When researching the ethnic heritage of the PA German/ Dutch, I traveled to Ontario Canada to visit their early American museums of the PA Dutch natives who immigrated from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to pioneer the farmlands of Colonial Canada. Realizing that my Oley Valley maternal ancestors were the Bieber branch of our family, I was always interested in the news coverage of Justin Bieber’s musical career, since many Oley Valley pioneer families, their frontier descendants had traveled to Canada to become Canadians, as well as the Northwest Territory of the United States. Thus, having visited the PA Dutch community of Ontario, I realized the native German dialect connection that these natives shared with Oley Valley citizens back in Pennsylvania, including our Amish and Mennonite religious sects, were identical.
When a radical Islamic sympathizer attacked the peaceful Canadian government at Ottawa on Oct. 22, shooting a ceremonial soldier at the War Memorial Gardens, he violated all the humanitarian principles of the Western civilization, not only our Christianity but the universal conception of any deity. Among the leading pioneers of the Niagara Peninsula, about 30 miles from Niagara Falls, is the “Jordan Historical Museum of the Twenty,” one of Canada’s finest institutions. Pioneered by Abraham Hoch (High) in 1798 from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, he was so hospitable his farm became a village by 1842 named Jordan on the Twenty, which was the distance from United States border for all other pioneers.
Today the village of Jordan is in the center of Canada’s million dollar wine industry, and features an early PA Dutch one screw lever press for pressing apples or grapes, 28 feet long; a village museum familiar to many Old Order Mennonites who migrated to Canada in the early American pioneer period. Many Pennsylvania German farmers migrated westward and north to Canada in Frontier Days who easily achieved the trip by loading their farming equipment on their large Conestoga wagons, which were invented circa 1750 in Lancaster County, thereby also used to engage in the Colonial import /export trade at the port of Philadelphia. Canadians have always been good neighbors of the United States, and we share in the loss of every Canadian citizen!
Fred Stauffer, the retired principal of the Oley Valley schools, enjoyed driving to the PA Dutch colony in Ontario Canada to see the number of natives keeping our heritage alive, near Kitchener Ontario with the exact type of furniture as we in Berks County continued to use.
Ironically, the PA Dutch in Canada were also called PA Dutch, even though these native-born Canadians of ethnic origin were not contemporary citizens of the United States. Many of the PA Dutch artifacts found in Canadian museums rival the best ethnic styles found in America’s 300 year old PA Dutch native territory!
Fred Stauffer, a PA German linguist, loved conversing in the German dialect with the Amish and Mennonite farmers of modern Canada, a true grit folk culture.
Richard H. Shaner is director of the American Folklife Institute in Kutztown.
