From Jacob and Jane Zook's "Hexology":
"Originally religious refugees form the countries bordering the Rhine, these people the Amish, Mennonites, Lutherans, Reformed, Dutch Quakers, French Huegenots and other groups came to America seeking religious freedom promised by William Penn. They landed at Philadelphia and then the great majority migrated westward to Penn’s land of southeastern Pennsylvania.
From this melting pot of people, free to worship, free to work and free to create merged the homogeneous culture of the Pennsylvania Dutch. And from the culture came a true folk art.
The tulips, the lilies, the pelicans and the hearts of the folk artist were not the naturalistic flowers of the fields and birds of the land, but the images created from man’s subconscious, his love of God, and his dream of the mystical lily that blooms in all the ends of the earth. Between these symbolic designs and the literary traditions, the hymnals, the bible and the poems there existed a direct association. So then, the flowers were those that grew in the garden of Paradise.
The images were found tooled into the leather of the family bible, on taufscheine (birth certificates), on the illuminated manuscripts from the Ephrata Cloister, embroidered on linens, cast into iron stove plates and trivets, pierced into tinware, and onto the sgraffitto pottery, cut into the tombstones, painted on the dower chests and the huge bank barns.
The Amish and Mennonites and the other plain sects never had “Hex Signs” painted on their barns….
The big, beautiful, colorful, geometric design were found on the barns of the Lutherans, Reformed and other church people. The designs are made up of whirling swastikas, tear drops, stars and rosettes.
Landis Valley Farm Museum has a collection of utilitarian objects marked with the sign of the cross. Among the collection is a door latch with crosses on the handle bar supposedly to prevent the entry of the devil’s emissaries. The late Henry Landis, one the co-founders of the Museum speaking of Hex Marks as Talismans has said, “So we find today a widespread belief in hexeries, braucherei, powwows, hexa marrik, gruttafoos (witchcraft, healing without medicines, powwowing or healing by words and motions, marks placed to ward off spells, and so on). With this belief goes a profound faith in signs, symbols, and the formulas of the pow wow doctors.”
George Korson speaking of a barn in Schuylkill County said, “The barn had crudely carved crosses on the overhand and on doors leading to the stalls. They were accompanied by the phrase, “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The carvings were the work of amateur, the farmer himself perhaps, invoking the blessing of the Holy Trinity on his cattle.”
The Pennsylvania Dutch were and are a very religious people and also were and are a very superstitious people."
