(Roebakker, Phillip) (fl. 1860s-1880s), itinerant calligrapher. Rohrbacher travelled about from house to house, inscribing family records in Bibles, or names on the title pages of books. He is remembered to have been partly crippled and to have walked with two canes. In the records of one family which the present author has seen, Rohrbacher listed events which took place as early as 1867 and as late as 1889–which helps date his period of activity. Rhodes Grant gives his name as Roe Baker, and says “He was too poor or too old to leave the country when the cold weather came and he would come ploughing through the snowdrifts in the middle of winter.” Unfortunate though he was, as he travelled the rough roads Philip Rohrbacher (or whatever his correct name may have been) was through his calligraphy one of the few people the Glengarrians met who helped support themselves through the practice of the arts. He apparently at least occasionally did paintings, such as on doors. No record of his calligraphy seems to exist in any national collection. It is not known whether he had any connection with the Mennonite tradition of “Fraktur” artists, of the Kitchener-Waterloo area of Ontario and elsewhere, whose work included calligraphy.

MacGillivray & Ross 595 * Rhodes Grant, ii, 88 * Butternuts and Maple Sugar 102 (example of his calligraphy?) * Fraktur: Hurtig, II, 896