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When folk artist Jehu Camper
was born near Harrington in 1897, most farmers in rural Kent and Sussex
Counties in Delaware lived much as they had for most of the century,
growing wheat, corn, vegetables and fruit and raising hogs and livestock.
It was during this time, just as farmers in lower Delaware were beginning
to use tractors and gasoline engines, that Jehu noticed that the implements
and equipment he and his parents once depended on had fallen out of
use. Camper began collecting--a grain cradle, harrow, cultivator and
plow--but when he was offered a large ox cart, Jehu realized he had
no room for such a collection. 
"I conceived of the idea of making replicas of most of the things out of wood so I could put a lot of them in one place," he recalled during an interview. By 1984, when severe arthritis in his hands forced him to give up whittling, Jehu Camper had created over six hundred whittlings which he displayed in a "museum" in his back yard. He gave away hundreds more small pieces over the years to friends, visitors and children. Delaware's rural history in wood, conceived of and carved by Jehu Camper, is exhibited at the Delaware Agricultural Museum & Village in Dover. |
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