Folk art of my Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors

Detail from Twenty-Four Original Barn Stars, Surveys of Berks, Lehigh, Schuylkill, and Montgomery Counties. Photo: of Patrick J. Donmoyer.

One of my favorite things about learning about my ancestors is discovering ones with whom I share similar traits. For example, my 10th great-grandfather, Dirck Goris Storm, was a skilled writer who penned a history of the Old Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow, New York. Last year, I discovered a creative streak on another branch of my family tree. 

It started with a little zine from Leodrune Press that mentioned Pennsylvania Dutch folk art, particularly barn stars (often called “hex signs” by outsiders). I knew that a number of my ancestors immigrated from Germany to Pennsylvania; although some of them were Mennonites who probably wouldn’t have engaged in barn decoration, not all of them were. So, I thought it would be interesting to see if there were any barn star motifs particular to my ancestors or the places they lived. 

I quickly learned that barn-star styles are determined much more by the artist than by the family that hires someone to paint their barns. There’s a popular misconception that these stars were painted on barns to keep witches away (hence “hex signs”) and protect the livestock inside. Instead, they’re more likely inspired by celestial themes that were common among the Pennsylvania Dutch, both before and after they came to the United States. Other patterns of shapes, such as flowers and hearts, are also common. 

(That being said, farmers did hire folk magicians — practitioners of Brauche/Braucherei or “Powwow” — to bless and protect their barns and livestock, and to perform healing spells for sick cattle and other animals. Petitions written on small slips of paper were occasionally found tucked into barn walls and other places, reflecting this practice.)

John Bieber. Chest over Drawers, 1789. 01.13.18.

I didn’t find any barn stars specifically associated with my ancestors, but did find something else: An intricately carved and detailed dower chest made by one of my ancestors’ brothers and nephews. 

My 6th great-grandfather, Conrad Bieber, was born in 1725, probably in Germany. He immigrated to Pennsylvania sometime before 1743. Conrad’s father, Johannes, was also born in Germany and arrived in Pennsylvania in 1739. Conrad had a brother, Jacob, born in 1731 before the family immigrated. 

While Conrad moved to the Shenandoah Valley in the 1750s to join a Mennonite community there, along with his wife, Maria Magdalena Kneisley, Jacob remained in Pennsylvania, specifically in the Oley Hills area of Berks County, and began a woodworking business with his son, John. I knew I had ancestors from the Oley Hills area, and when I searched for the location and the name Bieber, these beautiful wooden chests popped up. 

An article in Reading Eagle about one of the chests reads, “Thinking that John or Jacob Bieber made a mistake with his compass drawing of a perpendicular hex sign, we noticed that this unusual designed chest had six edelweiss flowers sprouting from three white flat hearts on each corner of the dower chest with the elaborate tulip shaped escutcheon design in the middle. They were not barn stars, but an edelweiss flower theme which spread their flower like petals standing upright in each cheek of the flat hearts! A native Rhineland symbol of love used by John Bieber in the 1780s on his dower chests.”

Jacob Bieber, Johann Bieber. Chest over Drawers, 1776. 01.24.22.

A very similar chest is in the Barnes Foundation Collection in Philadelphia. Another similar one, made for Magdalena Leabelsperger, is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. (I have a 6th great-grandmother named Magdalena Lionsberger, but her birth and death dates are different from the ones associated with this chest). The Barnes collection also has this Bieber chest, which has some different motifs but is clearly from the same makers. 

Although I’ve never been a woodworker, seeing this level of artistry and skill makes my heart glad. It’s an honor — and also reassuring — to know I come from people who enjoyed making beautiful things with their hands. 

The Storms of Sleepy Hollow

Philipsburg Manor, Sleepy Hollow, New York, photographed by Daderot in 2005, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

One branch of my family tree includes many folks who were among the first settlers of the legendary town of Sleepy Hollow in New York. Even better, their family name was Storm. 

A side note before we get started: Sleepy Hollow wasn’t always called Sleepy Hollow. The little village north of Tarrytown was most often called North Tarrytown from its incorporation in the late 19th century until 1996, when it officially changed its name, staking its claim to the Washington Irving story. 

One of my earliest ancestors to settle in Sleepy Hollow (in Haudenosaunee territory) was my 10th great-grandfather, Dirck Goris (or Gorisszen) Storm. He was born in 1630 in Leiden, in the Netherlands. He married Maria van Montfoort in 1655, and they had a son, my 9th great-grandfather, Gregoris Storm, in 1656. The family, including two other children, traveled to North America in 1662; Maria gave birth to a daughter during the journey. 

Before arriving in North America, Storm had served as the Town Clerk for Oss, in the Netherlands. When they arrived by boat -- at the foot of Wall Street in Manhattan -- Storm became involved in local affairs right away. He owned property, including a tavern on Beaver Street, and later served as Town Clerk for communities in Brooklyn. In 1670 he became Secretary of the Colony. In 1691 the British sent him north to Tappan, where he became the first Secretary and Clerk of the Sessions for Orange County, New York. Later that decade, Dirck and Maria were recorded as members of the Old Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow, not long after the church was built. 

The Old Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow, built in the 1690s and seen here in a postcard from 1907.

He was also a skilled writer, and the church members asked him to write the history of the church, dating back to 1697. His book, Het Notite Boeck der Christelyckes Kercke op de Manner of Philips Burgh, offers a rare look at early colonial life. He died in 1716, and is buried in Sleepy Hollow. 

The original village was quite small, with several large and active families that sometimes intermarried. My Storm ancestors married Van Tassels at least three times: Pieter Storm, son of Dirck, married Margaret Van Tassel in 1696, and Elizabeth Storm married Lt. Cornelius Van Tassel in 1756. A third marriage played a small role in one of the spookiest stories of all time.  

Sleepy Hollow was well established by 1820 when Washington Irving -- who had lived in nearby Tarrytown and socialized in Sleepy Hollow -- wrote his famous short story about the Headless Horseman. The character of Katrina Van Tassel was inspired by a flesh-and-blood daughter of the Van Tassel family. Although historians believe the actual girl was Eleanor Van Tassel; her aunt, Catriena, inspired the name. Eleanor’s grandparents were Jacob Van Tassel and Aeltie Alberts Storm. They married in 1724 in the First Reformed Church of Tarrytown. 

Dirck Goris Storm’s descendants remained in and around Sleepy Hollow for generations. Gregoris lived in North Tarrytown much of his life and is also buried in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery. Likewise his son, Derck Storm, who was born in 1695 and died in about 1762. His son, Hendrick, was born in 1709 and lived until 1793; his son, Gregorus, was born in 1731, baptised in North Tarrytown, and lived until 1807. Most or all have headstones in Sleepy Hollow. (So does Washington Irving.) 

The latter Gregorus Storm and his wife, Jannitje Williams, had at least three children, including my 5th great-grandmother, Mary Storms, who was born in 1760 in Haverstraw, just up the Hudson River (and on the other bank) from Sleepy Hollow. It’s unclear to me why she went by Storms instead of Storm; her brothers, Jacobus and Johannis, didn’t. Mary married Joseph Allison in 1781 and they had 11 children together. Mary died in 1829. The Allison lineage carried down to my grandmother, Frances Allison Nesbitt, whose middle name comes from that line. 

As with the other ancestors I’ve written about, I’d love to visit Sleepy Hollow, walk the streets they may have walked, visit their bones at the Sleepy Hollow cemetery, and find out just how haunted the village really is.

The Mennonites of Massanutten in the Shenandoah Valley

The White House, built in 1760, photographed in 1929. Built by my sixth great-grandfather, Martin Kauffman Jr., for Mennonite services.

My family tree is (perhaps oddly) full of religious leaders. 

One of my grandfathers was a Southern Baptist preacher, the other a traveling evangelist. My fourth great-grandfather, Robert Frazier Jones, was a Methodist minister who built his own log church outside Atlanta in the early 1800s. 

And several of my ancestors were Mennonites whose parents fled persecution in Europe. These families started out in the Mennonite community in Pennsylvania and ultimately moved south to Luray, Virginia, where they created a Mennonite settlement in the Shenandoah Valley. They included the reverends John Roads, Martin Kauffman, Sr. and Martin Kauffman, Jr. 

Four married couples, my sixth great-grandparents, were among these settlers of the valley next to Massanutten, a mountain named by the indigenous people of the area, most likely the Algonquins. Among them were Joseph Roads and Mary Strickler; Abraham Brubaker and Barbara Miller; Conrad Bieber and Maria Magdalena Kniesley; and Martin Kaufmann, Jr., and Mary Lionberger. 

Their great-granddaughter (and my third great-grandmother), Rebecca Roads, was born in Luray and moved to Licking County, Ohio, where she married my third great-grandfather, Isaiah Winegarner, in 1831. 

Joseph’s father, John Roads, was born in Switzerland in 1712 and immigrated to the U.S. when he was in his early teens. He married Eve Catherine Albright, whose parents were from the village of Gamburg, Germany, and they were among the first settlers of the “Massanutting Colony,” which was established in 1726 or 1727 in Luray. Although the majority of these early settlers were Mennonites, a few were Lutherans or Calvinists, according to the Spring 1994 issue of the Shenandoah Mennonite Historian newsletter. 

The journey could not have been easy. “The Massanutten settlers pushed a hundred miles beyond the Potomac and the frontier settlements into the heart of the wilderness, where they could expect no aid from their friends in Pennsylvania nor from the Virginians across the mountains,” Harry Miller Strickler, one of my distant cousins, wrote in his book Massanutten, Settled by the Pennsylvania Pilgrim, 1726.

“When those Swiss pioneers located this spot they found scenery not unlike their own beautiful Alps in Switzerland, not so sublime probably, not so awe-inspiring perhaps, beautiful scenery nevertheless -- ‘God-like scenery for God-like men for God-like purposes.’ The scenery is too beautiful, and too much like Heaven must be to be described by the most facile pen. So I will not attempt it, but advise you to go and see it for yourself,” Strickler wrote.

There were undoubtedly indigenous tribes living in the area at the time who were, at the very least, displaced by the new settlers. And more settlers kept coming. By 1758 there were at least 39 Mennonite families in the area, including my 6th great-grandparents. Strickler was born in the community. Brubaker was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and had moved to Luray by 1750. Miller, too, was living in the settlement by 1750. Bieber and Kniesley were married in Berks County, Pennsylvania, and arrived at Massanutten in 1756. Kauffman was born in Lancaster and came to the settlement before 1740, when he was still a young child. Lionberger was born in nearby Hawksbill Creek, and was living in Massanutten by 1760.  

Both Joseph’s and Martin’s fathers became important religious leaders in the nascent Mennonite Church. But Joseph’s family suffered a significant tragedy. In August of 1764, historians say, eight “Indians” and a white man, who some claimed was Simon Girty, attacked the Roads homestead. They were likely looking for money, as John had quite a bit hidden in a niche in the cellar wall. John and Eva were both killed, along with six of their children; Joseph and six others survived. The attackers set fire to the homestead, destroying it, but the hidden cache of money survived. 

This information comes from A History of Shenandoah County, Virginia, by John W. Wayland, written in 1927, and there’s a similar account in Strickler’s book. While it’s widely accepted that several members of the Roads family died on the same date in 1764, I can’t speak to the accuracy of the details. 

Another view of the White House.

Martin Kauffman, Jr., built a two-story house he called the White House -- because of its white-washed stucco exterior -- in about 1760. The building was used for Mennonite services for many years. In 1770 a new religious man arrived: John Koontz, a Baptist who converted many of the Mennonites to his faith, including Martin Kauffman, Jr. 

When the Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, the Mennobaptist community split; traditionally, Mennonites are pacifists who don’t support war. “Martin Kauffman, having first been a Mennonite ... retained most of their principles after he became a Baptist. These principles caused a division in the White House Church during the Revolutionary War, and Kauffman became the minister of a small number who did not believe in ‘slavery, war, or oaths,’” according to Strickler’s book.

Martin Jr. and many others created a new church, the Mennonite Separate Independent Baptist Church, resuming services at the White House. He also petitioned the General Assembly of Virginia for a military exemption similar to the one given to Quakers and traditional Mennonites, but the petition was denied. 

The separatist church began to disintegrate, but Martin Jr. and some of his followers moved away from the Shenandoah Valley, starting a new community called New Lancaster (now simply Lancaster) in Fairfield County, Ohio. His White House remains standing in Luray, and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2013. And my Winegarner ancestors -- dating back to Isaiah Winegarner and Rebecca Roads -- have been in Ohio for generations. 

While this group of Mennonites eventually led to the birth of my great-great paternal grandfather, Cyphus Winegarner, others descended from the same community are also found in my paternal great-grandmother’s line. Blanche Barr, who married Cyphus’ son, William Winegarner, is descended from Mary Strickler, who was part of the Shenandoah Valley Strickler clan, and from David Pence and Barbara Ruffner, whose families also lived in the Massanutten colony. It’s clear that the folks who left the colony remained close after relocating to Ohio, intermingling and marrying for at least a couple more generations. 

I have never been to Virginia, but would love to visit the area my ancestors lived. In addition to the White House, there’s some indication that a few of the other original homesteads are still around, possibly including Hope Farm, which was built on the land where the Roads family was burned. Those who were killed in that incident were buried near the banks of the Shenandoah River, just downhill from the house. I hope their spirits are at peace.

The Nesbitts of Berwickshire and County Down

My grandmother, Frances Nesbitt, was born in November of 1908 to Frederick Nesbitt and Louise Howell. But I didn’t learn until I was an adult that Nesbitt was the name of a longstanding Scottish clan with a lot of history behind it. 

The name is associated with the lands near Edrom in Berwickshire, Scotland, close to the English-Scottish border. Historians believe the name may have come from a geographical feature in this area; “nese” means “nose” in Middle English, while “bit” means “mouthful,” “piece of ground,” or possibly “bend.” The family name dates back to at least 1160, when William de Nesbite was listed as a witness to a charter by Patrick, Earl of Dunbar to Coldingham Priory.

The Nesbitts established two fortified houses in the 12th century, East Nisbet and West Nisbet. East Nisbet, now known as Allanbank, was located on the Blackadder Water near Allanton, although the original tower no longer exists. West Nisbet remains, and was extended in the 1630s to form the bulk of the present house, located in the Scottish borders. 

(There’s also a Nesbitt Castle in Zimbabwe, which was built in the 20th century by Theodore Albert Edward Holdengarde and then restored by Digby Nesbitt, a businessman from southeastern Zimbabwe.)

Nesbitts have two clan tartans, a primary one and one for dancing/performance, plus a badge that features a boar and the phrase “I byd it,” meaning “I endure.”

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Nesbitts pepper Scottish history, participating in the wars of Scottish independence and the Scottish civil war. Alexander Nisbet wrote a definitive book on the history of heraldry. His son, Philip, was knighted; he was later captured in battle and executed in Glasgow in 1646. Two other sons, Alexander and Robert were killed in the Scottish civil war. In the 1700s, some Nesbitt families moved to Ireland, and later to North America. 

My ancestors were part of this migration. I can trace my grandmother’s lineage back to what is now Northern Ireland; her grandfather, James Corry Nesbitt (that’s him with the tartans, above), was born in November of 1847 in Clanmaghery, a village in Tyrella, Ireland, and came to the U.S. in 1866, when he was 19. He moved to Ohio, where he met and married Elizabeth Woollard in 1880. According to the 1880 census, he and Lizzie lived at 260 East Town Street in Columbus, Ohio, and he worked as a dry goods retailer. The 1900 census shows James and Lizzie living with her parents at 247 East Broad Street in Columbus, and his occupation as “traveling salesman.”

Much of the 1890 census records were famously destroyed in a fire in 1921, but in those intervening years James and Lizzie had at least one child, my great-grandfather, Frederick Cookman Nesbitt, born in January 1881. In 1910 James and Lizzie were still living with her parents; he’s listed as working as a “com traveler” for a “cerfiet house” (if anyone’s got guesses, please comment below). They remained living at the Broad Street house in the 1920 census, after Lizzie’s parents had died, and James was working as the treasurer of an organization; which one isn’t listed. James Corry Nesbitt died in October of 1928; Lizzie lived until March of 1948.

James’ ancestors, including his father, William Nesbitt; his grandfather, Robert Nesbitt; his great-grandfather, also William Nesbitt; and his great-great-grandfather, James Nesbitt, lived much or all of their lives in Ireland, particularly the Woodgrange area of County Down. With the elder James the trail goes cold. We don’t know when or where he was born, or when he died. His son, William, was born in 1730, ostensibly in Ireland, and died in 1798 in Woodgrange. 

James’ father, William, came to the United States for at least a couple of decades. In the 1870 census he, and his wife Margaret, are listed as living in Ward 6 of Brooklyn; his occupation is listed simply as “Laborer.” They are shown living with their daughter, Ellen, and a 21-year-old William Nesbitt, likely a nephew or grandson. In the 1880 census, he and Margaret are shown living at 89 Carroll Street in Brooklyn, still with Ellen and William. He has no occupation identified, although by that time he was nearly 70. He died in 1888 at Clanmaghery. Clanmaghery Road, now also called the A2, still runs through Tyrella today.

I have not visited these regions of Ireland, though I’ve been to several other parts. Someday I’d like to see Tyrella and Woodgrange, and walk the coast near Clanmaghery Road. I’d like to visit the remaining Nisbet House and explore Berwickshire. I wonder if it will feel familiar.