Aaron W. Mountz (1872-1949)

Aaron William Mountz was a laborer, a carpenter, a well-driller, and a lifelong resident of Cumberland County – and he was a woodcarver. While his work had started to be appreciated by private collectors toward the end of his life, he died not knowing that his hobby of carving small wood animals would make him known in the art world nationwide, with his work held in museums such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Museum of Folk Art.

Aaron was born in Frankford Township (now Lower Frankford) in December of 1872 to William H. and Sarah A. (Swigert) Mountz.¹ His father, William, was a farmer and according to the Biographical Annals of Cumberland County the fifth generation of Mountz' to be born in the county. Aaron was one of nine children, six of whom survived into adulthood: Ann, Clara, Aaron, Ira, Harvey, and John.² Aaron, who never married, lived with his parents on the family farm in Frankford Township, described in the tax records of 1889 as consisting of 122 acres, with a two story house and barn. His father apparently had to give up the farm to pay off his debts in April of 1894, and he later died in 1900.³ County tax records in 1901 show Aaron as a head of household, living on six acres, still in Frankford Township, with a yearly income of $100 as a laborer. Aaron, still described as a laborer, was living with his mother in 1910 but by 1920 his brother John had joined the household and their occupation was well-drilling.⁴ Sarah died in 1922, but Aaron and John continued to live together and conduct their well-drilling business into the 1930's.⁵ By 1940 Aaron's life had taken a turn for the worse, as the census for that year shows him as a resident of the State Hospital for the Insane in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania according to historian Milton Flower he had "suffered a nervous breakdown… Since he was not violent he was later transferred to our County Home … There … he quietly lived out his days."⁶ He died on December 13, 1949, and he is buried with his parents and his brother Ira in the cemetery of a church he helped build, the Opossum Hill Union Church on Opossum Lake Road, Lower Frankford Township.⁷

Aaron learned to carve wood as a boy from the itinerant woodcarver Wilhelm Schimmel. His output was not extensive, numbering less than 100, and is thought to have been done mostly when he was a boy and young man. Like Schimmel he specialized in animals, including eagles, chickens, squirrels, sheep and dogs. He is especially known for his eagles and his dogs, and the Cumberland County Historical Society has one of each in their collection. His work shows the influence of Schimmel's teaching, but most critics consider his work more careful and precise, if less exciting, than that of Schimmel. Unlike Schimmel very few of his carvings are painted, and of those that are, the paint was applied directly to the wood. Today Aaron Mountz' carvings are much prized. "The small birds and animals done by Wilhelm Schimmel and Aaron Mountz … are cited in every treatise on American folk art, and they are the standard against which primitive or naïve American wood carving is judged." ⁸