The bulk of scholarship published on the agrarian, Indiana town of New Harmony focuses on the development of two utopian colonies, one a separatist, religious colony founded by the German George Rapp that existed between 1814 and 1824 and the second a socialist experiment led by Welshman Robert Owen that began in 1824 and lasted only three years. This second effort formed the basis of a more durable settlement composed of scientists and naturalists, some of whom were Owen’s descendants, that remained after 1900. 

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