A photograph of the first subscription page of a Baer Bible, published in Lancaster, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1819, by the young printer, Johann Baer. This page was from a Bible which was recently purchased on eBay by Roy W. Schreffler, It has since been been identified as most likely belonging to Simon Sallada (1785-1854), a pioneer settler and millwright of the Lykens Valley.
Baer took “subscriptions,” or pre-publication advances from those wishing to obtain one of his Bibles, and then printed the names by county and township in each Bible. The above page shows subscriptions from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Below, is a portion of the page from Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, showing the names of Simon Sallada and his brother Michael Sallada.
Other names which might be familiar to readers of this blog are Johannes Paul Jr.; Jacob Dietrich; Johannes Dietrich; Jacob Frantz; Johannes Hoffman Jr.; Johannes Schneider; George D. Hoffman’ Daniel Hoffman; Johannes Riegel; Andreas Rigel; Peter Werner; Isaac Paul; and Wilhelm Schneider. A complete list of Lykens Valley area subscribers can be seen in the 21 minute video by Schreffler on YouTube; advance to about 9:08 [minutes, seconds]. The image above is a screen capture from the video.
According to information found on WorthPoint,
John Baer (Johann Baer) Bible 1819. Pennsylvania hand-printed bible, in German [per Martin Luther’s translation]. In 1819, a young 23-year-old Johann Bär (John Baer, or John Bear) became Lancaster County’s only member of this exclusive club. John’s 1819 Biblia is the first, and only complete Bible hand-printed in Lancaster County. “Bär” is pronounced like “bear”. John’s Biblia was the largest German-language Bible printed in America to that date. Weighing in at a hefty 12 pounds, his folio Bible was a force to be reckoned with. John knew that his Pennsylvania Dutch friends and neighbors would be duly impressed that his Bible was the biggest, boldest, American-made Bible on the market in their German language. John’s ambitious Bible was in a class by itself, where it holds its own, even today.
Roy W. Schreffler produced a video in 2017 explaining the 1819 Baer Bible. That video can be seen at YouTube. After acquiring his most recent Baer Bible in 2018, a second video was produced which focused on Simon Sallada and the strong possibility that this Bible, pictured above, was the actual family Bible of Simon Sallada and that most of the genealogical entries were done by him.
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Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.