Robert Dale, born in 1801, was the eldest of Robert Owen's remarkable sons. Having been left in New Lanark to keep an eye on the mills when his father came to purchase Harmonie in Indiana, he did not come to America until his father's second trip, arriving late in 1825 with the others on the "Boatload of Knowledge." 

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Robert Dale Owen seems to have been a natural leader and was in his own way a reformer who helped us all. Within a week after his arrival, he went to court and declared his intention of becoming an American citizen. He soon helped his brother William publish the newspaper, The New Harmony Gazette, which Robert Dale later published with feminist Frances Wright. A few years later they published a liberal newspaper together in New York, The Free Enquirer. It was while he was in New York writing and lecturing that he met Mary Jane Robinson, whom he married in 1832. Robert Dale and Mary Jane had an unusual marriage contract designed to give his wife equality, but which contributed to his being erroneously accused of "free love." His marriage contract was the first of his many efforts for equality. He strongly believed in, and throughout his life fought, for free education, civil rights, women's equality, and birth control. In 1830 he published Moral Philosophy, the first treatise in the United States in favor of birth control.

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Robert Dale thought his father too dogmatic, but in one way was much like him; neither stayed long in one place. In 1834, Robert Dale returned to New Harmony and continued to periodically return as his career took him elsewhere. He served four terms in the Indiana General Assembly and was twice a presidential elector. He served two terms as a U.S. congressman, served as a delegate to the Indiana Constitutional Convention, and he was twice U.S. Chargé d'affaires to Naples. He introduced the bill to create the Smithsonian Institution; supported the African American cause, urging emancipation to President Abraham Lincoln; secured property rights for women; protected Indiana University's endowment; and was the key architect of the state system of public education. 

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With all Robert Dale did for the state of Indiana and the United States, he did not neglect New Harmony. When his father left permanently after only two years, he was put into a leadership role. He established long-lasting roots, when, in exchange for his New Lanark stock, his father gave him and his brother William the New Harmony land. Thus, Robert Dale touched many settlers through leasing land or providing employment.

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When Robert Dale and his wife returned to New Harmony, he remodeled a large hospital building into a huge imposing home, large enough to accommodate, at least for a time, all five of Robert Owen's children and their spouses. With a 122-foot facade, two front doors, and two porches, it was called "the Mansion."

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For the last twenty years of his life, Robert Dale espoused spiritualism, an interest he had long held. In 1876, just a year before his death, he married Lottie Kellogg. He left six children, four of whom lived to carry on some of their ideas.