The
communitarian ideas of Welsh reformer
Robert Owen (1771–1858) were popularized in the United States by his arrival in America in November 1824. Owen had learned that an already established
Rappite religious community at
Harmony, Indiana was for sale. He set sail for America with the intention of acquiring it from the
Harmony Society and thereby making it a model of his collectivist plans. This initial American community of Owen, a tract of 30,000 acres on the
Wabash River which included farmland, dwellings, and factories, would be rechristened "New Harmony" and served as the inspiration for the establishment of other Owenite colonies. The assembled audience included President
John Quincy Adams, several members of his cabinet, the justices of the
Supreme Court of the United States, and a number of other invited luminaries. Owen was assisted in the development of New Harmony by Philadelphian
William Maclure, himself a wealthy
philanthropist as well as the leading American
geologist of the day. Other leading American intellectuals participated in the project, including preeminent
zoologist Thomas Say, painter
Charles Alexandre Lesueur, pedagogue
Francis Neef, and Scottish-born feminist and freethinker
Frances "Fanny" Wright, among others. A brief fad followed seeking the realization of Owen's ideas in practice, resulting in the formation of over a dozen Owenite communities. All of these proved short-lived, either owing to internal dissension or an inability to generate a surplus producing manufactured goods and agricultural products sufficient to retire debts incurred. By about 1830 the Owenite movement in America had vanished with little trace, the established village of New Harmony having long since converted to operation on an
individualistic basis. ==List== ::
Source: T.D. Seymour Bassett, "The Secular Utopian Socialists," pp. 160-167 (unless otherwise noted). ==See also==