BLANKET CHEST

In 1772, Peter Manigault (1731-1773) of Charleston noticed the profound demographic shift that was sweeping the southern Backcountry. Returning from a trip to the Carolina Piedmont, Manigault noted that “the back parts of the Province have settled extremely fast…10,000 White Inhabitants…from the Northern Colonies in one Year only. They all travelled by Land, so that We upon the Sea Coast did not perceive with what Rapidity [the] Colony was increasing.” Fourteen years later, a Kentuckian observed that “it will be as practicable to turn a torrent of water backward, as to prevent the amazing emigration to this country…they are of all nations, tongues and languages, from our own country, and every part of Europe they are gathered.”

With the promise of cheap land, by 1800 the early South had become a polyglot of English Episcopalians, Pennsylvania-born Quakers, Scottish and Scots-Irish Presbyterians, French Huguenots, German Lutherans, Swiss Mennonites, Moravians, and Africans (both free and enslaved) who simultaneously clinged to their own traditions and co-mingled in a diverse culture. This blanket chest was made by Johannas Spitler, a member of the German-Swiss community that migrated from Europe to Pennsylvania and traveled down the Great Wagon Road into the in the Shenandoah Valley. With its combination of abstract and naturalistic designs executed in vibrant colors, Spitler’s chest speaks directly to his Germanic origins.