Elizabethtown lunch features the story of professor Elizabeth Myer and the Pennsylvania Garb Law

By Frank Ramirez

It’s a story of ignorance, prejudice, nativism, and ill will, and a mean-spirited law aimed at us Dunkers and all the “plain people,” with consequences that continue to be felt in our day. And it was appropriate that a story involving an Elizabethtown (Pa.) College founding professor, Elizabeth Myer, should be shared by Steve Nolt, director of the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies on Elizabethtown’s campus.

Today, July 1, is the 10th anniversary of Nolt’s tenure as director and senior scholar at the Young Center, which celebrates its 40th year. He recently returned from a Measles Summit in San Diego involving experts from Canada, Mexico, and the United States. In a session on special populations, Nolt spoke about the Amish community’s interface with public health.

Speaking at the Elizabethtown College lunch at the 2026 Annual Conference, he celebrated being able to “share a story not well known: Professor Myer and her struggle for religious liberty”—although over a century ago it made the front page of the New York Times.

His presentation was titled, “Professor Elizabeth Myer, Religious Liberty, and the Pennsylvania Garb Law, 1908-1910,” but the story actually began nearly 20 years earlier when the Gallitzin school system hired several nuns from the Sisters of Saint Joseph to teach in the local public schools. The nuns were teaching the public curriculum. No religion was taught, but the anti-Catholic prejudices of the day caused some to demand they be fired.

After a court ruled the nuns could stay, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law in 1895 forbidding teachers from wearing “any dress, mark, emblem or insignia” that signified their membership in a religious organization. The nuns chose to quit their jobs rather than comply.

*Steve Nolt, director of the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, at the Elizabethtown College lunch. Photo by Frank Ramirez*

Brethren had opposed the law. More than 100 Mennonite and Brethren women traveled to Harrisburg, the state capitol, to oppose the legislation—to no effect. Elizabeth Myer (1863-1924), was already “a legendary teacher,” said Nolt, “who was especially skilled and talented after dealing with unruly seventh and eighth grade boys,” when she became the first full-time teacher hired at Elizabethtown College and was permitted to teach in plain garb. This was a time when the college went out of its way to be inclusive, neither requiring students to wear plain garb, nor making chapel services mandatory.

One of her first students however, Lillian Risser, ran afoul of the law soon after her graduation. She was hired by Wheatland School, not far from the college, In 1908, a local farmer complained about Risser’s Dunker garb, which she adopted shortly after her baptism. One of her uncles was an influential attorney who took her case to the Lancaster District Court, where Justice William U. Hensel ruled the law unconstitutional.

Nativist and anti-immigrants ultimately raised enough money to influence the state Supreme Court to uphold the garb law, insisting that the law “is directed against acts, not beliefs.” The court justified the decision by saying, “True religion is just beliefs and should not affect how you live.” As Nolt noted, this is just the opposite of what Anabaptist groups teach. “A teacher could dress as a clown, a flop, or a flirt,” Nolt said, or sport “political badges under freedom of speech.” But teachers could not wear plain garb.

Decades went by, and the law remained on the books. Myer herself died suddenly and unexpectedly in 1924. “Risser got a job selling plain clothes…black stockings and sensible footwear” at a department store, Nolt said. Following her marriage, she and her husband helped to start a mission church. She herself died in 1986 at the age of 101.

The garb laws remained on the books and were used to prohibit Muslim women from wearing garb appropriate to their faith. Efforts to overturn the law failed in 2018 and 2020. Finally, in 2023, two state senators succeeded: Kristen Phillips-Hill, a Republican from York County, and Judy Schwank, a Democrat from Berks County.

Nolt concluded his talk by highlighting the upcoming 40 Year Anniversary Series at the Young Center. More information can be found at etown.edu/centers/young-center

— Frank Ramirez is a member of the Annual Conference Press Team.

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