PENNSBURGH, PENN. - When young Joshua Schultz used a word that was "too big for his britches" in an assignment at Pennsylvania's Goschenhoppen School in 1826, his teacher responded with a note asking the student to provide a source for his mystery word.

While the boy's word, "absumptasunt," created a bit of mystery for his skeptical teacher in that early American classroom, the teacher's note was the final piece of a modern-day puzzle for author Dennis K. Moyer.

Discovered between the pages of Joshua's ciphering book during Moyer's research for Fraktur Writings and Folk Art Drawings of the Schwenkfelder Library Collection, the signed note enable the author to identify the teacher as Samuel Schultz. Since the Goschenhoppen School's register listed no teacher's names after 1821, the note was the only clue that led Moyer to the name of the talented writer and artist responsible for the decorative folk art drawings and fancy lettering he hand found in the Library's archives on the pages of many Nineteenth Century student's workbooks.

Samuel Schultz, however, is just one of the many previously unknown writers/artists uncovered in Moyer's book, which introduces to the public for the first time the breadth and variety of the fraktur collection at the Schwenkfelder Library in Pennsburg.

Drawn from the library's 1,000-plus works - one of the largest collections of fraktur in the United States - the 320-page volume features more than 250 color photographs of this Pennsylvania German folk art, reminiscent of the illuminated religious manuscripts of the Middle Ages.

Fraktur Writings and Folk Art Drawings focuses on works completed from 1750 to 1850 by schoolteachers, students and everyday people in the southeastern Pennsylvania religious community of German immigrants known as Schwenkfelders. Fraktur Writings and Folk Art Drawings defines the distinctive style of Schwenkfelder writers/ artists. These artists, like Samuel Schultz, often used bright colors, elaborate pen work and familiar bird and flower motifs. But there were also artists who used pastels instead, along with images like the dragon heads, fish and human figures that Schultz added to his student's ciphering books with flourishes of his pen. Through attention to detail and composition, several Schwenkfelder writer/artists refined fraktur, traditionally considered folk art, to the point where it approached fine art.

Of course, the Schwenkfelders didn't live in isolation in the 1700s and 1800s. Fraktur was being produced by members of the region's other denominations - German Reformed, Lutheran and Mennonite. Through the books' examination of those artists' motifs and style characteristics, Moyer shows how the different religions influenced each other's folk art with borrowed motifs and other elements adapted to their own styles.

Fraktur came to America from Europe, where important writings, both religious and secular, were decorated with fancy lettering, as well as the occasional addition of borders and drawings. This "illumination" of manuscripts was practiced for centuries. Originally the term for only the fancy, formal "broken lettering" found in these texts produced in Europe and early America, "fraktur" came to include the manuscripts themselves - with their messages, different kinds of script, letters and design elements.

The illuminated manuscripts of the Pennsylvania Germans were produced from about 1750 to 1850. For the most part, Pennsylvania German fraktur writers/artists used ink and watercolor for their drawings, and their texts were religious. Design elements included stars, hearts, fan-shaped flowers, six-pointed stars and palmettes, along with feathered letters and intricate multiple borders. Depending on the writer/artist, some fraktur were drawn freehand, others with a compass or protractor and straight edge or ruler. These simple tools combined with a sharp imagination often resulted in intricate designs.

In the 1770s, most fraktur of the Mennonites and Schwenkfelders looked like formal European manuscripts, with an emphasis on pen work and interlacing texts. This formality began to disappear in the 1780s when color was used more generously and the restraints of pen work gave way to exuberant free-hand drawings of birds, flowers and other decorative devices. By the 1790s, the "golden age" of fraktur had dawned, with spontaneity and robust design flourishing through the mid-1830s - this was the most imaginative and creative period of fraktur production.

Since most fraktur was produced in the schools, Fraktur Writings and Folk Art Drawings examines the role that education played in the development of this Pennsylvania German folk art. The most common writers/ artists were teachers like Schultz, and it was in school that the highest quality work was produced Testimony to this quality are the book's examples of Vorschrift - generally a religious or moral text written in several letter and writing styles followed by examples of upper and lower case alphabets and numbers. This form of fraktur was produced by teachers as gifts for their students at the end of the school term to reward and inspire them.

The book also included fraktur and folk art in the form of birth certificates, book plates, manuscript pages and drawings, as well as house blessings and valentines.

While the publication of Fraktur Writings and Folk art Drawings is significant simply because it makes available to anyone the beauty of this long lost art form, it also provides scholars, collectors and folk art enthusiasts the opportunity to study the library's collection and compare its works with others.

Donald A.Shelley, PhD., art historian and president emeritus of the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Mich., has written of the book's significance, "The introduction to the public of such a rich cultural resource as the Schwenkfelder Library Fraktur Collection can only be compared to the debut of a bright new `star' upon the stage of early American decorative arts."

Today most collectors and folk art enthusiasts are drawn to fraktur for the decorative motifs that surround its text. But for Schwenkfelder writers/artists, those motifs only enhanced the raison d'etre of the work - its message. These messages were written and decorated as expressions of devotion to God and a study of this art of the common people is a study of the moral and ethical principles that drove their lives.

By demonstrating the priorities of those early Pennsylvania Germans, fraktur reflects America's roots. And by sharing his meticulous research in Fraktur Writings and Folk Art Drawings, Moyer reflects on the reasons why these exuberant works have become known as "masterpieces of American folk art."

As a boy growing up in the Upper Perkiomen Valley, the heart of southeastern Pennsylvania's Schwenkfelder country, Dennis K. Moyer was interested in items that document the life of the early Pennsylvania Germans in the United States. He began attending auctions with his parents when he was ten, and remembers using his allowance to buy his first antique, a coffee grinder.

A student of the folk art of the Pennsylvania Germans for four decades, he researched Fraktur Writings and Folk Art Drawings of the Schwenkfelder Library Collection for more than a decade.

His original interest in fraktur led him to research at the Schwenkfelder Library where he was so captivated with its resources that he began working there as a volunteer. That, in turn, led to a staff position, and Moyer served as the library's director from 1983 to 1996.

A descendant of Hans Heinrich Yeakel, a Schwenkfelder who immigrated to the United States in 1734, Moyer lives with his wife and daughter in an old stone farmhouse in Zionsville, Pennsylvania, that was built by one of his ancestors in the late 1700s.

Fraktur Writings and Folk Art Drawings of the Schwenkfelder Library Collection was published by The Pennsylvania German Society in Kutztown, Penn., and the Swenkfelder Library in Pennsburg. The 320-page hardcover book has 250 color photographs and 50 in black and white, and costs $65.