Early Works on Paper
BIRTH RECORD FOR HANA OBERHOLTZER
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  • David Cordier (dates unknown)
  • Probably Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
  • 1816
  • Watercolor and ink on paper
  • 7 3/4 x 12 1/4 in.
  • American Folk Art Museum, gift of Ralph Esmerian, 2005.8.34
  • Although the term Taufschein technically refers to birth and baptismal certificates, in common usage they also comprise records that list only births. Groups that did not baptize infants, such as the Mennonites, naturally still had the need to commission such records. That is surely the case with David Cordier’s birth record for Hana Obertholtzer. “Oberholtzer” is a Mennonite surname, enshrined in American life as Old Overholt, a whiskey initially made by a member of this family. The eight faces on Hana’s record (two of them in birds’ bodies, a mythological reference to apotheosis) emphasize the secularity in which these documents thrived, even with religious poems on them.
  • Photo © 2000 John Bigelow Taylor, New York