Visions of Harmony: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Millenarianism

This book tells the tale of a small town on the Wabash River that became the site of more than one attempt to bring about the millennium. In 1814 George Rapp, a religious leader from Wurttemberg, transferred a thousand of his followers to an uncleared site in a dense forest. The settlers called it Harmonie, and there they patiently awaited the Second Coming of the Lord. Ten years later Harmonie was sold to Robert Owen of New Lanark, who started to erect one of his Villages of Unity and Mutual Co-operation with the goal of bringing about the New Moral World. As attractive as New Harmony was to many, isolation, lack of foresight, and Owen's personal peculiarities eventually led to its collapse; but the curious story of the settlement is now preserved, offering unusual insight into religious fundamentalism, millenarian experimentalists, and 19th-century American history.