 1: be engaged by the appropriate sub committee for assistance. But really,
Speaker 1: despite all these plans, Owen's utopia was a lot harder
Speaker 1: he found to execute in reality than it had been
Speaker 1: on paper. For one, even though it was going to
Speaker 1: be a society of equals, there were some pretty clear
Speaker 1: class distinctions. Wealthy people had moved there due to the
Speaker 1: draw of this life among the intelligentsia, and working people
Speaker 1: had moved there for a chance to have a better life,
Speaker 1: and everybody thought it was going to be equal, but
Speaker 1: the reality was that those two groups rarely mixed. They
Speaker 1: kind of chose instead to self segregate along wealth lines.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a relinquishing of personal wealth in Owen's group
Speaker 1: like there had been in Wraps, so this class structure
Speaker 1: had just followed everyone into new harmony. The working class
Speaker 1: was resentful of wealthier inhabitants and ability to contribute to
Speaker 1: the labor that was needed to sustain such a place.
Speaker 1: No structure was ever fully implemented. The community couldn't really
Speaker 1: become self sufficient, so the group was floundering, while Owen
Speaker 1: was continuing to put his own money into trying to
Speaker 1: keep it afloat.
Speaker 2: Even on uneven footing.
Speaker 1: I feel like we should mention that there were some
Speaker 1: efforts really to make new harmony into a community. Owen's children,
Speaker 1: in particular, did a lot of things. His son William
Speaker 1: started a Thespian Society so that they could have arts
Speaker 1: and people could go see plays whenever they wished. The
Speaker 1: school system is really what flourished though children had both
Speaker 1: academic curriculum and training in trades. But ultimately, when it
Speaker 1: came down to it and things really were obviously not
Speaker 1: going to work out, Owen blamed McClure and the educational
Speaker 1: setup for tanking the community. Owen gave one last address
Speaker 1: to the community on May sixth of eighteen twenty seven,
Speaker 1: and in it he said that McClure system only reinforced
Speaker 1: class distinctions instead of erasing him. There had been some
Speaker 1: debate over whether he was favoring children that were from
Speaker 1: wealthier families with better opportunities. Owen also thought there was
Speaker 1: too much creativity in the curriculum and not enough morality education,
Speaker 1: and he basically told everyone his school ideas had been
Speaker 1: superior to McClure's and if they had just done it
Speaker 1: had his way, they could have sustained the town. Long
Speaker 1: story Bless his heart. Long story short, this did not
Speaker 1: go all that well. By the time Robert Owen decided
Speaker 1: to end his involvement in this utopian dream, he had
Speaker 1: lost eighty percent of his personal fortune. He went on
Speaker 1: to participate, but in a much less central way and
Speaker 1: other utopian experiments, but he eventually focused a lot more
Speaker 1: on activism and the establishment of trade unions. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: really became like a labor activist, which kind of seemed
Speaker 1: like it should have been his thing from the get go,
Speaker 1: but he learned a lot in the process. If you
Speaker 1: are wondering what happened to the Rappites and their leader
Speaker 1: after they left Indiana, they moved as planned and started
Speaker 1: a new settlement, returning to Pennsylvania to do it. That
Speaker 1: new home was called Economy, and it was where George
Speaker 1: Rapp lived out the rest of his life. And just
Speaker 1: as they had grown New Harmony into a massive and
Speaker 1: profitable enterprise, Economy had investments in railroads and the oil industry,
Speaker 1: and their export business reached dozens of states and ten countries.
Speaker 1: So they just kept on going with that money thing.
Speaker 1: This fascinates me because so often the story is and
Speaker 1: then they ran out of money and everyone got sick
Speaker 1: and moved away. Even though they were very financially successful,
Speaker 1: it was not entirely smooth. Rap and his adopted son, Frederick,
Speaker 1: who he had relied on so heavily since the beginning
Speaker 1: of the Harmonist time in the United States, started to
Speaker 1: have disagreements about planning for the financial future of the community.
Speaker 1: That caused a lot of fracturing within the group and
Speaker 1: a lot of tension. Yeah, when they started to think
Speaker 1: about like there was also this problem where people were realizing, like.
Speaker 2: What about Christmas here yet y'all.
Speaker 1: We're not having kids and we're getting older and there's
Speaker 1: some problems. Like they started to realize this was not
Speaker 1: working out. Rap died in eighteen forty seven at the
Speaker 1: age of eighty nine. And remember that collection fun that
Speaker 1: he started the early years of his community because they
Speaker 1: wanted to have funds so they could deal with travel
Speaker 1: needs to Jerusalem and any chaos that ensued. When he died,
Speaker 1: he had amassed half a million dollars that he kept
Speaker 1: an a vault under his bedroom. He had withdrawn all
Speaker 1: of the Harmonists money from banks because he feared a
Speaker 1: banking collapse. So he was just literally sitting on top
Speaker 1: of a pile of money. I feel like that that
Speaker 1: wasn't an unjustified fear. But at the same time, that's
Speaker 1: a lot of money to have in a vault.
Speaker 2: Under your bedroom. Yeah, I would dig it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The Rappike community continued, but without its charismatic leader,
Speaker 1: it couldn't really sustain things long term. Soon members of
Speaker 1: the group were questioning some of those things they had
Speaker 1: agreed to, in particular that celibacy situation. That also meant
Speaker 1: that they hadn't expanded their community by starting families, and
Speaker 1: without Wrap driving that whole ideology, they also weren't bringing
Speaker 1: in new members, so just the math was not in
Speaker 1: their favor long term. In the twenty years after rap died,
Speaker 1: the group shrank down to about two hundred and fifty members,
Speaker 1: and from there it continued to diminish right up until
Speaker 1: the dawn of the twentieth century. In nineteen oh three,
Speaker 1: the town of Economy was sold by a representative of
Speaker 1: the remaining Rapites for several million dollars. In nineteen oh five,
Speaker 1: the US Supreme Court issued judgments on the last of
Speaker 1: the disputed Rapite assets at Economy, and within a year
Speaker 1: the Harmonist movement was completely a matter of history. As
Speaker 1: for the people who had landed in the failed utopia
Speaker 1: of Robert Owen, one particular aspect of their efforts really
Speaker 1: did take hold and survived. The educators that McClure had
Speaker 1: brought in called the Boatloaders because the ship most of
Speaker 1: them traveled on to the United States had been nicknamed
Speaker 1: the Boatload of Knowledge, which I love. They I think
Speaker 1: that's a good T shirt. We should do that load
Speaker 1: of Knowledge shirt is a good one.
Speaker 2: They stayed.
Speaker 1: They created enclave of science and education that persisted for
Speaker 1: long after Owen was gone.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: McClure, as you guys probably know because you're you live
Speaker 1: near here, was really known for his knowledge of geology,
Speaker 1: and he really started some interesting stuff in New Harmony
Speaker 1: in terms of like teaching geology and establishing labs there,
Speaker 1: and a pretty long tale for him of his legacy.
Speaker 1: As a consequence, in nineteen sixty five, New Harmony became
Speaker 1: a National Historic District. Many sections of the town have
Speaker 1: been restored to their Rappite era versions, and the village's
Speaker 1: famous hedge labyrinth was restored in nineteen forty, much to
Speaker 1: the to the delight and sometimes confusion of tourists who
Speaker 1: choose to enter, as so as people who go visit.
Speaker 1: That's I have not gotten to go to New Harmony.
Speaker 1: That's the one thing I want to see. I will
Speaker 1: get lost in that labyrinth and maybe never come out.
Speaker 1: But that is our New Harmony tale for the day.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to send us a note, our email addresses
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