Robert Dale Owen

Robert Dale Owen came to New Harmony to help with his father's experiment. After it ended, he stayed and turned many of its ideals into laws. Of all the Owen family, he did the most to carry the community's ideas into American government.

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Early Life

Robert Dale Owen was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1801. He grew up at New Lanark, where his father ran the cotton mills and schools. As a teenager, he attended a progressive school in Hofwyl, Switzerland, run by the educator Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg. The school combined classroom study with farm work and practical skills.

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New Harmony and the Free Enquirer 

In 1825 Robert Dale Owen traveled with his father to America. In New Harmony, he taught school and edited the community's newspaper, the New-Harmony Gazette. In 1828 he began working with the reformer Frances Wright. Together they edited the newspaper and promoted free public education, women's rights, and the end of slavery. In 1829 they moved the paper to New York and renamed it the Free Enquirer.

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In New York, Owen supported the Working Men's movement and its call for free public schools. He also wrote books and essays on many subjects. Some of his ideas, including his views on religion and family planning, were very controversial.

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In 1832 Owen married Mary Jane Robinson. At their wedding, he signed a statement giving up the legal control over his wife's property that the law gave husbands at the time. The next year, the couple settled in New Harmony.

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A Career in Government

Owen was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives in 1836. There he worked to gain more state money for public schools. In 1843 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1846 he introduced the bill that created the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. He served on the Smithsonian's first Board of Regents and helped plan its famous red sandstone building, known as the Castle.

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In 1850–51 Owen helped write a new Indiana constitution. He argued for free public schools and for the right of married women to own property. In thanks, a group of Indiana women gave him a silver pitcher. From 1853 to 1858, he represented the United States as a diplomat in Naples, Italy.

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The Civil War

During the Civil War, Owen wrote a letter to President Abraham Lincoln in 1862 urging him to free enslaved people. In 1863 he led a federal commission that studied how to help formerly enslaved people build new lives. Its work helped lead to the creation of the Freedmen's Bureau.

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Final Years and Legacy

In his later years, Owen wrote books, including an autobiography called Threading My Way. He died at Lake George, New York, in 1877.

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Robert Dale Owen helped turn ideas first tested in New Harmony into public policy. Free public schools, women's property rights, and the Smithsonian Institution are all part of his legacy.