Description
Book SynopsisThe family register holds a distinctive place in American visual culture. Used to record marriages and offspring within a family through several generations, it also incorporates hand-illuminated decorative art. This study explores Pennsylvania German family registers and their place in American social, religious, and cultural traditions.
Trade Review“Corinne and Russell Earnest, experts on fraktur, have produced a lovely book filled with color and black and white examples of family registers, both hand-drawn and printed.”
—Jack Brubaker Lancaster New Era
“The numerous illustrations with substantive captions, a grouping of which appears in color, add significantly to creating an understanding and appreciation for the registers. An appendix of artists and scriveners who worked in the family register format, a short chronology of dates associated with the development of registers, and a glossary of terms both used in describing and found upon the registers are all welcome resources included in the book.”
—Michael S. Showalter Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage
“To the Latest Posterity possesses broad appeal because it combines the interests of the art enthusiast, the calligrapher, the genealogist, and the historian.”
—Pennsylvania Heritage
“This comprehensive study explores the world of printed family registers beginning with roots in Europe where information was almost solely limited to baptismal and other records of state church, and extending through several centuries in Pennsylvania to the present day Amish community in which family registers continue to be designed. . . . The volume contains an exceptional array of thirty-seven color plates, illustrating the six forms of Pennsylvania-German family registers. Also included are twenty-nine black and white illustrations. . . . This publication is an important and well-researched addition to Pennsylvania German studies. . . . The publication of this instructive and colorful volume, the first comprehensive documentation of this previously unappreciated Pennsylvania-German family register tradition, splendidly culminates their years of dedicated research.”
—Mary Jane Ledarach Hershey Mennonite Quarterly Review
“This volume is well illustrated with sixty-seven black-and-white or color examples. Each illustration is well captioned and sourced and includes an additional paragraph of explanatory information. . . . This book can be enjoyed by anyone interested in Pennsylvania German culture, folk art, or family history.”
—June Lloyd Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
“To the Latest Posterity offers an impressive and well-documented display of a long-standing but rarely considered vernacular expressive form; as such, it will both prompt and aid future investigations.”
—Danille Christensen Lindquist Journal of Folklore Research
Table of ContentsContents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Prologue
1. Perspectives on Family Registers
2. Pennsylvania-German Family Registers and the Fraktur Tradition
3. Comparisons of Pennsylvania-German and New England Family Registers
4. Texts on Pennsylvania-German Family Registers
5. Forms of Pennsylvania-German Family Registers
Preprinted Broadside-type Family Registers with Printed Infill
Freehand Broadside-type Family Registers
Preprinted Broadside-type Family Registers with Added, Handwritten Infill
Preprinted Family Registers Bound into Bibles
Freehand Family Registers Written on Blank Pages of Bibles
Freehand Family Registers in Booklet Form
Epilogue
Appendixes
Notes
Selected References
Index
