AFA Autumn 2021

2021 Antiques & Fine Art 95 bookplate is decorated with an abstract face and tulip springing from a heart that is inscribed (translation): “This songbook belongs to me Martin Gottschall, written in the year 1835.” One of Samuel Gottschall’s last known fraktur is a religious text that he produced on November 18, 1835 (Fig. 6). Above the date, he inscribed it with a grim rhyme: “Bey aller deiner Freud und Lust, Gedenke dass du sterben Must” (translation): “Amid all your joy and pleasure, remember that you must die.” Samuel Gottschall was also a weaver; his account book covering the period from 1830 to 1836 survives and documents that he produced linen, tow (a coarse linen), and woolen cloth. In 1838, he gave up both teaching and weaving to embark on a new, more lucrative pursuit—milling. Samuel erected a sawmill along the Branch Creek, which flowed through a property in Franconia Township that he co-owned with his brother William Gottschall. Two years later, Samuel added a clover mill and in 1842 he built a house and barn. He evidently prospered, as in 1879 he encouraged the establishment of the Souderton Mennonite congregation and donated both a house and two rows of horse sheds to serve the meetinghouse. An earlier example of Samuel Gottschall’s work, dated 1834, was recently donated to Historic Trappe and will be on view later this year at the Center for Pennsylvania German Studies (Fig. 7). It is entitled Die Sieben Regeln Der Weisheit (The Seven Rules of Wisdom) in reference to Proverbs 9:1 “Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn out her seven pillars.” Formerly in the collection of antiquarian and author Cornelius Weygandt of Germantown, Pennsylvania, this unusual example of Samuel Gottschall’s work incorporates design motifs found in his more typical fraktur within a grid consisting of seven horizontal rows and five vertical columns. The Gottschall family produced an exceptional body of fraktur art that continues to astonish and delight viewers today. Additional examples of their work are in the collections of the American Folk Art Museum, Free Library of Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Mennonite Heritage Center in Harleysville, Pa., and the Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center in Pennsburg, Pa.  1.  On the Gottschall fraktur artists, see Mary Jane Lederach Hershey, This Teaching I Present: Fraktur from the Skippack and Salford Mennonite Meetinghouse Schools, 1747–1836 (Intercourse, Pa.: Good Books, 2003), 107–110, 112–113, 146–154, 170–171. See also Clarke Hess, Mennonite Arts (Atglen, Pa.: Schiffer Publishing, 2002), 113, 122–123. The Dietrich American Foundation and Historic Trappe’s Center for Pennsylvania German Studies will present an occasional series of articles in these pages, featuring new research on objects made in southeastern Pennsylvania from the Dietrich collection. This article is the fifth in a series featuring the Dietrich American Foundation’s collection. The Dietrich American Foundation is delighted to present these articles as a type of crowd sourcing exercise, where responses and information shared by readers can inform the research. New information gleaned will be provided over the course of the series. As is always the Foundation’s mission, we are excited to share findings and stories about people, places, and history that are revealed through our research. Contact details are in the author bio below. For information about the Dietrich American Foundation, visit dietrichamericanfoundation.org . Lisa Minardi is the executive director of Historic Trappe and a contributing author to In Pursuit of History: A Lifetime Collecting Colonial American Art and Artifacts, ed. H. Richard Dietrich III and Deborah M. Rebuck (Yale University Press for the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Dietrich American Foundation, 2019). Please send comments/queries to info@historictrappe.org.