st successful of all the
communistic colonies is even more interesting. The founder, Johann
Georg Rapp, had been a weaver and vine gardener in the little village
of Iptingen in Wuerttemberg. He drew upon himself and his followers the
displeasure of the Church by teaching that religion was a personal
matter between the individual and his God; that the Bible, not the
pronouncements of the clergy, should be the guide to the true faith,
and that the ordinances of the Church were not necessarily the
ordinances of God. The petty persecutions which these doctrines
brought upon him and his fellow separatists turned them towards
liberal America. In 1803 Rapp and some of his companions crossed the
sea and selected as a site for their colony five thousand acres of
land in Butler County, Pennsylvania. There they built the new town of
Harmony, to which came about six hundred persons, all told. On
February 15, 1805 they organized the Harmony Society and signed a
solemn agreement to merge all their possessions in one common lot.[16]
Among them were a few persons of education and property, but most of
them were sturdy, thrifty mechanics and peasants, who, under the
skillful direction of Father Rapp, soon transformed the forest into a
thriving community. After a soul stirring revival in 1807, they
adopted celibacy. Those who were married did not separate but lived
together in solemn self-restraint, "treating each other as brother and
sister in Christ."[17] Their belief that the second coming of the Lord
was imminent no doubt strengthened their resolution. At this time,
also, the men all agreed to forego the use of tobacco--no small
sacrifice on the part of hard-working laborers.

The region, however, was unfavorable to the growth of the grape, which
was the favorite Wuerttemberg crop. In 1814 the society accordingly
sold the communal property for $100,000 and removed to a site on the
Wabash River, in Indiana, where, under the magic of their industry,
the beautiful village of New Harmony arose in one year, and where many
of their sturdy buildings still remain a testimony to their honest
craftsmanship. Unfortunately, however, two pests appeared which they
had not foreseen. Harassed by malaria and meddlesome neighbors,
Father Rapp a third time sought a new Canaan. In 1825 he sold the
entire site to Robert Owen, the British philanthropic socialist, and
the Harmonists moved back to Pennsylvania. They built their third and
last home on the O