New Harmony - Indiana - Religious Freedom on Waymarking.com

County of site: Posey County
Location of marker: 513 E. Church St., New Harmony
Marker Sponsor: Indiana Sesquicentennial Commission

Marker Text:

NEW HARMONY Location of two attempts at communal living: The Harmonists under Reverend George Rapp, 1814-1825, and the Owenites under philanthropist Robert Owen, 1825-1826. New Harmony remained, an important cultural center for many, years thereafter.

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"New Harmony is the site of two of America's great utopian communities. The first, Harmonie on the Wabash (1814-1824), was founded by the Harmony Society, a group of Separatists from the German Lutheran Church. In 1814, led by their charismatic leader Johann Georg Rapp, they left their first American home, Harmonie, PA. Indiana's lower Wabash Valley on the western frontier gave them the opportunity to acquire a much larger tract of land. In 1825, the Harmonists moved back to Pennsylvania and built the town of Economy near Pittsburgh. Robert Owen, Welsh-born industrialist and social philosopher, bought their Indiana town and the surrounding lands for his communitarian experiment." ~ New Harmony Tourism

"The singularities of the Rappite religion and philosophy need not concern us, but the fact that these fearless Germans were gifted with heroic capacity for creative work and possessed admirable talents for constructive progress-iveness does have a direct bearing on what I shall attempt to narrate.

"Becoming dissatisfied with their Pennsylvania environment the Rappites decided to move elsewhere. In 1814 George Rapp discovered the rich lands on the banks of the Wabash River and concluded, that, wilderness though it was, the beautiful tract in what is now Posey County, was the Promised Land that he and his followers needed for the ultimate success of their communal pursuits. Accordingly, he acquired some thirty thousand acres and in 1815 the whole colony left the Keystone State, migrated to their new domain and forthwith began the building of a new town which they named in memory of their old home in Pennsylvania." ~ Indiana Magazine of History

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