In frontier times, priests and various clergy did not have a congregation in their immediate neighborhood but did God’s bidding by traveling a number of miles throughout the countryside in making sure each one was baptized. In order to see their flock, they built frontier abodes to secure a living for themselves and their offspring. Certainly, the German press of Pennsylvania was crucial for printing German Bibles and necessary religious documents to support PA Dutch dialect teachings by numerous religious sects and churches in a day when education for the common man was almost non-existent.
Thereby, those who could read and write used colorful drawings, or Fraktur folk art, to instill in non-readers the religious messages they were trying to get across. These early decorated birth and baptismal certificates were cherished and handed down by each family as a record of their American experience. However, sometimes after the death of an individual, the family who had these cherished records might instruct the minister to bury the religious and sometimes colorful baptism certificate with the deceased in his or her coffin, as a sort of passport to Heaven, proving the individual was baptized.
An interesting thought is whether the highly-decorated Fraktur birth certificates predate dower chests or whether some of the early undated chests predate the folk art birth certificates. It was quite common for a girl to paste or tack her birth certificate to the inside lid of her dower chest. The question is, did this custom encourage early scribes to decorate the birth certificate to match the chest, or did the cabinetmaker decide to match the work of the scribe? The chest was certainly a joyous gift for the father to give his daughter, not only because it was her personal piece of furniture, but obviously the polychromatic folk decorations portrayed the love of the father for his daughter.
Although William Penn had a number of loyal “Society of Friends” members that joined him in settling Pennsylvania, these Quakers were not as prolific as the spirited German Rhinelanders who joined with Penn in establishing his “Holy Experiment” in Christian Humanity. Here, they worshiped the Lord and practiced Brotherly love as much as the Germanic Palatines, for whom he invited their illuminated Christ’s teachings in the art practice known as Fraktur, an early folk practice, which Dr. Henry “Hank” Kaufman rightfully phrased as “Our first American Folk Art.”
As devout a Christian people as the Quakers were, they did not express their religious belief as dynamically as the Pennsylvania Dutch/Germans, whose American Folk Art spilled over from the Bible into all their furniture and household belongings, as well. These Rhineland immigrants who feared being chastised for their religious beliefs in Europe by rival Kings and noblemen were for the first time in their lives free to practice whatever faith they chose without incrimination to them and their families in America. Thus, the folk art symbols, which they were not able to demonstrate without calling attention to their personal belief in a deity, were now free to be expressed in the New World under William Penn, one of the first proprietors to believe in Freedom of Religion.
Richard L.T. Orth is assistant director of the American Folklife Institute in Kutztown.
