Thanks to a 2011 grant from The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), the Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center worked with the Mennonite Heritage Center and the Goschenhoppen Historians to create an online database of the Pennsylvania German textiles in their collections.

Click here to go the database for each organization:

Goschenhoppen Historians Textile Catalog

Mennonite Heritage Center Catalog

Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center Catalog

While the goal of the project was to preserve and publicize the Pennsylvania German culture, an important component of the work was to standardize description terms for the PA German textiles to use in the cataloging process. The glossary developed during the project provides the most commonly used spelling and lexicon for the Bucks, Lehigh and Montgomery County region of Southeastern Pennsylvania. PA German textiles shared both differences and similarities in style and construction

View Textile Glossary