ABAC to host book-signing event

TIFTON — Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College will host a book signing Thursday for Art Lawton, who recently released his book “Friedrichstown Kinder-Anstalt (1745-1750): Records of a Moravian Boy’s School,” the first volume of a four part series.

The book looks at Johann Henrich Antes, a German immigrant who resettled in Pennsylvania and started a progressive school for Caucasian boys, African-American boys and Native American boys.

Lawton said he first became interested in German immigrants who resettled in Pennsylvania in the early 18th century when he married a Pennsylvania Dutch woman in 1959 and lived for several years in the region. He went on to study folklore and folklife at the University of Pennsylvania in 1963 and received a Ph. D. in Folklore at Indiana University in 2012.

Hans-Helmut Goertz collaborated on and helped Lawton with the book. The book is written in both English and German.

“Framed as a study in trans-Atlantic history,” Lawton said, “all material is presented in English and German to enable use of the material on both sides of the Atlantic.”

Together, Goertz and Lawton are working to publish the second book in the series “Tagebuch” (Day Book) next summer.

Lawton said he believes that the study of race in the current book is relevant to society as a whole with the progressiveness of educating boys of different races in the same school, in an equal way.

“The culture,” Lawton said, “the social structure, the educational methods and specifically the ability to cross cultural borders in real and meaningful ways, to see and relate to others without the blinders of race, ethnicity, color, politics, gender and religious denomination deserve our closest attention. This is especially so in this, our modern age of divisive rhetoric, alternative facts and our toxic politics, racial enmity and religious differences.”

However, Lawton also said he sees how his book and the research that went into it can be relevant to ABAC as well.

“The relevance of this work to ABAC lies in its opportunity to provide ABAC students with an occasion to do real and meaningful research in areas that relate to the social and practical history of a fundamentally agricultural lifestyle,” Lawton said. “But, most especially, in doing so, (they’ll be able) to confront the divisive issues of our day by examining the beliefs and methods of those in the past who saw through the outer covering of race, politics, gender and religion to seek and practice the spiritual unity that is there to be found in all people.”

Lawton will give a talk and book signing on Thursday at 7 p.m. in the History Room in the Tift Hall building at the Tifton ABAC campus.