List of Owenite communities in the United States

This is a list of Owenite communities in the United States which emerged during a short-lived popular boom during the second half of the 1820s. Between 1825 and 1830 more than a dozen such colonies were established in the US, inspired by the ideas of Robert Owen. All of these met with economic failure and rapid disestablishment within a few years.

The Owenite movement of the 1820s was one of the four primary branches of secular utopian socialism in the US during the 19th century, antedating Fourierism (1843–1850), Icarianism (1848–1898), and Bellamyism (1889–1896).

Background


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 idea of Owenite communities in the US was boosted by two widely publicized addresses by Owen made before the United States Congress on February 25 and March 7, 1825. 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).