I still see Dorcas standing blonde and tall
Barefoot in the doorway of her farm:
Her painted roosters flaming on the walls
Behind her, crowing up a Christiana dawn.
…Richard O’Connell

The trip from Kutztown to Christiana, PA takes just over an hour. But on our recent excursion to visit Appleseed Hollow, the home of the late artist Dorcas Weidner, I felt transported to another era. Tucked away in an oxbow curve of the Octoraro Creek, the farm is a lovely retreat from the world.

Jack Lindeman, a nationally respected poet and frequent CS2 contributor, acted as our guide. Jack shared a relationship with Doris “Dorcas” Weidner that spanned several decades. Born and raised a city slicker, he lived on her farm for 16 years, immersing himself in country life, in the lives of the many animals who shared their world and the rhythms of nature. Jack later wrote a book about his experience, and in 2001 Appleseed Hollow was published. Together, Dorcas and Jack edited Whetstone, a poetry quarterly. She split her time between Philadelphia and her country home and offered the farm as a sabbatical retreat to many friends in the artistic and literary community.

It was a perfect autumn day with clear blue skies, beautiful foliage, and balmy temperatures. We pulled into the drive and parked the car in the barnyard.There hanging over one of the barn entrances was a sign that read simply “OBEY”. Jack laughed as he pointed this out—apparently, Dorcas could be quite the task-master. Jack led us to the front door of the house, a large stone building which dates back to the mid-18th century. We entered a living room that was cluttered with all sorts of knick-knacks, antiques, piles of paper, books, magazines, instruments, photos and paintings…nearly every square inch of wall space was filled with paintings. A large fireplace occupied one wall and the fire burning within filled the room with that smoky wood scent I’ve always associated with autumn days in the country. We made our way towards the back of the house and to the kitchen, where Jack introduced us to Dorcas’ husband, Chet Marron.

The kitchen was no less cluttered than the living room, and the stronger light in this room made apparent the level of disrepair the house was in. Still, the collections of bric-a-brac and antiques (including the refrigerator) were fascinating. No less interesting was our host, Chet, a tall man with a white beard and long gray hair hanging past his shoulders beneath a tan hat. During the next six hours, Chet and Jack shared their memories of Dorcas; her work, her passions, her love of the land and animals—both domestic and wild. It quickly became evident that this woman had been an extremely talented artist and an extraordinary character. It was also very evident that the men who orbited her planet were likewise remarkable. Both Jack and Chet are determined to honor Dorcas’ memory and preserve the body of her life’s work.

Chet settled into a seat at the kitchen table as editor Chuck Brown started his tape recorder and began to ask his questions. After the first few minutes, very little prompting was necessary as Chet filled in the blanks for us. Dorcas and life at Appleseed Hollow began to take shape in our minds eye.

In 1916 the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts opened their Country School at Chester Springs, which operated until 1952. Located in the village of Yellow Springs, the property had been an 18th century spa. The four mineral springs on the property attracted people from the city to “take the waters.” A military hospital was built on the site in 1777, the ruins of which are still there today. Following the war, the village returned to a spa town during the early 19^th century. From 1868 to 1912, Yellow Springs was home to the Chester Springs Soldiers’ Orphans School for children of Civil War soldiers.

PAFA’s school catalog stated that the chief object of the Academy in establishing a school in the country was to afford instruction in the open air, with all the beautiful surroundings of nature itself. The school offered the opportunity to study plein air painting, a French expression meaning “in the open air”, made very popular by painters from the Impressionist movement. Students could attend classes during the summer or winter session or throughout the year. Many of the Academy’s finest instructors taught classes at the Country School. Students had to be experienced artists rather than beginners. Residence was available on site, but many people commuted. The village was serviced by a railroad spur.

Through the years that the school was open, painting styles came in and out of vogue. In the ’30′s, American Impressionism, made popular by artists such as Edward Redfield, was considered passé. The mode was social realism and regionalism. The style could be called Post-Impressionist. Dorcas joined the PAFA Country School in 1931 and taught there through the 1940s. Chet explained that painting is generational. About 20 years ago, the work of Redfield and his contemporaries was rediscovered and prices for their canvases skyrocketed. Artists from the 30′s, 40′s and early 50′s aren’t there yet, although interest is beginning to pick up.

“Did you know Dorcas during that period?” asked Chuck. “I moved here in 1971. That’s when I first met Dorcas,” answered Chet. “I came from north Jersey, within miles of where Dorcas came from…talk about your connections here—everything is connected.” Chet used to visit a friend in the area on weekends, while hunting for paintings to add to his Brandywine collection. (During the mid-60′s, he had a premiere collection of Brandywine art, including work by N.C. Wyeth, Frank Schoonover, and Gayle Porter Hoskins.) Chet was a painter himself and describes himself as a frustrated illustrator. “I was a real jack of all trades. I worked on the NY Stock Exchange and pumped gas on the weekends!” He had been looking for a place in the Lancaster area for years, and on one of his visits he found a farm for sale just up the road from Appleseed Hollow. He purchased the farm “for what would be considered peanuts today.” He and his wife and their three children moved to the farm, but shortly after, she decided to take the kids and go to California. Chet lived in the house alone, doing odd jobs, construction and stone work for about a year.

One miserable, stormy night, Chet was working on a large painting, indulging in a bit of “Irish courage” and feeling lonely. Earlier that month a neighbor had told him about the award winning, internationally known artist who lived just down the road, saying, “You two should get together. You might have a lot in common.” That lonesome, dark and rain swept night, he thought “screw this”, got into his old Pontiac, drove across the covered bridge and arrived at Dorcas’ door around 10 p.m. He knocked on the door and Dorcas cautiously appeared in the doorway. Chet chuckles as he tells us “to paraphrase, she said ‘You finally came down here!’” They sat together by the fire and talked. “Do you ever get the feeling the first time you meet someone that you’ve known them all your life? Chemistry—it had that chemistry. The mutual interest and appreciation of the same subject, later on finding out that we came from the same area of New Jersey…Dorcas was born in 1910 and I was born in 1935, so she was 25 years older than me. But you would never know it!” She was strong physically, emotionally, and intellectually. “She would take no shit from anybody. She was her own woman. Which is good when you’re working in a male dominated society back in the 30′s, 40′s, 50′s and even the 60′s.” It was in the wee hours when Chet finally left that night.

In addition to her success as a fine artist, Dorcas was well regarded as an ardent conservationist and authority on art history and early Pennsylvania architecture. She was founder of the Scenic Octorara Conservancy and the Mercer Mills Preservation Trust. Over the next few years, Dorcas and Chet spent their time between the two properties, working on both homes and eventually getting Chet’s property listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A stickler for detail and with an artist’s eye, Dorcas insisted that all restoration work had to be authentic. Chet says that Dorcas was his mentor and taught him carpentry, electrical work, and plumbing. Chet once told Dorcas, “There is one important thing that artists have that the average person does not—the ability to see. The average person looks at things, but the artist sees things. You taught me how to see.”

In 1969, Jack accepted a teaching position at Kutztown State College and moved from the farm. Chet and Dorcas helped to procure a trailer and move it to a site close to Jack’s work. Though no longer living on the farm, Jack was still a frequent visitor to Appleseed Hollow. Chet “became permanent resident number two” and the two were married.

“Before we start to look at Dorcas’ work, what about Dorcas the person? How would you describe her after spending all those years with her? What would your assessment be?” queried Chuck. “Very self-contained, self-reliant, self-assured, highly opinionated, extremely educated, creative. If I had to describe people that I had known for the last fifty or sixty years, she would be one of maybe three or four who I would consider exceptional souls. She was certainly an incredible exception. And, you know, I tell younger folks, one thing you have got to remember—get your priorities in order. You grew up in a different time, a different generation. I grew up during the depression. I’ve been around the block four or five times and back again. I’ve had it great and I’ve had it miserable and somewhere in between. Take stock of yourself, the most important thing is a four letter word that starts with C—COPE. Train yourself to cope. Dorcas always said, ‘You get so frustrated Chet, because you have all this stuff going on. You don’t know when to take a break. Just do the best you can with what you have.’ I always remember that. It saves you the angst and the negatives, thinking that you’re not performing or accomplishing what you set out to do. This is the type of person she was. She was very forgiving. She had scores of friends that I got to know. She would say ‘don’t ever ridicule anyone.’ She was very expansive in her psyche.”

Chuck interjected that Jack had confessed that she was also quite a fighter. A sportsman’s club had purchased the adjacent property, which led to many a battle between Dorcas and the gun club officials. Dorcas would get aggravated with Jack, since his severe hearing loss made him oblivious to the noise of gunfire. On this golden, autumn afternoon, things were fairly peaceful, with the occasional punctuation of nearby gunshots. According to Chet, on some days it was nearly impossible to sit outside and carry on a conversation. “They would be blasting away and it would get so bad that we would have to go inside. They might as well have been shooting off howitzers!” In the 1960′s that land had belonged to an elderly woman who farmed it. Dorcas heard through the grapevine that the woman was considering selling the property. It was also rumored that the Boy Scouts of America was interested in purchasing it, but Chet contends that this was just a subterfuge to hide the true identity of the interested party. The woman wouldn’t sell to them, and someone started going up on the hill at night with 4-wheel drive vehicles, running down her crops. There was no police department, only one constable who served the whole area. Dorcas wanted to buy the property, but she wouldn’t sell it to Dorcas either. “Dorcas didn’t get along with many people because she was so strong willed. She was more of an introvert when it came down to one on one with strangers. She turned people off, because she was who she was. And these other women were frustrated. They never had a chance to exercise their own interests and talents back in those days. And here’s this free-booting, free-agent, artist woman who was an engineer and a painter. There were rumors going around the township that she was a witch. These people were very backward, very bucolic. Most of them never got past the 8th grade. You know…’What are they doing with that old place down there!’ All that breeds contempt, the ignorance. Anyhow, she wouldn’t sell to Dorcas and was coerced into selling to those people (the Sportsman’s Club)” Chet turns to Jack laughing and says, “That was a blessing, being deaf!” Jack adds, “She used to stand outside of the house and scream, SCREAM! Then around midnight she would call the president of the gun club up on the telephone and keep ringing him to keep him awake.”

In 2000, when Dorcas was 89 years old, she was diagnosed with two different cancers. She had been in great shape, with good resistance and rarely ill. She was misdiagnosed three times. The tumor reached a critical mass and she was taken to the hospital on a Thursday. The oncologist said that she would not make it through the weekend. Chet wanted her to be able to die at home and made arrangements to sign her out of the hospital on Saturday. As they left Brandywine Hospital in the ambulance at 3:30 that afternoon, Chet noticed an ominous sky about ten miles ahead. “As we headed west and came into Atglen, all hell broke loose. It was storming like I’ve never seen it storm before. The ambulance parked where your car is (in the barnyard), and the rain was coming down in sheets, thunder and lightning. It’s actually only one of the two times in my life that I’ve seen tongues of blue flame coming out of the ground as lightning is striking. And they said, ‘I guess we’re going to wait it out,’ and I said, ‘No, we’re taking her right in.’ They had a sheet over her, and as they were coming down that walk, the sheet blew off—her blonde hair was flying! They took her into the house and I thought she would love this—she was such a nature person. ‘This is your welcome home’ I thought. We took her upstairs and put her in our bed, and she survived for almost a week. She finally succumbed on May 18th.”

Chet wanted to bury Dorcas on the farm, in the place that she loved. He contacted a friend who was a funeral director for advice and was told that it could be done, depending on the laws of the particular township. It turned out that it would be legal, so long as it wasn’t a flood plain. A friend with a backhoe dug the grave and the burial was done simply, with a plain Amish coffin. About two dozen friends came to the burial. Gathered around the grave, Chet read a poem that Dorcas had written and one of Jack’s poems. Afterward, everyone went into the house. A friend came up to him and said, “Chet, do you remember as they lowered her down into the grave all of the birds were singing? And then when they buried her, they all left.” Later in the day, Chet and his kids went over to a neighbor’s home. He was asked to play one of Dorcas’ favorite songs on the piano. As he played, people noticed the scent of roses in the air, though there were no flowers in the room. Chet ended the story by saying that he had picked five antique roses from Dorcas’ garden and placed them on her breast before she was lowered into the grave. “This is what happened—kind of interesting.”

In winter there are those who hug the stove
With shoulders hunched
Longing to hibernate like the groundhog
Retreating into that small world inhabited by kittens
Who play among the coal buckets
Never knowing the outside world
And by mice who boldly venture forth after crumbs
Geraniums bloom on the windowsill
Yet fail to bring summer into the kitchen
Outside in the barn chickens huddle
And as the icicles hang like the sword of Damocles
The sun climbs the stairs and down again
And the clock on the mantle strikes away the hours till spring
by Dorcas Weidner

***************************************
Chet has spent countless hours archiving Dorcas’ work and exploring the genealogy of her family. She was an extremely prolific artist, working in multiple mediums, favoring lithography, watercolor, and oil paints. There are literally thousands of paintings within the house and studios. Chet has spent tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket over the past thirty years conserving all of her artwork. In our next issue, we will take a closer look at the artwork of Doris “Dorcas” Weidner as Chet takes us on a tour of the Mercer Mills studio and the outdoor studio.