Remembering Rapp
Ambridge — On Aug. 31, Old Economy Village will celebrate the 200th birthday of Western Pennsylvania's first internationally recognized businesswoman, Gertrude Rapp.
Admission will be free to the site from noon to 5 p.m., and refreshments and other activities will help celebrate the day.
As a nineteenth-century American businesswoman, Gertrude Rapp challenged cultural perceptions, yet was considered a paragon of virtue by those who knew her.
Emily Lapisardi, who portrays Gertrude Rapp at Old Economy, will interact with visitors during the bicentennial program by recreating Rapp's role as Harmony Society hostess, displaying and demonstrating aspects of silk manufacture, and providing musical entertainment from the Harmony Society's sheet music collection.
Rapp was born in Harmony, Pa., on Aug. 31, 1808. Her father, Johannes Rapp, was the only natural son of Harmony Society founder George Rapp. Johannes died in Harmony in 1812, at the age of 28, after which 4-year-old Gertrude and her mother, Johanna Diehm, became part of George Rapp's household.
In 1814, the Society moved to Indiana Territory and founded the second town called Harmony. By June 1816, 7-year-old Gertrude and her 30-year-old aunt Rosina Rapp were living with the Shakers at their West Union, Indian settlement while Gertrude attended school. It was there she learned to speak English.
In 1824, the Society moved back to Western Pennsylvania and settled on the Ohio River, 18 miles north of Pittsburgh, where they built the town of Economy. In 1826, at age 18, Gertrude launched the Society into the manufacture of fine silk textiles. While the male leaders of the Society promoted her efforts, the success of the project was her responsibility. She raised the worms, reeled the cocoons, dyed the silk yarns, and oversaw the weaving of fabrics and ribbons.
Gertrude kept extensive notes on dyes and a letter book for her international silk correspondence. Silk manufacturing books from that era survive in Old Economy's library, as do several thick dye books containing an extensive collection of dyed silk thread samples and formulae prepared by Gertrude.
By the mid- to late-1830s, the Harmonists were nationally regarded as experts in silk manufacture and agriculture. An 1836 issue of the Silk Culturist described Harmonist silk as "decidedly the best we have seen of American manufacture."
In 1838, Gertrude Rapp received, personally, a gold medal from the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia for her silk velvet and fancy ribbons, indicating that an extremely sophisticated manufactory could be found at Economy. The Harmonist silk velvet in the Old Economy Village collection is the earliest known American manufactured silk velvet, predating others by about 30 years. Additional first prizes, including another gold medal, were awarded to Gertrude Rapp in 1844: two at the Boston Fair and one at the American Institute in New York.
By the late 1840s, the declining and aging population of the Harmony Society became less able to cope with the demands of making silk fabric, including maintaining the white mulberry trees, and feeding the thousand of worms dependent on the leaves. Additionally, without the protection of a national tariff on textile imports, the Harmonists were unable to compete with the low costs of imported goods. By the mid-1850s, silk textile production at Economy was ended.
Gertrude Rapp died on Dec. 27, 1889. Only one member of the first generation of Harmonists born in America, Jonathan Lenz, survived her. She outlived all other members of the Rapp family and became the symbol of the Society's founding family to later generations who had not known George Rapp, or his adopted son Frederick.
