MISSION STATEMENT:
American Folklife Institute, founded in 1972, in the Oley Valley of Pennsylvania is celebrating its 37th Anniversary of researching American folk culture among the Pennsylvania Dutch people of southeastern, Pennsylvania; the Nation's Foremost Living Folk Culture, dating back to 1683. Our Institute records their architecture, antiques, craftsmanship, customs, and religious folklife. The Folklife Staff, at its new Kutztown office, records the history and changes in this 17th and 18th Century born early American culture, as modern innovation is accepted or rejected in the Pennsylvania Dutch way of life.
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SEED OF A FOLKLIFE IDEA
The Pennsylvania Dutchman newspaper founded by Dr. Shoemaker’s Folklore Department at Franklin and Marshall College in 1949 had a major influence on the people of Southeastern Pennsylvania when they decided to showcase the Pennsylvania Dutch Culture by holding their Pennsylvania Dutch Folk Festival at Kutztown, Pennsylvania in 1950.
Left to right: Doctors J. William Frey, Don Yoder, and Alfred Shoemaker, editors of this widely read newspaper (1949-52) among the Dutch populace where each were well qualified to write about folklife culture. Writers and folklorists recording our living folk culture in their journal for several years soon brought people to converge on Kutztown, making it the capital of the Dutch Country.
Olive Zehner Merritt, the journal’s craft editor enlisted the help of her local Reading-Berks Craftsmen Guild who participated in the Kutztown Folk Festival, demonstrating native Dutch crafts.
Photographer and folklife writer, Vincent Tortora, became an outstanding authority on the Old Order Amish and Mennonites of Lancaster County. Herbert Miller and his wife, Viola, farmers near Kutztown believed whole-heartedly in the Folk Festival idea and introduced Shoemaker to the Dutch agrarian community of Kutztown.
Thereby, (2009) The American Folklife Institute commemorates the 60th Kutztown Folk Festival and 51st Anniversary of the American Folklife Studies Movement begun by professors: Alfred L. Shoemaker, Don Yoder,and J. William Frey (1958), editors and writers of the Pennsylvania Folklife magazine. With headquarters in Kutztown, PA., they showcased the native Pennsylvania Dutch Folk Festival for many years. "Less we forget our roots and friends in an ever changing world."
American Folklife has erected a brass plaque in their HONOR at our headquarters on Main Street of Kutztown at the Old Town Criers House, 360 West Main Street, dedicated on Sunday, April 13th at Trinity Lutheran Church. 2009 also marks the 96th Birthday of the late Pennsylvania Folklorist, Dr. Alfred L. Shoemaker, born & raised on a farm outside Saegersville, Lehigh County.
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Horse and Buggy Dutch at Kutztown. Mennonite Buggies are canvassed in "black," whereas the Amish family buggies in Lancaster are canvassed in "gray" colored canvas.
The growing Plain Dutch culture of Team Mennonites living around Kutztown in the East Penn Valley; Wenger Old Order Mennonites from Hinkletown, Lancaster County have their central meeting house south of Kutztown with a new Old Order meeting house near Fleetwood. Old Order Mennonites have large farms east of Reading, along the Great Valley, and as far east as Trexlertown, near Allentown.
A self-sustained community of farmers and craftsmen, they do not participate driving cars or using modern electric automation in their daily lives. Since 2006, Mennonite farm families have settled as far south from Kutztown as the Oley Hills and Valley of Historic Berks County.
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Among the first Mennonite families that relocated from Lancaster County to the farming community of Kutztown in 1949, were the Eli Burkholders, Ivan Leids, Ivan Martins, and Amos Sauders. Eli Burkholder was the son of Ezra Burkholder, Sr., who was the patriarch leader of the East Penn Mennonites, upon whose farm their Central Meeting House was built in 1952.
Eli Burkholder, Jr., the grandson of Ezra Burkholder, Sr., recalls when folklorist, Dr. Alfred L. Shoemaker would visit their farm near Renninger's Farm Market. Professor Shoemaker, an authority on the PA Dutch Dialect, would amuse the young children by correcting their Dialect conversations when they would substitute an English word for a Dialect term that they were not familiar with.
Proud of his own PA Dutch roots, jovial Alfred would share his good humor with these youth by providing articulate, but friendly Dialect conversations. Pictured above is the Ezra Burkholder, Sr. farmstead.
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Following in the steps of Dr. Alfred L. Shoemaker, Pennsylvania's foremost Folklorist, our Institute will research native folklife of the Pennsylvania Dutch whose Plain people in Lancaster and Berks Counties have been acclaimed for continuing their native American folklife. Special attention will be given to the Amish and Old Order Mennonites, although the folk activities of the Worldly Pennsylvania Dutch of southeastern Pennsylvania will continue to be researched, as well.
Dr. Alfred L. Shoemaker (left) with friend, Gilbert Snyder from Reading radio station WEEU, performing Pennsylvania Dutch dialect humor on the main stage at the first ever Pennsylvania Dutch Kutztown Folk Festival in 1950. Shoemaker would later televise (1953) the first half hour of an all dialect Pennsylvania Dutch program on WEEU-TV, channel 33.
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With the vast expansion of the Old Order Mennonite colony, a second Meetinghouse was built in 1970, east of Fleetwood. Here, bicycles are parked for Good Friday service.
Unlike the Amish who worship every fortnight in the farmhouse of a member, the Wenger Mennonite sect built large, impressive Meetinghouses to worship, with horse and buggy sheds cloistered around them. Services are traditionally done in the PA German Dialect with traditional Hymns sung in the Dialect as well. Women always wear traditional Dutch Bonnets, and men, broad brimmed hats.
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THE AMERICANISM: PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH
The term Pennsylvania Dutch to indicate the broad group of immigrants who came to America in the pre-American Revolutionary period from Europe's Rhine Valley, is preferred over the term Pennsylvania German or German-American, the latter are not Americanisms. Pennsylvania Dutch is the original term used by English Colonists referring to the Rhenish German Civilization of native Palantines; including French Huguenots, Swiss Amish and Mennonites, Holland Dutch Mennonites, and Moravians who collectively shared the German language together, in large numbers seeking farms in Pennsylvania almost outnumbering Penn's English immigrants.
This early American cultural melting pot mainly in southeastern Pennsylvania was made up of naturalized Rhineland citizens who swore allegiance to the United States assimilating with English laws and standards, but their everyday work habits and living customs, they followed in their native Rhineland fashion, continuing German dialect in America, which soon became known as Pennsylvania Dutch rather than formal High German. Dr. Alfred L. Shoemaker, founder of the Folklife Movement preferred the native American term, Pennsylvania Dutch, rather than the misnomer term, Pennsylvania German.
An ethnologist, Shoemaker believed that the older term, Pennsylvania Dutch, was more precise in describing these people with pre-Revolutionary Rhineland roots rather than the latter terms that were not as accurate, especially because most of the Amish and Mennonites were not German but Swiss. Only because of varying editorial policies in America, the American Folklife Institute will use both terms.
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MENNONITE ONE-ROOM SCHOOLHOUSES OF THE WENGER SECT AT KUTZTOWN.
Pleasant Hill (pictured above) was the first schoolhouse built on a knoll, just east of the first meeting house.
Oak Haven (located west of Weaver’s Hardware Store)
Hidden Valley (located northwest of Topton)
Willow Creek (located northwest of Fleetwood)
Sunny Meadow (located west of Topton)
White Oak Ridge (located north of Walnutown)
All of the one-room schoolhouses have traditional bell towers and chimneys for their self-contained heating stoves. The name of the school is usually marked on or above the door with homemade lettering. Each school has two outdoor privies to accommodate each sex. The girls’ privy may have stencil painted walls but the boys prefer their abode plain. Schoolyards are simple but almost always have a homemade seesaw and several swings. Ample room is provided to allow for playing of handball and to park their bikes.
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