Extraordinary folk art born of religious roots
Rhinelanders’ native folk art showed up in furniture and almost every task they undertook
The heart and soul of our PA Dutch Country here in southeastern Pennsylvania cannot be explained without first delving into its ethnic diversity, especially through the Pennsylvania Dutch of our region and their American folk art which is world renown. Unlike the English Quakers, who lived in the heart of the Oley basin up making their way up from Philadelphia, Rhinelanders from Germany, whose native folk art was part of their folk culture, showed up in furniture and almost every task in which they undertook. In fact, the large number of French Huguenot immigrants who settled in the Hills of the Oley Valley nicknamed them the “Alsatian hills,” which they likened or remembered from living in the Rhine Valley. The variety of European immigrants who pioneered the area brought with them a number of talented skilled craftsmen and artists who became part of the fabric of the early settlers in this American folk frontier region; and a vast number from the Rhine Valley of Europe soon developed the folk art style of the East Penn and Oley Valleys.
Their Germanic Dialect they shared was very popular in central ethnic folk-art styles of this agrarian area and was spoken by people who hailed from the European areas of Switzerland to France and the Netherlands, in addition to Motherland Germany. Thus, becoming natives to the New World, their religion continued to be written in German and they became known for their Pennsylvania German folk art documents which were gaily colored and inscribed in 18th Century lettering (to document their baptisms announcements). Therefore, it was only natural that 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.
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 whichever faith they chose without incrimination and persecution to them and their families here in America. The folk art symbols they were once 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, and as devout a Christian people as the Quakers were, they did not express their religious belief as dynamic as the Pennsylvania Dutch. Their Americana folk art had spilled over from the Bible into all their furniture and household belongings.
Their Calvinistic humility was similar to following “the inner light” of the Quaker faith, not as bold as Roman Catholics or German Lutherans, but more akin to the religious folk practices of the Swiss Amish or Mennonites. Equal to the importance of their folk character throughout the valleys were their churches, which by and large have remained unchanged. The earliest of churches to the region have for almost 300 years been inseparable from community life. Thus, when Colonial John Lesher set aside land from his estate for a church in America, he favored the Salem Reformed Church not the Germanic Lutheran faith. Even though the language he spoke in that part of Europe was German, he favored his French Huguenot faith.
The ingenious valley folk, descendants of pioneers to the area, still follow a church calendar year that is an integral part of rural agrarian life. Planting of crops on Good Friday and Ascension Day are still frowned upon and instead days that should be given to fellowship alongside one’s neighbors. For the history enthusiasts, one should not think of modern Pennsylvania without first thinking of William Penn’s diverse religious pilgrims who bonded together in Brotherly love, forging an environment in which freedom was nurtured from their grass roots spirit and Americana folk art born from.