The humility of the Pennsylvania Dutch, specifically the French Huguenot immigrants like the (Johann) Bieber, Bertolet, DeTurck, Lesher, Levan and Yoder (et al) families who went to Philadelphia to market their agrarian homemade products, was not lost among the English Quakers who founded the City of Brotherly Love. Their Calvinistic humility was similar to following the inner light of the Quaker faith, but not as bold as Roman Catholics or German Lutherans, and more akin to the religious folk practices of the Swiss Amish or Mennonites.
Thus, when John Lesher set aside land from his estate for a church in America, he favored Salem Reformed church and not the Germanic Lutheran faith. Even though the language he spoke in that part of Europe was German, he favored his French Huguenot faith. In fact, the large number of French Huguenot immigrants who settled in the hills of the Oley Valley nicknamed them the Alsatian hills, after those they remembered from living in the Rhine Valley. It was not surprising, on the eve of the Declaration of Independence, Patriots Jacob Bieber and son, John, folk artists, designed the folk art dower chest for Esther Hoch in capital letters of red, white and blue over four large flat hearts in the year 1776. Beloved folk artists whose large flat hearts stood for the Virgin Mary, they occasionally interspersed colorful geometric stars in each globe of the heart.
But their large Americana wardrobe decorated with eight flat hearts, found near Kutztown, was an overwhelming salute by French Huguenots to America after they had escaped from Louis the XIV King of France. However, their Colonial Wardrobe for the 1775 French Huguenot DeTurk family living in Oley Township did not have flat hearts as decorated, but merely was painted with a marble raised panel design. Nonetheless, in early American days, these PA Dutch designs made a wonderful presentation piece, and Oley Valley citizens were proud of their families’ colorful dower chests, as they were an expression of Christian love of their offspring!
However, neighboring English Quakers rarely decorated dower chests for their newborn children, other than lettering their name and the date of one’s birth or the presentation date on the front of a dower chest. Rhinelanders additionally decorated birth certificates and religious broadsides for their children, enjoyed expressing their parental love by asking a folk artist to design lavish Americana folk art chests for their children to hold their dowries until they got married. Few children were in need of a wardrobe until they got married. But, since family wardrobes were a necessity, these large hardwood or soft wood paint decorated parlor pieces were often elaborately paint-decorated and often the most beautiful centerpieces found in hallways or parlors, especially if a home was a very large manor house or Georgian mansion. Some folk artists in the Oley Valley paint-decorated the interior doors and rooms of the area’s most stylish interiors, as well as fireplace mantels and corner cupboards.
The variety of European immigrants who pioneered the Oley Valley brought with them a number of techniques, styles, ideas and beliefs and became the early settlers in this American folk frontier region. But, the vast number from the Rhine Valley of Europe soon developed the folk style of the Oley Valley. Their Germanic Dialect, very popular in central ethnic folk art styles of this agrarian area, was spoken by people who hailed from the European areas of Switzerland to France and the Netherlands. Thereby, Oley Valley natives whose religion was written in German were known for Pennsylvania German folk art documents that were gaily colored and inscribed in 18th Century lettering to document their baptisms announcements. These colorful Fraktur and marriage drawings of tulips, carnations and distelfinks were transferred onto their dower chests and early American wardrobes, together with stylized stippled raised panels on local furniture.
Richard L.T. Orth is assistant director of the American Folklife Institute in Kutztown.
