Page 12 - 2015 New Harmony Music Festival Program Book

MUSIC FESTIVAL COMMUNITY CONTRA DANCE:
FEATURING THE 2015 STUDENT & FACULTY DANCE BAND

06 The Rapp-Owen Granary, Thursday July 9 at 7:00 pm
Adults $10, Kids 12 and under, FREE

Dance Caller & Musical Arrangements: Susie Petrov

(Continued from page 08)

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Dancing in 1814 was a matter of social discourse for citizens of the fledgling United States. Dances like the waltz, made
popular by the French around 1804, were still the rage here in the New World. Throughout the two hundred years of
New Harmony’s history, dancing was a community activity up to and through the 20th century at the Oddfellows Hall,
Sass and Poss, the American Legion, the Ribeyre Gymnasium, and the Owen Community House.

The Rapp-Owen Granary dates to the second decade of the 19th century and is a wonderful example of creative
repurposing. Our deep thanks go to the Rapp Granary-Owen Foundation, which completed a massive
restoration in 1999. We offer this description of the building’s history from the Robert Lee Blaffer Foundation.
(website: RobertLeeBlafferFoundation.org)
Around 1818, the massive sandstone, brick, and wood granary had been completed by the Rappites. In 1827, after the town
was sold, the Granary became part of William Maclure’s holdings. Maclure, known as the Father of American Geology, used
the granary for geologic laboratory investigations, specimen storage and display. In 1837, David Dale Owen, engaged by the
Indiana General Assembly as the first state geologist, was granted use of the granary, its equipment, specimens and library.
In 1843, he bought the granary and improved the “second” level of the building with large windows and developed a lecture
room, laboratories and museums – his third geologic laboratory – “all open for the enjoyment and instruction of townspeople
and visitors.” After David Dale Owen’s death in 1860, the building was used as a woolen mill, gutted by a fire in 1878,
rebuilt as a granary in 1893, and remodeled as a wheat granary in 1905. In the 1990’s, Kenneth D. Owen, also a geologist,
initiated the granary’s historic preservation. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places and is located in the
National Landmark Site of New Harmony.

We would also like to thank The Working Men’s Institute Library for sharing some of the original Owenite
music with us two years ago. The Robert Henry Fauntleroy manuscripts from the collection will be played this
evening by the combined student and faculty “big band.” That music came to the library through the Fauntleroy
family descendants. R.H. Fauntleroy was a draftsman, scientist, and as it turns out, a skilled fifer and flautist from
rural Virginia before he married the daughter of Robert Owen, Jane Dale Owen.
We can say with some certainty that some of the rare and lovely dance tunes heard here tonight were not only arranged
by Fauntleroy in New Harmony around 1826, but were in fact a part of the steady diet of music-making and social
dancing that enlivened life here on the prairie.

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