Page "New Harmony, Indiana" Paragraph 34

Robert Dale Owen, eldest son of Robert Owen, was a social reformer and intellectual of national importance.

At New Harmony, Robert Dale Owen taught school and published the New Harmony Gazette with Frances Wright.

Owen later moved to New York.

In 1830 he published " Moral Philosophy ," the first treatise in the United States to support birth control, and returned to New Harmony in 1834.

From 1836 to 1838, and in 1851, Owen served in the Indiana legislature and was also a delegate to the state's constitutional convention of 1850.

Owen was an advocate for women's rights, free public education, and opposed slavery.

As a member of the U. S. House of Representatives from 1843 to 1847, Owen introduced the bill establishing the Smithsonian Institution.

He also served as chairman of the Smithsonian Building Committee.

He arranged for his brother, David Dale Owen, to sample a large number of possible building stones for the Smithsonian Castle.

From 1852 to 1858 Owen held the diplomatic position of charge d ' affairs ( 1853 – 1858 ) in Naples, Italy, where he began studying spiritualism.

In 1860, Owen's book, Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World, aroused something of a literary sensation.

Among his critics in the Boston Investigator and at home in the New Harmony Advertiser were John and Margaret Chappellsmith, he formerly an artist for David Dale Owen's geological publications, and she a former Owenite lecturer.

Robert Dales Owen died at Lake George, New York, in 1877.