Written by Virginia Gunn, a professor of Clothing, Textiles and Interiors in the School of Family and Consumer Sciences at the University of Akron in Akron, Ohio. She has served on the board of trustees of the Wayne County Historical Society where she is currently on the Textile Committee and serves as Co-chair of the Beall-Stibbs Homestead restoration project.

Peter Hartman, master weaver and coverlet designer

Peter Hartman, 1797-1876

Elizabeth Palmer Hartman

Peter Hartman was born in Germany in 1797 and came to Pennsylvania when he was five. He married Elizabeth (Betsy) Palmer in the late 1820s. They and their two young children moved to Wayne County in 1832. They purchased a farm seven miles north of Wooster, Ohio in Canaan Township. Here they raised their family which grew to eight children. Peter also wove “beautiful table linen in design, also fine linen for sheets and pillowcases.”

After Charles and Samuel Meily moved to Wayne County in 1835, Peter Hartman purchased one of the patented Jacquard attachments their older brother had helped create. Then Peter and his younger brother, John, began to weave Jacquard coverlets. They worked together from 1837 to 1839.

When John Hartman married and moved to Lafayette, Ohio (now Red Haw) in 1840, Peter gave John the design cards for the patterns they wove together to help set him up in business. Peter then created new patterns for himself, signing his coverlets from 1840 to 1845 with a Wooster location. It is likely that another brother, David P. Hartman, helped market the coverlets at his tailoring shop in downtown Wooster.

Peter also served as a circuit-riding preacher for the Church of God and went through Wooster on a regular basis. He could leave sample coverlets in David’s store, and pick up orders and drop off finished coverlets. Peter ceased labeling his coverlets after David moved to Mansfield.

In the late 1840s, Peter kept busy organizing and serving churches in Wayne and adjoining counties. He continued to weave and sold coverlets to others near his circuit. These customers may have preferred coverlets without a Wooster or Wayne County label. A granddaughter later recalled that Peter was a “preacher by profession, a farmer and coverlet weaver by necessity.”

Peter was one of the most innovative coverlet designers in northern Ohio. He created over twenty different patterns during the decades in which he wove. Most of them feature his distinctive rose motif somewhere in the design.

In 1854, at age sixty, Peter moved to Madisonburg in Wayne Township and opened a dry goods store and later served as appointed postmaster under the Abraham Lincoln administration.

After the Civil War ended, Hartman retired. He and his wife and youngest daughter moved to Smithville in Green Township. He continued to weave and some of his later coverlets often have his name “P. Hartman” woven in the border.

Peter Hartman died in July 1876, leaving his assets to his “beloved wife Elizabeth Hartman.” His obituary, written by his oldest son, made no mention of his weaving, but his beautiful coverlets remain heirlooms and textile treasures in Wayne County and in homes across the country.