Biography of robert dale owen facts

Welsh textile manufacturer and social reformer (1771–1858)

For other people named Robert Owen, see Robert Owen (disambiguation).

Robert Owen (; 14 May 1771 – 17 November 1858) was a Welsh textile manufacturer, philanthropist, political philosopher and social reformer, and a founder of utopian socialism and the co-operative movement. He strove to improve factory working conditions, promoted experimental socialistic communities, sought a more collective approach to child-rearing, and 'believed in lifelong education, establishing an Institute for the Formation of Character and School for Children that focused less on job skills than on becoming a better person'. He gained wealth in the early 1800s from a textile mill at New Lanark, Scotland. Having trained as a draper in Stamford, Lincolnshire he worked in London before relocating at age 18 to Manchester and textile manufacturing. In 1824, he moved to America and put most of his fortune in an experimental socialistic community at New Harmony, Indiana, as a preliminary for his utopian society. It lasted about two years. Other Owenite communities also failed, and in 1828 Owen returned to London, where he continued to champion the working class, lead in developing co-operatives and the trade union movement, and support child labour legislation and free co-educational schools.

Biography

Early life and family

Robert Owen was born in Newtown, a small market town in Montgomeryshire, Wales, on 14 May 1771, to Anne (Williams) and Robert Owen. His father was a saddler, ironmonger and local postmaster; his mother was the daughter of a Newtown farming family. Young Robert was the sixth of the family's seven children, two of whom died at a young age. His surviving siblings were William, Anne, John and Richard.

Owen received little formal education, but he was an avid reader. He left school at the age of ten to be an apprentice draper in Stamford, Lincolnshire,

Women’s rights advocate, poet, and author of “Paddle Your Own Canoe” and “Indiana,” Sarah Tittle Barrett was born in Newport, Kentucky circa 1814. Commonly known as Sarah Bolton, she moved to Indiana as a young child, when much of the state was still unsettled. According to theLife and Poems of Sarah T. Bolton, while growing up on her family’s farm near Vernon, she was exposed to the pioneer experience, living in a log house and clearing the fields.

The Life and Poems of Sarah T. Bolton reports that she published her first poem in the Madison Banner when she was not yet fourteen and that she later wrote regularly for the papers of Madison and nearby Cincinnati. Bolton authored over 150 poems during her lifetime, many of which were featured in newspapers across the country. Her writings were included in numerous anthologies in the 1800s and 1900s, and several of the melodic verses were set to music, including Bolton’s “Indiana.”

In 1831, she married Indianapolis Gazette co-editor Nathaniel Bolton and the couple moved from Madison to Marion County, Indiana soon after. Between 1836 and 1845, they owned and operated a tavern, “Mt. Jackson,” on the National Road. In 1845, the Boltons sold their property to the State and it eventually became the site of the Indiana Hospital for the Insane, later renamed the Central State Hospital.* While in Indianapolis, Sarah’s poetry output continued to increase, and she wrote some of her most popular works there. She lived in the city for many years by the time she became involved in the women’s rights movement.

Bolton aided social reformer Robert Dale Owen in his fight for women’s rights of personal property in the 1850 State Constitutional Convention. Owen sought to add a provision to the new constitution that would allow women to retain control of their personal property after they entered into the contract of marriage. Bolton wrote letters to women across the state to build support for the movement,

Born at Newtown, Montgomeryshire, 14 May 1771, his father, Robert Owen, was a saddler and ironmonger in the town, and his mother the daughter of a local farmer named Williams. His only formal education was what he received before he was 10 when he left home to serve four years' apprenticeship to a Scottish draper, James McGuffog, at Stamford, Lines. After a short time as a draper's assistant in London he moved to Manchester where he made rapid progress in cotton-spinning. His business brought him to Scotland where he bought the New Lanark cotton mills for himself and his partners. There he initiated a great experiment in community building on which his fame rests. His work there entitles him to be called the pioneer in factory reform, the father of distributive co-operation, and the founder of nursery schools. His reputation was such that he was invited to advise on what should be done to meet the industrial crisis which followed the end of the Napoleonic Wars. He recommended the setting-up of self-sufficiency communities. For the rest of his life he preached this solution of the social problems and initiated experiments, the more famous of which was that of New Harmony, Indiana, U.S.A. His fundamental tenet was that character is fashioned by circumstances. His declared view that all religions were tainted with error and that men could not live in peace and harmony until they recognised this fact created a strong prejudice against his teaching. He returned to Newtown in 1858 and died there on 17 November. He was buried in the old churchyard, where the Co-operative Moveme

United States politician

Robert Dale Owen (7 November 1801 – 24 June 1877) was a Scottish-born Welsh-American social reformer who was active in Indiana politics as member of the Democratic Party in the Indiana House of Representatives (1835–39 and 1851–53) and represented Indiana in the U.S. House of Representatives (1843–47). As a member of Congress, Owen successfully pushed through the bill that established the Smithsonian Institution and served on the Institution's first Board of Regents. Owen also served as a delegate to the Indiana Constitutional Convention in 1850 and was appointed as U.S. chargé d'affaires (1853–58) to Naples.

Owen was a knowledgeable exponent of the socialist doctrines of his father, Robert Owen, and managed the day-to-day operation of New Harmony, Indiana, the socialistic utopian community he helped establish with his father in 1825. Throughout his adult life, Robert Dale Owen wrote and published numerous pamphlets, speeches, books, and articles that described his personal and political views, including his belief in spiritualism. Owen co-edited the New-Harmony Gazette with Frances Wright in the late 1820s in Indiana and the Free Enquirer in the 1830s in New York City. Owen was an advocate of married women's property and divorce rights, and secured inclusion of an article in the Indiana Constitution of 1851 that provided tax-supported funding for a uniform system of free public schools and established the position of Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction. Owen is also noted for a series of open letters he wrote in 1862 that favored the abolition of slavery and supported general emancipation, as well as a suggestion that the federal government should provide assistance to freedmen.

Early life and education

Robert Dale Owen was born on 7 November 1801, in Glasgow, Scotland, to Ann (or Anne) Caroline Dale and Robert Owen. His mother was the daughter of David Dale, a Scottish textile manufacturer; h