Josiah Warren, born in Boston in 1798 of famous Puritan lineage, was, to quote an earlier writer, "a man who seeks freedom as water seeks its level." He was known as America's first anarchist, but actually, being modest and unobtrusive, he was more a social philosopher and, if a revolutionary, certainly a very peaceable one.

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Warren had a love of music and owned a lamp factory in Cincinnati, where he was attracted by Robert Owen's ideas when Owen lectured there promoting his New Society in 1825. Warren had been associated with Joseph Neef's Pestalozzian School in Kentucky and may have come to New Harmony with Neef. In New Harmony, Warren became the leader of the orchestra/band. Although he rarely spoke in public, wrote little, and published less, he had the same enthusiasm for righteousness as Owen's son, Robert Dale, and served as a social philosophy inspiration to early feminist and abolitionist Frances Wright. John Stuart Mill speaks of Warren as a "remarkable American." Although he remained obscure, he successfully carried out Owen's idea of labor notes and later worked with a group conducting labor schools for boys. He participated in the Owen experiment and later sponsored more than one utopian community, called equity villages, in Ohio and New York.

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Warren's greatest work was as an inventor, often in the field of typography. He invented a stereotyping process which brought him financial stability. His other inventions included a cheaper lamp, patented in 1823, which substituted lard for tallow as fuel and gave a better light, and a unique system of music. This system was based on mathematical notation to accomplish, in harmonic sounds, a similar service to that provided by phonography in speech. His most lasting invention, however, was the first printing press that could print on a continuous roll of paper - a boon to newspapers even to this day. This new system was first used by the Southwestern Sentinel in Evansville, Indiana, running sixty copies per minute.

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Josiah Warren's interests often took him to other parts of the country, but his family remained in New Harmony. As late as 1856, his son, George, was helping Peter Duclos paint scenery for the theatre.

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The unusual ideas, both social and mechanical, generated by Josiah Warren's excellent mind made him the kind of citizen who left his imprint on the future. Warren himself stated, "Freedom to differ is the keynote to social harmony."