Lead by William Penn and the Society of Friends in the late 17th century a group of eager, poor in means but rich in enthusiasim, English Quakers had made the migration from upheaval in Europe to the eastern part of Pennsylvania, With a promise of peace, religious freedom, furtile soil, and fair dealings the new settlers, who had no fear of honest, hard work begin to establish themselves.

“When, after many years, he had enough money and the opportunity to do so, he built himself a substantial welling house. Solidly established now on land, with churches build and schools running, he at last found a little time for the decorative notes of life, for that love of ornamentation which had lain dorment in him.”

By the middle of the 18th century the art of these newly rooted folk began to florish in Pennsylvania. All craftsmen were busy people in the later half of the 18th century, creating those honest, substantial objects which we can truthfully call the Folk Art of Rural Pennsylvania. But then, by the 1850’s with the pressure of the machine age, not just in Pennsylvania German Country but in almost all parts of the world, its was dead.