New Harmony, Indiana

“ In 1814, the community sold the greater part of its holdings of real estate in Pennsylvania and purchased 30,000 acres of land in Indiana, of which Harmony became the centre. [100] The following year the Rappites moved to the lower Wabash and continued in a new wilderness their severe labors and ascetic practices. They marked out a village in squares, with broad streets, and built houses in which beauty was sacrificed to stability. ”

“ Economy is the seat of the German colony, under the late Mr. Rapp, which emigrated from their former residence of Harmony on the Wabash river in Indiana. It is a flourishing town on the right bank of the Ohio, 18 miles below Pittsburg. It has several factories, a large church, a spacious hotel, and 800 or 900 inhabitants, living in a community form, under some singular regulations. The Economists, or Harmonists, as they were called, in Indiana, are an industrious, moral and enterprising community, with some peculiarities in their religious notions. ”

“ When fifty-one per cent of the people in a community are filled with a desire to give, Socialism will be a success.
Perhaps the most successful social experiment in America was the Oneida Community, but next to this was the Harmonyites, founded by George Rapp. The Harmonyites founded Harmony, Indiana, in Eighteen Hundred Fourteen. They moved from Pennsylvania and had been located at their present site [Pg 43] for eleven years. They owned thirty thousand acres of splendid land at the junction of the Wabash and Ohio Rivers. ”

“ The centre of population in the United States, which lay just east of Baltimore in the first decade of the century, moved gradually westward, until, in the last decade, it lay in Indiana at a point sixty-five miles south of Indianapolis.
The older Indiana towns enjoyed in their beginnings all the benefits that may be bestowed upon new communities by a people of good social antecedents. Many of these towns have lost their prestige, owing to changed political or commercial [11] conditions; the departed glory of some of them is only a tradition among the elders ”

“ The Methodists from the pioneer days to the present have been the leading denomination, having more members in Indiana in proportion to the total State membership of all churches than in any other Northern State. In recent years the Christian Church has had a phenomenal growth. The Catholics are proportionally weaker than in any other Northern commonwealth. ”

“ From Chicago, or Colorado, or San Francisco one may expect a giant labor war or social upheaval of any kind; from Boston or Pennsylvania or New Mexico new religious movements may come—and have; New York, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Nebraska and Illinois can and have contributed vast political upheavals. This is even true of Ohio, its next door neighbor.
But Indiana lies in between all this—simple, unpretentious, not indifferent but quiescent,—a happy land of farms and simple industries which can scarcely be said to have worked any harm to any man. ”

“ Indiana, a typical American State, owes nothing worth mentioning to the original French population. In early days it must be considered little more than an extension of Kentucky. Virginia had set aside a large tract for rewarding the men of George Rogers Clark's expedition and these were the original land agents, so to speak, for the territory. But all along the border a frontier population drifted there across the Ohio River. As late as 1850 there were twice as many Southern people in Indiana as there were from the Middle States and New England put together. ”

“ General Remarks.—The importance of Indiana, as a desirable State for the attention of the emigrant to the West, has been too much overlooked. Though not possessing quite equal advantages with Illinois, especially in the quality and amount of prairie soil, it is far superior to Ohio, and fully equal,—nay, in our estimation, rather superior to Michigan. Almost every part is easy of access, and in a very few years the liberal system of internal improvements, adopted and in progress, will make almost every county accessible to public conveyances, and furnish abundant facilities to market. ”

“ The new moon favors us with just sufficient light to reveal fully the great oaks, the white tents, and the shadowy outline of the Cumberland mountains. The pious few of the Eighty-eighth Indiana, assembled in a booth constructed of branches, are breathing out their devotional inspirations and aspirations, in an old hymn which carries us back to the churches and homes of the civilized world, or, as the boys term it, "God's country." ”

“ Westward through Greenville to Brother Emanuel Flory's in Darke County, where we dine and feed; then on to Winchester in Indiana, and stay all night at Acker's tavern. We are now in Randolph County, Indiana. If we were among false brethren in this new country, as Paul says he once was in the land in which he traveled, situated as we are in respect to bad roads, a long way from our homes, with no means of conveyance except the backs of our horses to carry us to Virginia, the prospect of our stay here, and our hopes of safe return, might be gloomy indeed. ”

“ The rural and urban classes produced a first generation that realized a type drawing strength from both farm and town and destined to steady improvement throughout the century. New people poured in from the Eastern States and from Europe; but in no old community of the seaboard has loftier dignity been conferred by long residence or pioneer ancestry than in Indiana. ”

“ The injunction mind out, which is used in Kentucky in such admonitions as “mind out what you are doing,” becomes watch out in Indiana. Wrench for rinse, used in the States contiguous to the Ohio, is rense in New England. Critter for horse is still heard in parts of rural Indiana, which derived population through Kentucky, where the same usage is noted. Fruit, as applied to stewed apples (apple sauce) only, is a curious limitation of the noun, heard among old-fashioned people of Southern origin in Indiana. ”

“ Episcopalians were few among the first Indiana colonists. The diocese of Indiana was created in 1838, and many earnest men have given their [65] labor to its service first and last; but the slow progress of the Episcopal Church in the commonwealth has been due to conditions antedating the settlement of the Ohio Valley, running back, indeed, to the efforts of James I. to establish Scotch and English colonies in Ireland, the most turbulent part of his kingdom, and thus forming the base for a migration to America that was to color the life and thought of a vast area of new soil. ”

“ A president and a vice-president of the United States have been on the club’s rolls, as have cabinet officers, senators in Congress and foreign ministers; but literary and ethical questions, oftener than political problems, have vexed its discussions, and it has been more interested as a society in Newman, Arnold, and Emerson, and in the thwarting of the Zeitgeist, than in material things. The women of Indiana have been important contributors to all agencies that tend toward ideal living, and at Indianapolis they have exerted an intelligent and beneficent influence in literature. ”

“ When the way was opened, the Middle States and New England slowly contributed to the population. Many of these immigrants paused first in the Western Reserve of Ohio, and a smaller proportion in Michigan. It is a question for the scientists whether the differences still observable between the people of the northern prairie region in Indiana and those of the woodland areas—differences of thrift, energy, and initiative [3] —are not due as much to natural conditions as to racial influences ”

“ The Stars fall. Move. Texas. The flood of 1844. First School. White River's Pocket. No Nimrod. A Fish Story. Clarksburg.
At the time of father's arrival, Indiana was only 14 years old and contained about 300,000 inhabitants. Its capital city's first Mayor was inaugurated two years before I was born and three years after the stars fell.
In 1842 when I was about four years old my parents sold out and moved down the river five or six miles and bought a new, larger and better farm with a large two story hewed log house and a big double log barn, and a good apple orchard. ”

“ You're from New York and it goes against the grain to be overlooked, you might say, by a girl from Indiana. Oh, I know what you New Yorkers think of Indiana,—and all that therein is, as the Scriptures would say. You think that nothing but boobs and corn-fed squaws come from Indiana, but if you hang around long enough you'll find you're mistaken. This state is full of girls like Alix Crown,—bright, smart, good-looking girls that have been a hell of a ways farther east than New York. ”

“ Indianapolis was long a place of industry, thrift, and comfort, where the simple life was not only possible but necessary. Its social entertainments were of the tamest sort, and the change in this respect has come only within a few years,—with the great wave of growth and prosperity that has wrought a new Indianapolis from the old. ”

“ The friends of education were to meet with further trials and discouragements; but the pioneer work in Indiana education closed when the new constitution had been ratified by the people. It is clear that any examination of the forces that raised Indiana into an enlightened community must comprehend a knowledge of these early struggles, and that the showier attainments of later citizens cannot obscure for the sincere student the services of those who dared to stand for the cause of free schools in the day of their peril.
Mills is an especially admirable and winning figure. ”

“ The artistic impulse appeared naturally in later generations. The value of the literature produced in the State may be debatable, but there is no just occasion for surprise that attention to literary expression has been so general.
Indiana has always lain near the currents of national life, and her beginnings were joined to the larger fortunes of the national destiny. Three flags have been emblems of government in her territory, and wars whose principal incidents occurred far from the western wilderness played an important part in her history. ”

“ Churches.—The strongest denominations in the State of Indiana are the Methodist Episcopal, Roman Catholic, Disciples of Christ, Regular Baptist, United Brethren, Presbyterian, Friends, and Lutheran.
Railroads.—The total railway mileage in the State in 1919 was 7,808. There has been practically no new construction in recent years. ”

“ To this migration and to a liberal provision for popular education Indiana owes a great improvement in the average intelligence of her people. As early as 1880, I believe, the State had come to rank with some of the New England States in the matter of literacy.
The folk-speech of the Ohio River country has many features in common with that of the eastern Middle States, while it received but little from the dignified eighteenth-century English of eastern Virginia. There are distinct traces of the North-Irish in the idioms and in the peculiar pronunciations. ”

“ Forty-two thousand settlers are said to have come into Indiana in 1816, and to have raised the population to 112,000.
Letters from New York describe the condition of that state west of Utica as one of astonishing prosperity. Log cabins were disappearing, and frame and brick houses taking their place. The pike from Utica to Buffalo was almost a continuous village, and the country for twenty miles on either side was filling up with an industrious population. ”

“ Southern Indiana also filled rapidly.
For a time the westward movement was regarded as of no disadvantage to the seaboard States. It was supposed that the frontier would attract a population of such character as could easily be spared in more settled communities. But it became apparent that the new country did not appeal simply to broken-down farmers, bankrupts, and ne'er-do-wells. Robust and industrious men, with growing families, were drawn off in great 99 numbers ”

“ Indiana resembles Illinois in its physical features. Lying within the prairie region, it has a gently undulating surface which slopes by imperceptible stages toward the southwest, The northeastern part has an elevation of 1000 to 1200 feet, the northwestern 500 to 700 feet; along the Ohio River the elevations are about 500 feet in the southeast and 300 feet in the southwest. There are sandy hills near Lake Michigan, and a series of low elevations of glacial origin occurs in the southern part, extending from the Ohio, in Clark County, northwestward to Parke County on the Wabash. ”

“ What a glorious casket! Away with the cane! The pallor of his countenance is a part of the uncanny mockery of the night. There is no better speaker on the floor of the Senate. His thoughts flow fresh, clear, sparkling, like water from a hill-side spring. It is true, Indiana is a benighted State, morally defective, as seen by her divorces; her territory swampy, with fever and ague a yearly crop. But which is the best harvest a State can yield? Why men, to be sure, and when this fact is considered Indiana need not feel ashamed of herself. ”

“ Now, you've all got the idea that because Thursday night prayer meeting is still well patronized in Indianapolis and all good women go to market on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, nothing amusing ever happens here except candidates for the vice presidency and little things like that. But you're all wrong, as I've tried to prove to you ever since we began having these little parties. Visitors are always asking why Indiana is a literary center, and the real reason is that the Hoosiers are different and do things differently. ”

“ Indianapolis is only twenty years old, having been, upon its site, a dense forest in 1820; now it has several public buildings, churches, schools, court-house, etc., and two thousand inhabitants. The amount of tolls taken upon the canals and railroads of Indiana amount to twenty-eight thousand five hundred dollars. Salt of a very fine kind is made in Fountain county. Its population is six hundred and eighty-three thousand three hundred and fourteen. ”