|
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.
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
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.
|
|
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 Palatines; 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.
|
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.
|
|
DENTON FEICK’S HISTORIC DEISHER HOMESTEAD AT KUTZTOWN
By
Richard H. Shaner
Living in Kutztown with its many versatile citizens, one tends to take for granted local inhabitants
whom you see every day, like my breakfast acquaintance, Denton W. Feick (Denny), who I would meet at the Quality Shoppe downtown.
But unless you go beyond the usual morning greetings, you never really get to know the man's interesting lifestyle and meaningful
importance to the community.
Sharing mutual interests, I did not know we had, this winter Denton brought historic
Kutztown photographs over to my 1804 Kutztown Town Crier's House to record for the American Folklife Institute. I enjoyed
showing him our Georgian townhouse outfitted with local antiques, some of which I acquired from local antique dealer Ed Bieber
who lived down the road from Feick’s historic Deisher farmstead.
Casually, we talked about the old days when he and
other friends stopped off at Bieber’s mill-farm to help him and have a refreshing bottle of beer in the summertime. When I
got married in 1970, Ed Bieber and friends surprised my wife and me with an old PA Dutch "Bull Band" serenade, complete with
wooden box upon which a plank was drawn across to make the bull sound.
Ed himself was striking a huge circular saw
blade to make the rhythm as they walked down the hill at the Oley Forge mansion where we lived. A close friend of Ed Bieber
too, when Denny Feick married Marjorie Ferguson, Ed Bieber secretly tied sleigh bells to the underside of his wedding bed
box springs to make a loud noise! Denny and Ed Bieber were as Dutch as you can be; both had farms and loved collecting antiques.
But
I did not know until recently how historic Denny’s Deisher farm (Arrowhead Stables) was at the edge of town beyond College
Boulevard. Most local history buffs know that the Deisher farm fields were where we discovered multiple valuable Indian burial
artifacts in the early 1900’s. According to Berks historian, Robert Montgomery, hundreds of Indians may have had burial gravesites
there in the field with the artifacts of their primitive life in Maxatawny Township. On the west side of College Boulevard,
there is a 1938 tall stone family monument to mark the 1741 pioneer farming land of Johannes (1680-1761) and Barbara (Siegfried)
Deisher who are buried there themselves in unmarked graves, in the farm field.
It is not unusual to find Indian tools,
artifacts, and hunting points beneath this fresh plowed ground. And that's exactly what descendent Henry K. Deisher did in
the early 1900’s collecting a rare assortment of major anthropological Indian specimens to open a museum in his home in Kutztown.
Together with other Kutztonians so very many aboriginal artifacts were unearthed, Henry's major collection of rare Indian
artifacts were acquired by the prestigious state museum at Harrisburg, PA!
However, because of the kindness of Kutztown's
first settlers toward the peaceful Indians, a tribesman named "Knee Buckle" remained here long after his clan left Maxatawny.
On the adjacent Deisher farm to Johan Deisher, a French Huguenot, Denny Feick and his wife, continue to preserve the historic
Deisher buildings of the early American period.
Horses reminiscent of a bygone era freely roam in the meadow protected
by the shade of "Deisher's Baerrick," (mountain). There, an abandoned 1939 tree lined dirt road from the 1930’s still leads
up the hill to memories of Kutztown’s yesterday. When Denton's father, Willis bought the farm in the Depression years, Denny
helped farm it with horses. Following a plow horse, one could not help but notice the numerous arrowheads and artifacts unearthed
by horse and plow.
But, the focal point of Denny’s farmstead is the large and comfortable Deisher Georgian stone mansion
which is below the Swiss bank barn, but not as far as the ever flowing spring which may have been why Indians had originally
made this spot their village home or campsite; a quiet place of rural reverence, hidden away from today’s noisy campus life
of modern Kutztown University.
Georgian Colonial architecture was employed by our early settlers whose perseverance
in successful farming amassed them enough wealth; they could hire a master carpenter to build themselves a home of the finest
Colonial fashion. Built possibly in the 1780's, the historic pedimented doorway to the Deisher residence is flanked by two
beaded pilasters and carved sunbursts leading up to a pedimented arched fanlight crowned by a carved key¬stone. The criss-crossed
mullions of the fanlight admitted sunlight into the formal mansion hallway trimmed with chair rails along its historic walls.
Although the gable-end wall of the mansion nearest the road was built later and has later ribbon pointing on its
stone masonry, the original rear wall facing the eternal flowing Indian spring, which also supplies Denny with drinking water,
has earlier "V" masonry pointing.
The rear stone addition to the mansion has a walk-in fireplace for cooking, but this
addition may have originally been made of logs. The early raised front panel doors of the mansion and rear wing are backed
with interior wide boards hung on early wrought iron hinges the width of the doors, possibly reinforced from the danger of
a few marauding Indians left after the American Revolution.
Deep stone masoned interior window sills held antiques
or some family Feick heirlooms. Denny's grandfather, Wellington W. Feick, had a bushy mustache just like villager Henry K.
Deisher, and operated the Feed mill on Railroad Street in Kutztown and Denny had his original antique mustache cup in a place
of honor in the formal dining room with a built-in early corner cupboard and Georgian mantel fireplace.
Outside, in
the backyard of the house, an early combination bake-oven and smokehouse had still served the needs of the early Deisher family;
the bake oven iron door was actually cast at Kutztown's foundry. Nearby a large frame butcher and wash house with hand hewn
rafters was used for Denny’s family to make their scrapple or process meats.
As I approached Denny’s Swiss bank barn
(with barn stars or hex signs), the forebay in front had an interesting paved brick apron on the ground in front of the Dutch
stable doors, running the length of the barn. Denny explained that many years ago when Kutztown pulled up the old trolley
car tracks on Main Street, the brick between the tracks were salvaged by some of the Feick family. These old worn brick made
a wonderful brick walkway below the forebay of the barn in front of all the Dutch stabled doorways.
Having a linear
look, laid end to end, these trolley car
track bricks have an early Colonial look, very practical to clean. I recalled
that a waitress at Scott's Quality Shoppe in town had boarded her horse (Sterling) at Feick's farm. Since horses spill or
do not chew their oats or food efficiently, Denny had Bantam chickens roaming freely in the stable area and the barnyard foraging.
A traditionally large pile of manure from the winter months was in the barnyard waiting to be spread on fields.
Spring
was just beginning the day I went to see Denny Feick, and wild dandelion was about to appear from beneath random piles of
drifted snow for wide eyed hens and roosters with great expectations; hens perhaps hiding their nests of eggs like we used
to have them do in the stables before we had chicken coops. Perhaps this was the origin of ancient PA Dutch Easter folklore,
when housewives and Dutch children had to hunt for these nests of eggs wherever they could be found!
I bid Denny good-bye
and thanked him for the historic Deisher tour, and was confident that he and his wife would continue to preserve our historic
material heritage at Kutztown, a proud part of the American Culture and folklife.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Denton Feick and
the Kutztown Historical Society's book, Along the Saucony, about Henry K. Deisher and Kutztown's early Indian artifact enthusiasts.
|
The
early Deisher brick arched 19th Century bake oven with adjoining smokehouse compartment on the left, has an iron hearth door
cast by the Kutztown Foundry.
|
|
