Scholar of folklore and material culture, museologist, and ceramic-tile maker. Born into a
family of some means, Mercer grew up in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and later returned
there, founding the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works and funding and building the Bucks
County Historical Museum.
Formally educated in private schools, Mercer graduated from Harvard University in
1879 and was certified to prac-tice law in 1881. His growing interests in ethnology and
archaeology, however, checked a career in law, and his publication of The Lenape Stone
in 1885 established him as a scholar in those fields. Although he explored caves from his
native Bucks County to the Yucatan searching for insights into Paleo-Indian culture in
America, by 1896 Mercer had turned his attention to the folk culture of his native
Pennsylvania and had begun to study the artifacts of everyday life in America. Beginning
with the publication of Tools of the Nation Maker in 1897, Mercer went on to write more
than thirty books and articles on American material folk culture. In his works, he
examined not only the tools of the past, but also houses and the origins of their design
and construction. In the last thirty years of his life, Mercer amassed a vast collection of
artifacts, which he housed in the museum that he erected in Doylestown.
Perhaps the best-known decorative-tile maker of his day, Mercer was also a proponent
of the Arts and Crafts Movement of the late 19th century. His greatest significance,
however, lies in the role that he played as an early scholar of material folk culture.
Mercer was a pioneer in the field, but his achievements have only recently been
recognized for their important contribution to the study of traditional artifacts in the
United States. Described by Warren Roberts as a “remarkable scholar,” Mercer deserves
a place beside other eminent students of American folklife.
Scott Hamilton Suter
References
Mercer, Henry Chapman. [1914] 1961. The Bible in Iron: Pictured Stoves and Stoveplates of the
Pennsylvania Germans, ed. Joseph E.Sanford. Doylestown: Bucks County Historical Society.
——. [1926] 1976a. The Dating of Old Houses. Doylestown: Bucks County Historical Society.
——. [1926] 1976b. The Origin of Log Houses in the United States. Doylestown: Bucks County
Historical Society.
——. 1929. Ancient Carpenters’ Tools. 5th ed. 1975. Doylestown: Bucks County Historical
Society.
Suter, Scott H. 1989. The Clapboards Lifted: Henry Chapman Mercer and the Origin of an
American Log Building Style. Folklore Historian 6:76–88.