Ink and Cut Paper / 25" x 9.5"/ On 1908 Sermon from Pictured Church

My ancestors built this church. It’s a mile or less from the farm they settled on in 1855 near Madison, Wisconsin. They were Moravian, a German ethnic minority, and they were immigrants fleeing religious persecution.

That constellation is a Moravian star.

The paper it is on is the first page of a long sermon preached at the church in 1908. The church building is printed on a hymnal page from the church circa 1910. The roots are on my Grandpa Ed’s homework circa 1930. The tiny hearts under the graveyard represent Ed and Flo, (and are made from a stamp from a letter Ed received) my beloved maternal grandparents, who are buried there.

My favorite part of the piece is the arrowheads. My Grandpa Ed collected arrowheads from right there, his entire life. He was very interested in the indigenous people who lived on the land before him. He wrote a number of small construction paper booklets with maps indicating what tribes lived where and facts and drawings about how they had lived. The arrowheads represent a type of land acknowledgment. I did some research on what a contemporary land acknowledgment would sound like at the church today, and the interactive map was interesting but also complex and too confusing for me to have a simple answer. I wish Ed and I could look at that map together. He would be excited to learn more.

LINK to see the details.