OLD ORDER MENNONITE ENTERPRISES:
1. Weaver's Hardware Store....Fleetwood-Lyons Road
2. Weaver's Bike Shop...Fleetwood-Blandon Road, Maidencreek
3. Echo Hill General Store...Dryville Road, East of Fleetwood
4. JaMar Groceries....North Kempville Rd./route 222
5. Wooden Bridge Drygoods………South Kutztown
6. Eli Burkholder’s Woodworking Shop……Bowers
7. Isaac Burkholder, Jr.'s Welding.....Topton
8. Martin’s Woodworking Shop…………Bowers
9. James Nolt’s Welding Shop…………North Kempville Rd./222
10. Kutztown Produce Auction…………West Kutztown
11. Leid’s Harness & Saddle Shop…………Rural Bowers
12. Clarence Shirk Auction Hall.....Kutztown
ROADSIDE FARM STANDS:
13. Amos Burkholder’s (Baked goods)......Old Topton Road
14. John Burkholder’s (Baked goods)……Lyons Rd., East of Fleetwood
15. Mark Brubaker......Fleetwood Rd. to Dryville
16. Phares Burkholder.....Old Topton Road
17. Ernest Newswanger....High Rd., West of Topton
18. Titus Nolt.......Route 662, North of Fleetwood
19. Samuel Burkholder....Richmond Rd., Fleetwood
20. Rebecca Martin......Pleasant Hill Rd./route 222
21. Lewis Zimmerman.....Fleetwood-Topton Road
22. James Weaver......Bowers Road
23. Ivan Martin, Jr.....Oak Haven Road
QUILTERS:
24. Mrs. Enos Burkholder......Richmond Road
25. Mrs. John Brubaker.......Siegfried-Dale Road
Although the Agra-Business community of the Kutztown area was the first to receive economic stimulus, which these Plain Dutch farmers brought to this farming region, their ethnic kinship proved to be far greater.
As Old Order farm families mingled with native citizens, their ability to converse in the native PA Dutch Dialect with their neighbors brought them respect and a common yearning to share their Rhineland culture.
Religious differences between Kutztown’s native Dutch families became smaller as they indeed discovered that their common ethnic heritage worshipping the same God was all that mattered.
Without a doubt, if there was any Plain Dutch institution which brought the “Worldly” or Church Dutch together with these Plain Dutch cousins, it was the establishment of the Kutztown Produce Auction.
Located outside of Fleetwood, adjacent to route 222, the Produce Auction, owned and operated by Mennonites, has become a boom to the local farming economy.
Here, farming families young and old share the success of their chosen occupation. Just a short distance from Kutztown proper, the well run market serves the interests of many people in eastern Berks County.
Socializing about the weather, and talking about traditional PA Dutch farming practices, the men bond together. While the women, who share an interest in domestic arts share the Dry goods knowledge of the day.
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Like Amish teenagers in Lancaster County who hold hymn singings in their barns on a weekend night, followed by traditional folk games, Mennonite teenagers have summer school social evenings where hymns are sung in English as opposed to German at their Sunday services. Games like “Sally the Miller” are part of their playtime, and many youth take singing very serious at these gatherings. Between school terms, singing sessions are led by an elder proficient in singing who takes charge of such meetings. The girls (pictured above) are carrying pails of lemonade for the men involved in the barn raising.
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Nowhere is a greater difference between native East Penn Valley farmers and Plain People than in the treatment of their barns. Plain people who purchase Berks County barns with multi-colored hex signs on their broadsides will not repaint them, but instead favor the Lancaster County tradition of painting the entire barn white. Always a practical people, very seldom will you find “fancy” adornments on the farmsteads of Plain People. This speciman is a rare example.
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The Pavilion of the Kutztown Produce Auction, west of Kutztown, is one of the finest built market centers erected by Plain people anywhere. A raised platform was constructed at the end of the building to allow buyers to stand on and see the various produce as wagons and flatbeds pulled by horses have their contents sold to the public.
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MENNONITE BARN RAISING. Following the Bible and the plow has always been at the heart of the vast Pennsylvania Dutch culture, which has been the lifestyle of hundreds of thousands of descendants, who have played more than a significant part in the development of rural America. Today, there are 125 Old Order Mennonite families, which call the East Penn Valley home. Not all are team Mennonites driving horse and buggy, but their number has increased enough to add an additional meetinghouse and cemetery just east of Fleetwood, Pennsylvania since relocating. Photo courtesy: The Morning Call (1960's).
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Upon arrival in (1949) to the East Penn Valley from Hinkletown, Lancaster County, Old Order Mennonites depended on tobacco as their main cash crop to pay off high mortgages. Tobacco has now been replaced by corn, wheat, soybean, and the Produce Auction as chief economic stimuli for their community.
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Kutztown’s Plain People have turned to truck crops in founding the huge Kutztown Produce Auction, which was built on their lands, west of Kutztown. A major institution, on market days farmers all over the East Penn Valley convene at the produce auction by truck or horse-drawn wagon with vegetables and fruits to sell and also buy in quantity. Currently, Ralph Zettlemoyer of Fogelsville, Lehigh County, a popular Pennsylvania Dutch auctioneer conducts the sales assisted by George Frey from Oley Valley.
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At first, reluctant to leave their plain Dutch community in Lancaster County, Ezra Burkholder, Sr. who led the Old Order Mennonites to the East Penn Valley had a difficult time to persuade members of their Groffdale Conference that relocation was in their best interest. But soon after Ezra purchased land here, a group followed and they built a large impressive meetinghouse just east of Renninger’s Farmer’s Market on the Kutztown-Lyons road in the 1950’s. Pictured is the Kutztown Meetinghouse burial plot behind horse and buggy sheds.
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The Old Order Wenger Mennonites of Kutztown, like Lancaster County’s Old Order Amish, dress in Plain Clothe. They shun using modern cars and modern man-made machines in their daily lives. Travel is done by horse and buggy, and their fields plowed by teams of horses. Tractors operated on steel wheels or tracks may be used on the farm, but no tractor on rubber wheels is allowed. Television and video are also not used in the home.
Most Mennonite men are clean shaven, whereas Amish men in Lancaster and elsewhere grow beards. Currently, there are no Amish families living within Berks County. Both religious sects believe that one shall not make any graven images of God or themselves. Therefore, they will not pose for photographs, but may not be offended if you photograph their farming activity.
Mennonite Meetinghouses have many benches, and are very austere or plain, without any ornamentation or statues. A stove to heat the house of worship may be the only convenience within the abode. A two-hour service is held every fortnight. The Kutztown Central Meetinghouse (1952) is on the old Ezra Burkholder farm, southeast of Kutztown's Renningers Farm Market and can hold approximately 1,000 people. A second Meetinghouse is adjacent to the John Burkholder farm, east of Fleetwood.
Successful farmers and proud entrepreneurs, several Plain Dutchmen operate roadside farm stands in the East Penn Valley. Women make and sell fresh PA Dutch baked goods. Skilled Mennonite farmers also practice a second, trade-like woodworking to supplement their income.
Folklorist, Dr. Alfred Shoemaker, who formed the Kutztown Folk Festival in 1950, would have been immensely proud of Kutztown’s model community that has evolved in the sixty years since the team Mennonites have been welcomed at Kutztown, by their agrarian Church Dutch counterparts in Berks County.
Born into “Anabaptist sects,” the youth of these Plain sects do not join their congregations until Adult Baptism (ages 17-20) similar to Lutheran and Reform confirmation. Perhaps most symbolic of all Plain Dutch wedding customs, is the throwing of the groom “over the fence.” On the day that the Mennonite couple marries, and ends their single life.
The groom's several farm hostlers at the farm wedding ceremony, who accomodated the horses and buggies of the wedding guests would then surprise the groom. After the wedding and meal these single friends would corner the groom near a farm fence!
According to Plain Dutch tradition the hostlers force the groom over the fence into the new pasture which represents his new life as husband and eventually father.
Unlike the Amish who require the groom to grow a beard upon marriage. The Old Order Mennonite remains clean shaven, but his Sunday Plain Clothe attire is now that of a married adult.
Like other European immigrant groups that pioneered the American frontier, (1683) our PA Dutch descendants have a deep and abiding love of their Rhineland ancestors, who created a unique part of Pennsylvania known as the PA Dutch Country. Here their age old Rhenish-Americana foods are still eaten and served by a loving Dutch country folk who have bonded together as they follow the Bible and the plow into the 21st Century. Humble and wise in their traditions, they strive to live "Christ-like lives."
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Sixty years ago when the Old Order Mennonites purchased historic farms in the Kutztown area, few Americans realized that our rural countryside was endangered. The same urban and suburban modernization that bought up farmlands in Lancaster County was now engulfing all the farms between Allentown and Reading, PA.
Historic Preservationalists concerned with the loss of farming lands, were also fearful that historic landmark farmhouses and early American barn structures would be lost to the megalopolis on the eastern seaboard. However, Preservation societies welcomed the occupation of Berks County’s historic farms by the Old Order Mennonites who would continue their use in a way which would be commensurate with their protection.
The unique 19th Century PA Dutch lifestyle of these Old Order Mennonites was often compatible with the historic period in which these landmark structures were built. A case in point is the nation’s historic 1783 Hottenstein farm mansion along route 222, just east of Kutztown. This landmark architectural specimen would have been engulfed amid commercial enterprises.
However, the number of Mennonite farms in the area makes a classic argument that they and the Georgian Hottenstein mansion should be zoned non-commercial.
Having resided in the countryside of east Berks County for several years, I am a witness that without the influx of these farming Mennonites, since 1949, our community would have been annexed by Reading and Allentown’s suburbia. Therefore, the American Folklife Institute tips its hat off to the many Old Order Mennonites who have preserved our culture and countryside.
The hazards of driving a horse and buggy or bike, along route 222 and narrow route 737 are dangerous day by day. But, I too had horses on my farm in Rockland Township; A reminder to all people that we share our lives with animals. Perhaps our fast moving modernization in America has left us with little appreciation of God and Mother Nature. Plain People take time out in their daily lives to commune with God and all he has created.
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A nearly self-sufficient Plain Dutch Community dating from 1949, these Mennonite families have merged with the historic 1779 rural settlement laid out by proprietor, George Kutz.
At least 21 Mennonite farmsteads have greenhouses to support their roadside stands and supply the public at the Kutztown Produce Auction. Besides the two buggy shops for their sect, they also have four farm tractor repair shops, and this dry goods shop.
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An enterprising people, who participate in the local economy, Old Order Mennonites also operate two modern general stores. For harness and equestrian needs, Ivan Leid’s Harness and Horse Supply shop, near Topton serves the plain community as well as the public at large. Almost all men and women have a separate job skill besides the numerous tasks required on their farms. Although they shun advertising, it is commonplace to have an occupation marked on a sign in the beginning of their driveway.
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