In 1950, Fredric Klees had published his award winning book, The Pennsylvania Dutch , which covered the entire Dutch Country with architectural sketches to illustrate his chapters, similar to Alliene DeChant’s style (covered previously), which no doubt influenced her. Born in Reading, PA, Klees taught in the winter months and spent his summers visiting all parts of the Dutch Country to work on his articulate and definitive book. Dr. Alfred Shoemaker, the leading authority on the Pennsylvania Dutch, considered Klees’ book the most comprehensive and accurate one ever written about the Dutch people. A well-traveled native of Berks County, Klees also never used the ethnic term, “Pennsylvania German,” but favored the earlier Colonial American term, “Pennsylvania Dutch.”
This 18th Century Americanism, “Deitsch” in German, translated to Dutch in English, was used in Colonial times, including the Swiss (Amish and Mennonite), French Huguenots, and Holland Dutch, inclusive of Germans, all who left Europe’s Rhineland Valley for the New World. Many of these immigrants sought freedom of religion in Penn’s Holy Experiment. But in particular, the Swiss religious sects like the Old Order Amish and Mennonites were excluded in the connotation of the term “Pennsylvania German,” as well as French Huguenots like DeChant, and important Oley Valley families like the Leshers, LeVans, Yoders, Greisemers, DeTurks, Biebers, etc., and unjustly, more so than the broader, more inclusive “PA Dutch” idiom.
A vast immigrant population of early American farmers who succeeded in farming the Atlantic coastal Piedmont region, the Pennsylvania Dutch also turned the Lancaster Plain into a Garden of Eden; harvesting grain crops all the way out to the Ohio River Valley, not to forget our rich Oley and East Penn Valleys. Their commerce, hauling farm products on Conestoga wagons, had opened up the Western expansion of United States, as well as embarking in trade with Canada. Evidenced on the 200th Anniversary of the United States, a congressman proud of his ethnic heritage said to his colleagues, “You can’t be any more American than to be Pennsylvania Dutch!” This is a true realization of what our ethnic cultural heritage has meant to the American folkways of our Civilization.
The Germanic material culture still highly cherished by German ethnic descendants, such as our German language Bibles and Birth/ Baptism decorated documents (Fraktur) very much appreciated today were among American descendants who helped establish William Penn’s Colony of Brotherly Love. There is no doubt that the ethnic merger of Quaker English citizens with Rhineland Farmers in Pennsylvania was an ethnic mix that was significant in founding the United States, and when the British attacked Philadelphia in 1777, it was PA Dutch farmers of Lehigh County who secretly hid the nation’s Liberty Bell by taking it to Allentown to be hidden under one of its church foundations.
Ultimately, what remains is the overwhelming preference for hundreds of thousands of native descendants born from Rhineland peoples in Pennsylvania in Colonial times is to still call ourselves, “Pennsylvania Dutch.” Resisting pressure from some ethnic groups to call ourselves German, because of the Rhenish Dialect they spoke, DeChant and Klees and Doctors Don Yoder and Alfred Shoemaker used only the Colonial term “Pennsylvania Dutch,” just as in the “Pennsylvania Dutch Folk Festival” they began in Kutztown, Berks County, PA in 1950, coinciding with Klees’ “Bible” on the Pennsylvania Dutch.
1. The Pennsylvania Dutch, by Frederic Klees, published by the Macmillan Co., N.Y., 1950. Klees, an English professor at Swarthmore College, PA, born in Reading, PA wrote an in-depth study on the Pennsylvania Dutch Country, its people, religions, and history. His book is 451 accurate pages on customs, folkways, and historic locations.
