Ursinus College Digital Commons @ Ursinus College Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine Pennsylvania Folklife Society Collection Fall 1976 Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 26, No. 1 Angus K. Gillespie Susan Stewart Mac E. Barrick Gary D. Hydinger Leonard Primiano See next page for additional authors Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/pafolklifemag Part of the American Art and Architecture Commons, American Material Culture Commons, Christian Denominations and Sects Commons, Cultural History Commons, Ethnic Studies Commons, Fiber, Textile, and Weaving Arts Commons, Folklore Commons, Genealogy Commons, German Language and Literature Commons, Historic Preservation and Conservation Commons, History of Religion Commons, Linguistics Commons, and the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits oy u. Recommended Citation Gillespie, Angus K.; Stewart, Susan; Barrick, Mac E.; Hydinger, Gary D.; Primiano, Leonard; Winkler, Louis; and Baker, Gordon C., "Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 26, No. 1" (1976). Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine. 71. https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/pafolklifemag/71 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Pennsylvania Folklife Society Collection at Digital Commons @ Ursinus College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Pennsylvania Folklife Magazine by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Ursinus College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Authors Angus K. Gillespie, Susan Stewart, Mac E. Barrick, Gary D. Hydinger, Leonard Primiano, Louis Winkler, and Gordon C. Baker This book is available at Digital Commons @ Ursinus College: https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/pafolklifemag/71 AUTUMN 1976 A Country School ....--Contributors to this Issue-..... DR. ANGUS K. GILLESPIE, New Brunswick, New Jersey, is a member of the American Civilization department at Douglass College, Rutgers University, New Brunswick. A native of Virginia, he re­ ceived his doctorate in American Studies at the University of Pennsyl­ vania, on the contribution of George Korson to folklore scholar­ ship in the United States. Dr. Gillespie is Director of the New Jersey Folk Festival held annually in April at Rutgers University. Several of his articles, on almanac illustrations and tombstone decoration, have appeared in Pennsylvania Folklife. SUSAN STEWART, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is a native of Stewartstown. York County, Pennsylvania, and at present a candidate for the Ph.D. degree in Folklore and Folklife at the University of Pennsylvania. A previous article, on quilting among Brethren Church women in Pennsylvania, appeared in Pennsylvania Folklife. DR. MAC E. BARRICK, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, teaches Spanish language and literature at Shippensburg State College, Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. A member of the Editorial Committee of Pennsylvania Folkl((e, he has contributed a distinguished series of articles to our pages. Most of them, including the article in this issue on moonshining, were researched in Dr. Barrick's home area of Cumberland County. GARY D. HYDINGER, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is a native of the Midwest now studying in the Graduate Folklore and Folk­ life Program at the University of Pennsylvania. His paper in this issue was prepared for a seminar in Pennsylvania German History and Ethnography. LEONARD PRIMIANO, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is a student at the University of Pennsylvania. His paper, on student life at Marshall and Franklin and Marshall Colleges, institutions of learning set up by the Reformed Church in the United States, was done in connection with the seminar in Pennsylvania German History and Ethnography. DR. LOUIS D. WINKLER, State College, Pennsylvania, is pro­ fessor of astronomy at the Pennsylvania State University. His series on Pennsylvania German Astronomy and Astrology has been supported in part by grants from the American Philosophical Society and the Pennsylvania State University. GORDON C. BAKER, Rockville, Maryland, is a native of Western Pennsylvania, and a member of the Stewart Clan of which he writes in this issue. Family Reunions were once, and in some areas still are, important institutions for the reinforcement of personal, family and ethnic identity in rural Pennsylvania. The illustrations for the article, including the open air group photographs of the reunion participants, are part of the author's collection. EDITOR: FALL 1976, Vol. XXVI, No.1 Dr. Don Yoder ASSISTA T EDITOR: Dr. William Parsons Contents EDITOR IAL COMMITTEE: Dr. Mac E. Barrick 2 Pennsylvania Folk Festivals in the 1930's Dr. Henry Glassie Dr. John A. Hostetler ANGUS K. GILLESPIE Dr. David J. Hufford Dr. Phil Jack 12 Rational Powwowing: An Examination of Dr. Hilda A. Kring Choice among Medical Alternatives in Rural Dr. Earl F. Robacker York County, Pennsylvania Dr. Alta Schrock SUSAN STEWART FOLK FESTIVAL DI RECTO R: Mark R. Eaby, Jr. 18 Memories of a Moonshiner FOLK FEST IVAL P UBLIC RELATIONS: MAC E . BARRICK Peg Zecher 25 The Pennsylvania Germans: Folklife Studies SUBSCRIPTIONS: from Autobiographical Sources Doris E. Stief GARY D. HYDINGER PENNSYLVANIA FOLKLIFE, Summer 1976, Vol. 26, No. pub­ 34 Student Life at a Pennsylvania Dutch College lished five times a year by the Penn­ LEONARD PRIMIANO sylvania Folklife Society, Inc., Lan­ caster, Pennsylvania. $1.50 for 39 Pennsylvania German Astronomy & Astrology single copies; Autumn, Winter, XIII: Health and the Heavens Spring and Summer. $1.00 for Folk Festival Supplement. Yearly sub­ LOUIS WINKLER scription $7.00. 44 A Traditional Family Reunion MSS AND PHOTOGRAPHS: GORDON C. BAKER The Editor will be glad to consider MSS and photographs sent with a 48 Roads, Ferries, Fords and Bridges: view to publication. When unsuit­ able, and if accompanied by return Folk-Cultural Questionnaire No. 45 postage, every care will be exercised toward their return, although no responsibility for their safety is as­ sumed. Editorial correspondence: Contributors Dr. Don Yoder, Logan Hall, (Inside front cover) Box 13, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19174. Folk Festival correspondence: COVER: College Blvd. and Vine, Kutztown, Pennsylvania 19530. The cover illustration, "A Country School, " drawn by W. 1. Hennessy and engraved by H. Harral, appeared Folk Festival public relations: Peg Zecher, 717 N. Swarthmore Ave., in the illustrated weekly, Every Saturday, August 12, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania 1908 I. 1871. It will bring back memories to those Pennsylvanians Subscription, business correspondence: who received their schooling in the one-room, eight­ Box 1053, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. grade schools that used to dot our countryside. Several Contents copyrighted. sectarian groups, including the Old Order Amish, are preserving neighborhood schools of this type. Entered as second class matter at Lancaster . Pa. Pennsylvania Folk Festivals in the 1930's By ANGUS K. GILLESPIE "It is not surprising that piety for the past should be ing as a reporter and columnist for the Allentown a Pennsylvania trait and the upholding of tradition one Chronicle and News. During the 1920's Korson had of the customs of the commonwealth. " collected the folklore of the anthracite miners in north­ -Edwin Valentine Mitchell' eastern Pennsylvania. In the early 1930's he continued to observe Pennsylvania folkways in the area around Many of us look forward every year to the Kutz­ Allentown to supply ideas for his column. With his town Folk Festival as a time near the Fourth of July knowledge of folklore and a keen sense of timing, which we set aside for a celebration. For us it is not Korson founded and directed the Pennsylvania Folk just the largest regional folk festival in the United States, Festival in Allentown. It is difficult to make an exact it is also a time to escape from work and get together historical reconstruction of how this Festival came into with old friends, to make new friends, and to have a being. It was due to a favorable combination of cir­ good time. 2 Occasionally when we see the advertising cumstances which Korson recognized. The year was "Kutztown Folk Festival, 1950-1976" we may reflect on 1935 and it was the right moment to take action. No the origins of the Festival in the early 1950's. If we one was better prepared by background or tempera­ take the trou!)le to look into the matter a bit further ment than Korson to launch this enterprise. we may learn that in the year 1950 three college pro­ The thirties were marked by the Great Depression fessors from Franklin and Marshall College - Alfred and the New Deal. The rapid pace of change frightened L. Shoemaker, J. William Frey, and Don Yoder - many people because it seemed almost revolutionary. founded the Festival. 3 But the real origins of the Festi­ Writers and intellectuals were often so disappointed by val go back not to the 1950's, but to the 1930's. It the failure of capitalism that they turned to Marxist was during the 1930's that Pennsylvania's own George writing and proletarian fiction. Marxist critics tended Korson, noted folklorist from the anthracite region, to praise only that work which endorsed left-wing launched the Pennsylvania Folk Festivals at Bucknell change. However, at the same time there was another University and at Allentown. In this article we shall group of thinkers who were involved with what Van examine the historical origins of these early festivals Wyck Brooks has called "the search for a usable past."4 and try to suggest some of the reasons why the 1930's This group believed that it was insufficient to find fault constituted a favorable period for putting the idea of with American culture because of a supposedly bad a folk festival into action. tradition. They believed that it was necessary to find The year was 1935. Franklin D. Roosevelt was in a new tradition, or at least reinterpret the old one. his first term of office. That year saw the passage of Korson was a member of this second group. He was the Federal Social Security Act and the creation of looking for the values, customs, and traditions of an the Resettlement Administration and the National earlier and simpler America.