John George Rapp
In 1804, the followers of the Separatist George Rapp (1757-1847) emigrated to America from Iptingen (near Stuttgart in Württemberg) in southwest Germany seeking religious and economic freedom. About 800 farmers and craftsmen followed their leader to Butler County, Pennsylvania where they built the town of Harmony. Ten years later they migrated westward to Posey County, Indiana founding a second town named Harmony, which today is known as New Harmony.
Robert Owen
A Welsh textile manufacturer, philanthropist and social reformer, and a founder of utopian socialism and the co-operative movement. He strove to improve factory working conditions, promoted experimental socialistic communities, and sought a more collective approach to child-rearing, including government control of education. He gained wealth in the early 1800s from a textile mill at New Lanark, Scotland. Having trained as a draper in Stamford, Lincolnshire he worked in London before relocating aged 18 to Manchester and textile manufacturing. In 1824, he moved to America and put most of his fortune in an experimental socialistic community at New Harmony, Indiana, as a preliminary for his Utopian society. It lasted about two years. Other Owenite communities also failed, and in 1828 Owen returned to London, where he continued to champion the working class, lead in developing co-operatives and the trade union movement, and support child labour legislation and free co-educational schools.
William Maclure
An Americanized Scottish geologist, cartographer and philanthropist. He is known as the 'father of American geology. As a social experimenter on new types of community life, he collaborated with British social reformer Robert Owen, (1771–1854), in Indiana, United States.
Thomas Say
Thomas Say was born in Philadelphia and, as a self-taught naturalist, at the age of 25 became a charter member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Living frugally in the Academy building, Say took care of the museum there and became a friend of William Maclure, President of the Academy from 1817 to 1840.
Thomas Say accompanied William Maclure and other scientists and educators from Philadelphia on the famous "Boatload of Knowledge." The party arrived in New Harmony, Indiana, in January, 1826. One of the passengers was the artist Lucy Way Sistare, whom Say married secretly, near New Harmony, on January 4, 1827.
In New Harmony, Say continued his descriptions of insects and mollusks, culminating in two publications still considered classics in the field today.