NEW HARMONY, a village in Posey county, Indiana, on the Wabash river, about 2 2 m. N.W. of Evansville. Pop. (1930) 1,022. It is served by the Illinois Central railway. New Harmony had its beginning in 1814-15, when it became the home of a com munistic religious sect known variously as the Harmonists, Har monites and Rappites, founded in Germany towards the end of the i8th century by George Rapp a native of Iptin gen in Wurttemberg. Rapp and his followers, who sought to form a community after the manner of the primitive Christian Church, were persecuted in Germany, and in 1803-04 emigrated to Butler county, Pennsylvania. There they established in 18o5 a community known as Harmony, consisting of some 600 persons, who held their property in common and in 1807 adopted celibacy. In 1814 Rapp sold most of his Pennsylvania land and bought about 24,735 ac. (in the next ten years more than 14,000 ac. in addition) on the Wabash river in Indiana Territory. In 1814-15 Rapp and a thousand of his followers settled on the Indiana tract, their headquarters being established at New Harmony or Har monie as they called it. The settlers, mostly Germans, devoted themselves to agriculture, weaving and leather-working so indus triously that they prospered from the start. Rapp, however, in 1825 disposed of his lands and property to Robert Owen, having returned with part of his followers to Pennsylvania and founded a new community known as Economy (q.v.), in Beaver county,
where he died in 1847. Intent on founding a socialistic community, Owen went to the United States in 1824, and purchased Rapp's lands and live stock for $182,000. He interested several well known scientists in his settlement, and with them came to New Harmony in the spring of 1826. Within six months the community numbered over i,000. The greater part of the settlers, however, were impractical theorists or adventurers. Constitution after con stitution was adopted, and with the adoption of each new consti tution and with each new religious discussion a group would se cede and form a separate community—in 1828 there were ten. The whole organization broke up in 1827, and Owen left New Harmony in 1828. The Working Men's Institute Public library, founded in 1838 by William Maclure, had in 1907 18,00o volumes ; the collection is rich in works dealing with socialism.
See "The Harmony Society," German-American Annals (1904) ; G. B. Lockwood and C. A. Prosser, The New Harmony Movement (1907) ; Meredith Nicholson, The Hoosiers (i9o1) ; Morris Hillquit, History of Socialism in the United States (1903) ; Frank Podmore, Robert Owen (1906) ; and G. H. Holiday, "An Indiana Village, New Harmony," Indiana Historical Society Publications (1906).