The small religious sect of Schwenkfelders immigrated to Pennsylvania from Silesia, a German province now in Poland. Since there were too few of them to warrant printing their devotional writings, they developed a strong tradition of scriveners, who copied them over and over. The proximity of the Schwenkfelders to Mennonites, with their customary fraktur drawings for schoolchildren, had a further impact on the group's artistic impulses. Sometimes generations of a family made such artwork, and the existence of a specialized library in the Schwenkfelder community, whose collection was begun in 1885, helped ensure that family holdings of such material would enter public hands.

The drawing for Salome Wagner relates directly to a similar undated piece that also has a text in a Schwenkfelder style by an artist who has been identified as Reverend Melchior Schultz (1756–1826). Two drawings of houses and gardens have also been attributed to Susanna Heebner; they were made, probably for her nephews, in 1818, the year she died. A piece by her hand, or by the maker of the Salome Wagner piece, however, is dated 1771, when Schultz would have been fourteen or fifteen years old, long before there is a record of his being a teacher. Probably another artist altogether made the three pieces, which may safely be said to be by one hand.

Frederick S. Weiser, "Drawing for Salome Wagner," in Stacy C. Hollander, American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with American Folk Art Museum, 2001), 484.