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O OAKEY, CHARLES COCHRAN: 1845-1908.
Charles Cochran Oakey was born in Knox County, Ill., in 1845. Most of his life was spent as a newspaper writer in Terre Haute. He died on Mar. 17, 1908.
Information from the Emmeline Fairbanks Memorial Library, Terre Haute, Ind.
page: 241[View Page 241]- Greater Terre Haute and Vigo County.
Chicago, 1908. 2
vols.
ODELL, FRANK IGLEHART: 1886-
Born at Evansville, Ind., on July 22, 1886, Frank Iglehart Odell graduated from Evansville High School in 1905 and attended Northwestern University and the University of Illinois. In 1914 he married Helen Heilman of Evansville.
He served as a reporter and copy-reader on the EVANSVILLE COURIER, the EVANSVILLE PRESS and the EVANSVILLE JOURNAL NEWS; he was a reporter for the City Press Association of Chicago, the CHICAGO TRIBUNE, and the INDIANAPOLIS STAR; and from 1907 to 1912 he was telegraph editor and city editor of the INDIANAPOLIS SUN. From 1912 to 1946 Mr. Odell was a commercial fruit grower and served for a time as president of the Indiana Horticultural Society and the Indiana Fruit-Growers Association.
Information from the Evansville Public Library.
- Larry Burke, Freshman. Boston,
1910.
- Larry Burke, Sophomore. Boston,
1911.
O'DONNELL, CHARLES LEO: 1884-1934.
Charles Leo O'Donnell , son of Neil and Mary O'Donnell, was born in Greenfield, Ind., the birthplace of another Indiana poet, James Whitcomb Riley, on Nov. 15, 1884. Following his graduation from the University of Notre Dame in 1906, he took graduate work at Holy Cross College, Harvard, and the Catholic University of America, receiving his Ph.D. from the last-named institution in 1910. In the same year he was ordained to the Congregation of the Holy Cross and became professor of English literature at Notre Dame. From 1928 until his death in 1934 he was president of the university. The Rev. Ft. O'Donnell was named provincial of his congregation in the U. S. in 1920 and in 1926 was made assistant superior general. During the first World War he served as a chaplain in the American Expeditionary Forces.
Information from the University of Notre Dame Library.
- Francis Thompson: a Critical Essay. Notre
Dame, Ind., 1906.
- A Study of the Prose Writings of Francis Thompson.
1913.
- Ode: for Indiana Day, Panama-Pacific International
Exposition, n.p., 1915.
- The Dead Musician and Other Poems. New
York, 1916.
- Cloister and Other Poems. New
York, 1922.
- A Rime of the Rood and Other Poems. New
York, 1928.
- Collected Poems. (Compiled and edited byCharles M. Carey.) Notre Dame, Ind., 1942.
OGG, FREDERIC AUSTIN: 1878-
Frederic Austin Ogg , son of William R. and Sarah S. Ogg, was born in Solsberry, Ind., on Feb. 8, 1878, and graduated from De Pauw University in 1899. He received the A.M. degree from Indiana University in 1900, from Harvard in 1904, and the Ph.D. from Harvard in 1908. He married Emma Virginia Perry on Sept. 9, 1903.
After teaching history for two years at Indianapolis Manual Training High School and for one year at Indiana University, he went to Harvard in 1903 as a fellow and assistant in history. From 1905 to 1914 he was in the history department at Simmons College, and after 1914 he served on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, as professor of political science and, after 1925, as chairman of the graduate division of social studies.
He served as associate editor and later as managing editor of the AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW and contributed numerous articles to current periodicals.
Information from Who's Who in America and De Pauw University's Alumnal Record, 1920.
- The Opening of the Mississippl–a Struggle for
Supremacy in the American Interior. New York,
1904.
- Social Progress in Contemporary Europe. New
York, 1912.
- The Governments of Europe. New
York, 1913.
- Daniel Webster. Philadelphia,
1914.
- Economic Development of Modern Europe. New
York, 1917.
- National Governments and the World War (withCharles A. Beard). New York, 1917.
- National Progress, 1907-17. New
York, 1918.
- The Old Northwest; a Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and
Beyond. New Haven, Conn., 1919.
- The Reign of Andrew Jackson; a Chronicle of the Frontier in
Politics. New Haven, Conn., 1919.
- Introduction to American Government (withP. O. Ray). New York, 1922.
- Builders of the Republic. New Haven,
Conn., 1927
- Research in the Humanistic and Social Sciences.
New York, 1928.
- page: 242[View Page 242]
- English Government and Politics. New
York, 1929.
- Essentials of American Government (withP. O. Ray). New York, 1932.
- European Governments and Politics. New
York, 1934.
- Rise of Dictatorship in France. New
York, 1941.
OLCOTT, CHARLES SUMNER: 1864-1935.
Charles Sumner Olcott , son of John Milton and Miriam J. Brown Olcott, was born in Terre Haute, Ind., on Feb. 20, 1864, and graduated from De Pauw University in 1883, receiving the A.M. degree in 1886. He married Allie M. Gage in 1886.
From 1891 to 1933 he acted as general manager of the subscription department of Houghton Mifflin Publishing Company. He was also known as a lecturer on literary subjects. He died on May 3, 1935.
Information from Who Was Who in America and De Pauw University's Alumnal Record, 1920.
- George Eliot–Scenes and People in Her
Novels. New York, 1910.
- The Country of Sir Waiter Scott.
Boston, 1913.
- The Lure of the Camera. Boston,
1914.
- The Life of William McKinley.
Boston, 1916. 2
vols.
- Literary Landmarks of New England.
- At the Home of Rafael Sabatini.
Boston, 1927.
O'NEAL, JAMES: 1875-
James O'Neal , son of John and Clara Miller O'Neal, was born in Indianapolis on Mar. 13, 1875, and was educated in the public schools.
In 1900 he became active in organizing the Socialist Party. He lectured in the U. S. and Canada on socialism, was assistant to the national secretary of the Socialist Party for two years, acted as associate editor of THE WORKER (1906-08), and was state secretary of the party for Indiana (1911-13) and Massachusetts (after 1915).
He married Ella Oswald of Arlington, N. J., on Apr. 24, 1915.
Information from Who's Who in America.
- The Workers in American History. Terre
Haute, Ind., 1910.
- Sabotage; or, Socialism vs. Syndicalism, a Critical Study of
Theories and Methods. St. Louis, 1913.
- Labor and the Next War. Chicago,
1923.
- History of the Amalgamated Ladies' Garment
Cutters' Union, Local 10, Affiliated with the International Ladies
Garment Workers' Union. New York,
1927.
- American Communism: a Critical Analysis of Its Origin,
Development and Programs. New York, 1927.
- Militant Socialism. St. Louis.
- Labor in England and America.
Chicago, n.d.
OSBORN, CHARLES: 1775-1850.
" Charles Osborn (Aug. 21, 1775-Dec. 29, 1850), abolitionist … the son of David and Margaret (Stout) Osborn, was born in Guilford County, N.C. About 1794 he removed to Knox County, Tenn., where he became a Quaker preacher. He lived in Jefferson County, Tenn., Mount Pleasant, O., and from 1819 to 1842 in Wayne County, Ind., excepting the years from 1827 to 1830 that he spent in Warren and Clinton counties, O. In 1842 he removed to Cass County, Mich., and in 1848 to Porter County, Ind., where he died. On Nov. 11, 1798, he married Sarah Newman, who died on Aug. 10, 1812, leaving seven children, and on Sept. 26, 1813, he married Hannah Swain, who bore him nine children …
"In December 1814, at the house of his father-in- law, Elihu Swain, he began his career as an antislavery leader by laying the foundations for the Tennessee Manumission Society, whose organization he did not, however, complete until the next February at Lostcreek Meeting House. In 1816 he founded similar societies in Guilford County, N. C. While at Mount Pleasant, O., he published the PHILANTHROPIST, from Aug. 29, 1817, to Oct. 8, 1818, a paper partially devoted to anti-slavery agitation. It has been asserted that he himself and, through him, the manumission societies and PHILANTHROPIST were the earliest advocates of immediate emancipation. This assertion cannot be substantiated. The societies definitely advocated gradual emancipation … Following Quaker tradition he long opposed the use of products of slave labor, considering them stolen goods because slaves' labor was stolen by their masters. His exhortations resulted in the formation on Nov. 22, 1842, of the Free Produce Association of Wayne County, Ind., and the establishment of a propagandist newspaper, the FREE LABOR ADVOCATE AND ANTI-SLAVERY CHRONICLE. When the conservatives, who, only mildly abolitionist, believed in confining anti-slavery activity to their own religious organizations, gained control over the Indiana Yearly Meeting, which before 1842 was dominated by the active abolitionist radicals, they removed him and others from the Meeting for Sufferings, page: 243[View Page 243] a governing committee of the Church, on which he had served for years. This was a severe and unexpected blow to him. Bitterly lamenting the conservatives' position, he participated prominently in the session of 2,000 radicals who formed the Indiana Yearly Meeting of Anti-Slavery Friends in February, 1843. He continued his interest in the later activities of the seceders and died condemning the Fugitive-slave Law. After his death, in 1854 the Church published The Journal of That Faithful Servant of Christ, Charles Osborn.
Condensed from R. A. K., Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XIV.
- A Testimony Concerning the Separation Which Occurred in the
Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends, in the Winter of 1842 and '43;
Together with Sundry Remarks and Observations, Particularly on the Subjects
of War, Slavery, and Colonization. Centerville,
1849.
- Journal of That Faithful Servant of Christ, Charles Osborn,
Containing an Account of Many of His Travels and Labors in the Work of the
Ministry, and His Trials and Exercises in the Service of the Lord, and in
Defense of the Truth, as It Is in Jesus.
Cincinnati, 1854.
OSBORN, CHASE SALMON: 1860-
Chase Salmon Osborn , son of George A. and Margaret Fannon Osborn, was born in Huntington County, Ind., on Nov. 22, 1860. His parents were both physicians.
Following his graduation from Purdue University in 1880, Osborn started in newspaper work on the LAFAYETTE ( Ind. ) HOME JOURNAL and continued that career in Chicago, Wisconsin, and Michigan . He married Lillian G. Jones on May 7, 1881.
Mr. Osborn finally settled in Michigan , where he graduated from the Detroit College of Medicine in 1909 and where he played a prominent part in state affairs, holding various offices and, in 1911-12, serving as governor of the state. Oct. 4, 1939, was proclaimed Chase S. Osborn Day by the governor of Michigan in honor of this newspaperman, author, world traveler, orator, and statesman.
Information from Who's Who in America and the INDIANAPOLIS STAR, Feb. 9, 1941.
- The Andean Land. Chicago, 1909. 2 vols.
- The Iron Hunter. New York, 1919.
- The Law of Divine Concord. 1921.
- Madagascar, the Land of the Man-Eating Tree.
New York, 1924.
- Short History of Michigan. 1926.
- The Earth Upsets. Baltimore,
1927.
- Following the Ancient Gold Trail of Hiram of Tyre and
Solomon. 1932.
- Northwoods Sketches. 1934.
- The Conquest of a Continent (withStella Brunt Osborn). [Lancaster, Pa.] 1939.
- Schoolcraft–Longfellow–Hiawatha (withStella Brunt Osborn). Lancaster, Pa., 1942.
- Hiawatha with Its Original Indian Legends (withStella Brunt Osborn). Lancaster, Pa., 1944.
- Errors in Official U. S. Area Figures (withStella Brunt Osborn). Lancaster, Pa., 1945.
OVERMAN, NATHAN R.: 1827-1883.
Born in Randolph County, Ind., on April 11, 1827, Nathan R. Overman had few opportunities for formal education but overcame this handicap by study at home. At eighteen years of age he began teaching.
In 1849, while engaged with his father in a brick- making business, he began the study of law and for the next eleven years he alternated teaching, farming, brick-making, and the study of his chosen profession. He married Mary J. Cox on May 27, 1854. In 1861 he began the practice of law in Tipton, Ind., and in 1878 he was elected judge of the Thirty-sixth Judicial Circuit.
He died in 1883.
Information from Representative Men of Indiana, Vol. 11.
- Pre-Historic and Indian History of Howard and Tipton
Counties, Indiana. n.p., 1883.
OWEN, DAVID DALE: 1807-1860.
David Dale Owen , third son of Robert [see, also, sketches of Richard and Robert Dale Owen] and Ann Caroline Dale Owen and brother of Robert Dale and Richard Owen, was born near New Lanark, Scotland , on June 24, 1807. He was educated by private tutors and at Lanark Academy, and then, like his brothers, went to Emanuel von Fellenberg's school in Hofwyl, Switzerland.
In 1827 he accompanied his brother Richard to the U. S. and to Indiana, where his father had started his socialistic experiment at New Harmony. It had already failed, insofar as his father's plan was concerned, and he subsequently returned to Europe and spent two years studying geology and chemistry. He also studied page: 244[View Page 244] drawing and painting–later putting this talent to use in illustrating his geological surveys.
In 1832 he returned to the U. S. , entered Ohio Medical College, and in 1836 received the M.D. degree from that institution. He became state geologist for Indiana in 1837, U. S. geologist in 1847, and state geologist for Kentucky in 1854. In 1857 he also accepted an appointment as state geologist for Arkansas , but he died before he had completed his work in this connection.
In addition to the surveys he made for the federal and various state governments, he also conducted examinations for private individuals and corporations. Before he died he was regarded as the pre-eminent geologist in America. In his large private museum and laboratory at his home in New Harmony he had one of the most complete geological and natural history collections in the country at that time. After his death this collection was purchased by the state of Indiana for Indiana University.
On March 23, 1837, David Dale Owen married Caroline C. Neef, daughter of Joseph Neef–one of the Pestalozzian teachers brought to the New Harmony Community by William Maclure. David Dale Owen died at New Harmony on Nov. 13, 1860. Most of Owen's works, being state or federal government publications, are not listed here.
Information from Representative Men of Indiana, Vol. I, and the Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XIV.
- Report of a Geological Reconnaissance in 1837.
Indianapolis, 1839.
- Geological Report on the Marble Hill Quarry.
Louisville, 1853.
- Report of a Geological Reconnaissance of Indiana Made During
the Years 1859 and 1860 Under the Direction of the Late D. D. Owen. (Completed and published byRichard Owen.) Indianapolis. 1862.
OWEN, RICHARD: 1810-1890.
Richard Owen , youngest son of the Nineteenth century reformer Robert Owen [see, also, sketches of David Dale and Robert Dale Owen] and his wife, Caroline Dale Owen, was born near New Lanark, Scotland , on Jan. 6, 1810.
At the time of Richard's birth his father was at the peak of his career as a cotton processor employing a humane and enlightened labor policy to the profit of himself, his partners and his employees. The family fortune, later to be wrecked by dreams of world reform, was being made, and to be a son of Robert Owen was to have access to all that was new and hopeful in education.
Robert Owen was an avowed deist, while his wife, Caroline, was an uncompromising Presbyterian: Richard and the other children listened to the arguments of both sides. Their education began at home, at the hands of their mother and of the tutors she selected, and continued in the model school which their father had organized in New Lanark for the children of his employees. Like his brothers, Richard was eventually enrolled in Emanuel yon Fellenberg's Pestalozzian school at Hofwyl, Switzerland, but unlike his elder brother, Robert Dale, he continued in more conventional work at the Andersonian Institute in Glasgow. His chief interest was in science.
Robert Owen's dreaming of social reform rendered his partners sufficiently hostile to make his withdrawal from the mills advisable. This state of affairs coincided with Richard Flower's opportune arrival from the U. S. with a commission to sell George Rapp's religio- communistic Harmony Community on the Wabash, and the Owens, full of plans for a modern Utopia, purchased the village and land and came to America.
The history of the difficulties which beset Robert Owen's New Harmony community for the few brief months of its survival is too complicated to be reported here. It should be noted, however, that Richard seems to have taken no very active part in its activities. He taught in the school for a while, went about the country on geological collecting trips, and cut an attractive figure at the community dances. That, it appears, was about the total of his participation.
With the dissolution of the community as such Richard Owens farmed for a while in Pennsylvania, spent three years in Cincinnati, where he employed his Glasgow chemical training in a brewery, and returned to New Harmony about 1840, to farm the land which had been his share of the settlement of his father's American property. In 1837 he had married Anna Eliza Neef.
Owen enlisted in the 16th U. S. Infantry for the Mexican War, was commissioned captain and served until August, 1848, most of the time in the service of supply.
Following the war he assisted his brother, David Dale, in the geological survey of Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and part of Nebraska Territory, joined the faculty of the Western Military Institute at Drennen Springs, Ky., and remained there for nine years. The institute was eventually moved to Nashville, Tenn., and Owen occupied his spare time–he was teaching page: 245[View Page 245] natural sciences, French, German, Spanish, military science and fencing–by studying medicine at Nashville University, receiving the M.D. degree in 1858.
Shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War he had returned to Indiana and had undertaken a geological survey of the state. When hostilities began he was commissioned lieutenant-colonel of the 15th Indiana Volunteers. His most distinguished service was as commandant in charge of Confederate prisoners at Camp Morton, Indianapolis, where he inaugurated a humanitarian policy which brought considerable criticism from the North but under which he was most popular with his prisoners. This policy became, moreover, more or less the model for prisoner-of-war regulation in this and other civilized countries until the second World War.
Col. Owen's regiment was sent to the front in May, 1862. He and his two sons were captured at Mumfordville, Ky., but, due to his popularity with the prisoners he had entertained at Indianapolis and his acquaintance with former students from the Western Military Institute in the Confederate ranks, they received gracious treatment.
Richard Owen joined the faculty of Indiana University on Jan. 1, 1864, as an instructor in geology, chemistry and natural philosophy. There he remained, as a distinguished member of the faculty, until 1879.
In 1871 first ground was broken for construction on the future campus of Purdue University, and in 1872 –during the long organization process which that institution underwent–Richard Owen was appointed president. He did not serve, for his recommendation for organization, submitted the following year to the trustees, appeared to them and to the public generally as if, in its advanced ideas as to the importance of sanitary conveniences, beautification of the grounds and elaborate living arrangements, it might have been formulated by "Old Bob" Owen himself. "No farm college," said the people of Indiana, "should aspire to such fol-de-rols," and that was that. President Owen of Purdue resigned and continued as Professor Owen of Indiana University.
Upon his retirement from active duty Richard Owen returned to the home in New Harmony where for years he had spent his summers and where his interest in things scientific, religious, medical, and literary continued unflagging until his death in 1890.
Material taken from Albjerg–Richard Owen.
- Key to the Geology of the Globe. Nashville,
Tenn., 1857.
- "Honor to the Illustrious Dead." A Lecture
Delivered in Behalf of the Mount Vernon Association; Delivered in
… Nashville, Dec. 4, 1857.
Nashville, 1857.
- Report of a Geological Reconnaissance of Indiana, Made During
the Years 1859 and 1860, Under the Direction of the Late David Dale
Owen. (Begun byDavid Dale Owen.) Indianapolis, 1862.
- Industrial Colleges. Added, a Communication on the General
Plan of the College Building, by R. Owen (withLewis Bollman). Washington, D. G., 1864.
- Report on the Mines of New Mexico.
Washington, D. G., 1865.
- Report of a Geological Examination Made on the Lands of the
Wabash Petroleum and Coal Mining Company in Warren, Fountain and Parke
Counties. Indianapolis, 1866.
- Report of a Geological Examination, Made on Certain Lands and
Mines, in the Counties of Haywood, Madison, Buncombe, Jackson, and Macon, N.
C., and in Cocke County, Tennessee.
Indianapolis, 1869.
- Happiness and Home, Temporal and Eternal; Farewell Address
Delivered at… Indiana State University, May 11, 1879.
Bloomington, Ind., 1879.
- The Rappites: Interesting Notes About Early New
Harmony (withJ. Schnack). Evansville, Ind., 1890.
OWEN, ROBERT DALE: 1801-1877.
Robert Dale Owen , a son of the notable but erratic Robert Owen, was born on Nov. 9, 1801.
His father was a man of vast talent, deep human sympathy, great executive ability, unlimited faith in mankind and an almost complete lack of balance. His mother was Ann Caroline Dale Owen, aristocratic, well educated, proper daughter of a wealthy Scotch industrialist. It is not difficult to see how these two happened to marry, even though Ann Caroline's father had his doubts at the time, for their match was made at a time when Robert Owen's abilities were concentrated on an unorthodox but highly successful effort to demonstrate that mill-hands produced more goods when they were well fed, clothed and housed than they did when they were starved: his ideas succeeded most profitably and it was some years later, after he and Ann Caroline had long been married, when he began to believe that workers at all levels need not only be well fed but should preferably also not work. Then it became evident that Ann Caroline's father was right–that Robert Owen had little, if any, judgment.
By that time Ann Caroline had borne Robert Dale, David Dale, William and Richard Owen and divorce was unthinkable for a strict Scot Presbyterian woman, no matter if the woman's husband had adopted a retinue of pensioners who preached freedom for women page: 246[View Page 246] and even free love for both sexes–so she remained Robert Owen's wife until her death. The two were separated, however, most of the time after 1825 and she was almost entirely out of touch with her sons, who had followed their father, even though William and David Dale, the more stable of the four, had followed him not necessarily in spirit.
To this ill-matched couple Robert Dale Owen was born. He was reared and educated, after his very earliest years, according to his father's dictates. He attended the very good model schools set up by his father for the mill-workers' children at New Lanark and he had private tutors who prepared him for higher education. When he reached his eighteenth year he was sent to the progressive school at Hofwyl, Switzerland, which Emanuel von Fellenberg had recently opened and which had attracted the attention of Robert Owen.
Robert Dale Owen spent four years at Hofwyl and his conscientious approach to his studies is evidenced by the meticulous notebooks which he kept there. Von Fellenberg's system–tutorial, but with no restraint on progress–was good for a serious minded student and Robert Dale Owen certainly gained an excellent liberal education there. He kept meticulous note books and occasional journals while touring England and Scotland to visit public institutions and industrial communities with his father during and immediately after his school days.
This touring of institutions was carried on with a purpose: Robert Owen had already begun to plan a model community, where arts and manufactures came from the same hands; where writers grew crops and where field workers gained culture; where cooking, dish-washing and house-keeping were community problems and required only a small part of anyone's time; where all were well dressed, well-fed, well educated and well bred–and where all contributed and all shared alike. He hoped he and his son would find some ideas in practice in orphan asylums, schools, and homes for the indigent and unfortunate which would be useful.
The plans went on. An Englishman who owned land on the west side of the Wabash (which, incidentally, was for sale) told Robert Owen that he had secured an option giving him a commission to sell Father George Rapp's community, Harmony, on the Wabash. Robert Owen had his choice between trying continued improvement in a Scotland still dubious of the propriety of allowing mill-hands' children to learn to read, or of buying this ready-made town in a country where there were still few neighbors to disapprove of whatever reforms he might wish to try. He put the question to his son and, to quote Robert Dale Owen himself when his father asked, "Which shall it be, New Lanark or New Harmony?", the twenty- four year old Robert Dale replied, "Oh, Father! Let it be New Harmony!"
The two came to the U. S. in November, 1825. The Harmony property had been bought and partially paid for. The aims of the new community had been widely published and welcomed by a vast number of serious people who hoped for a final solution to the social problems which they saw all about them, by reformers who saw here an opportunity to get their own pet theories adopted, by people who had always had an aversion to the sight of wealth in the hands of their neighbors, by those who had a desire to express talents previously unappreciated, and by people who had never believed that any considerable amount of work was either necessary or desirable. Some hundreds of these were already in New Harmony before the Owens even sailed, and hundreds more were on the long and arduous way.
William Owen had gone ahead and was on the ground, but Robert and Robert Dale Owen felt this was not a particularly fortunate circumstance because William was a practical young man with a talent for milling and other realistic pursuits: they felt he did not comprehend the Utopian aims of the community.
Robert Owen went to Washington to outline his plan to Congress and to any other gatherings which might be expected to listen. Robert Dale accompanied him for a while, then went to Philadelphia to join the party of educators, artists and scientists, protegees of the hard-headed but scholarly old William Maclure. That wealthy old gentleman had agreed to furnish and to feed the party while they set up the school systems in Robert Owen's new town. They were an inspired and an inspiring group: Thomas Say, naturalist; Madame Fretageot, former Hofwyl teacher and mistress of Maclure's interests, if not of Maclure himself; the two charming wards of Charles Alexandre Lesueur, Lucy Virginia du Palais, and Lucy Sistaire, whom Madame Fretageot chaperoned; Lesueur himself; Joseph Neef, another ex-Hofwyl teacher, and his daughter Caroline; Gerard Troost, naturalist; Capt. Donald Macdonald, young adventurer, who traveled to America with the Owens; and others of like charm and distinction.
They started down the Ohio by flatboat, in winter. As might have been anticipated by a more practical party they were soon frozen in and made quite a long journey of it, but the "Boat Load of Knowledge" (as page: 247[View Page 247] some romantic chronicler of the New Harmony movement nominated it) eventually reached a spot on the Ohio from which it could get transportation to the community on the Wabash.
Robert Dale Owen had arrived in the Hoosier Utopia.
He was completely charmed. He could see none of the reasons for doubting success which the prosaic William hinted at. He plunged immediately into community life.
He began to teach in old Neef's school and he began to edit the newspaper, THE NEW HARMONY GAZETTE. Robert Dale Owen also immediately volunteered for manual labor but soon found his constitution unfit for it.
As the result of circumstances too long for consideration here there was quite shortly no New Harmony Community. There was also only enough left of the Dale and the Owen fortunes to keep Ann Caroline quietly established in Scotland and to pay the modest expenses of Robert Owen as he traveled and lectured in Europe and the British Isles. The Owen sons– Robert Dale, David Dale, William and Richard– were pretty much on their own, except for some partially developed Indiana farm land.
Robert Dale Owen had become acquainted with the beautiful and talented but odd Frances Wright when she, like many other reformers, had paid an investigating visit to the New Harmony Community during its brief existence. Now, New Harmony as a community being at an end, he became her abject follower. For six or seven years he followed her about, trying to resuscitate her Nashoba Community for freed slaves, as her fellow editor of the New York FREE ENQUIRER, as her fellow-lecturer, as her fellow-lobbyist. But soon enough this happy association was terminated: Frances married Phiquepal d'Arusmont, one of those who had been at New Harmony, and that gentleman, taking over his wife's estate in conformity with the European custom but in direct opposition to the tenets of women's rights which that lady had long preached, soon put publishing, philanthropy, and lecturing beyond her reach. She no longer required the assistance of Robert Dale Owen.
And so in 1832 he went to England where for six months he assisted his father in the editing of a short-lived organ of reform, THE CRISIS. At the end of this six months Robert Dale Owen may have begun to see the world about him more realistically; perhaps he thought it wise to see if some part of the family investment could be salvaged from New Harmony equities. He returned to the Wabash and began that memorable part of his career which, in spite of occasional digressions and dreams of Utopia, is his monument.
In 1836 he was elected to the Indiana State Legislature. His advanced ideas, balanced by the reactionary instincts of the Indiana farmers with whom he served, resulted in worth-while legislation which gave the state a future income with which to set up a public school system.
He was elected to Congress and served from 1843 to 1847. His measure began the activity which resulted in the peaceful settlement of the Oregon Question; he introduced the bill which set up the Smithsonian Institution and included publication of reports of research as one of its functions, and he served as chairman of its building committee.
Back in Indiana he became interested in the construction of year-round roads and, after careful study, published a book explaining the construction of plank roads. He sat as a delegate to the state Constitutional Convention of 1850 and succeeded in writing in reasonably liberal laws concerning divorce and women's property rights.
In 1853 he was appointed United States charge d'affaires at Naples and in 1855 he was appointed minister. He served with distinction until 1858. But it was during this period that he began another of those digressions which had led him in a hopeless chase for so many of his younger years: the study of spiritualism, which he now took up, within seven or eight years cost him his usefulness and in a few more years his reason.
Fortunately he was not so quickly enthralled by this new interest as he had been, for instance, by community 'living, dress reform, women's rights and the others: he was able to forget spiritualism enough to give excellent service as purchasing agent for Indiana in preparation for equipping state troops for the Civil War, to serve as chairman of the committee to investigate the condition of freedmen and to battle the Copperheads and adroit fellow-travelers in Indiana.
After the War he devoted himself mainly to writing and to further investigation of the spirit world which was now rapidly becoming his ruling interest.
As a young man he had been infatuated with two women of as widely divergent background as can well be imagined: the first was a daughter of a mill-hand in New Lanark, whom he gave up for New Harmony and whom he long remembered, and the second was, of course, the dynamic Frances Wright. He was afterward twice married. His first wife, Mary Jane Robinson, page: 248[View Page 248] he married on Apr. 12, 1832. She died in 1871 and on June 23, 1876, he married Lottie Walton Kellogg.
He suffered a complete mental breakdown about the time of his second marriage and died at his summer home on Lake George, N. Y., on June 24, 1877.
- An Outline of the System of Education at New Lanark.
Glasgow, Scotland, 1824.
- Moral Physiology; or, a Brief and Plain Treatise on the
Population Question. London, [1830].
- Popular Tracts (with others). New
York, 1830.
- Address on the Hopes and Destinies of the Human
Species. London, 1836.
- Pocahontas: a Historical Drama, in Five Acts; with an
Introductory Essay and Notes. By a Citizen of the West.
New York, 1837.
- A Lecture on Consistency.
London, 1842.
- Address on Free Inquiry. London,
n.d.
- Address on Free Inquiry. On Fear as a Motive of
Action. London, 1843.
- Hints on Public Architecture. New
York, 1849.
- A Brief Practical Treatise on the Construction and Management
of Plank Roads. New Albany, 1850.
- Discussion on the Authenticity of the Bible (withOrigen Bacheller). Philadelphia, 1854.
- Divorce: Being a Correspondence Between Horace Greeley and
Robert Dale Owen. New York, 1860.
- Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World.
Philadelphia, 1860.
- The Future of the Northwest.
Philadelphia, 1863.
- The Policy of Emancipation (withS. P. Chase and E. M. Stanton). Philadelphia, 1863.
- Emancipation Is Peace. [New
York, 1863.]
- The Conditions of Reconstruction; in a Letter … to
the Secretary of State. Letter from Hon. S. P. Chase. New
York, 1863.
- The Wrong of Slavery, the Right of Emancipation, and the
Future of the African Race in the United States.
Philadelphia, 1864.
- Beyond the Breakers: Story of the Present Day.
Philadelphia, 1870.
- The Debatable Land Between This World and the Next.
New York, 1872.
- Threading My Way: Twenty-Seven Years of
Autobiography. New York, 1874.
- Address on the Influence of the Clerical Profession.
New York, n.d.
OWEN, WILLIAM DUNN: 1846-?
" William D. Owen was born Sept. 6, 1846, at Bloomington, Ind. He attended Indiana University and studied law in Lafayette. He became a Christian minister and in 1881 settled in Logansport and engaged in the practice of law with D. C. Justice. He was a Congressman from the Tenth Indiana district from 1884 until 1890. He was Secretary of State from 1894 to 1896 and commissioner of immigration during the McKinley administration …"
From Powell–History of Cass County, 1913.
- Success in Life, and How to Secure It; or, Elements of
Manhood and Their Culture. Chicago, 1878.
- The Genius of Industry. Chicago,
1883.
