THE FOUNDING OF THE KUTZTOWN FOLK FESTIVAL BY FOLKLORIST DR. ALFRED L. SHOEMAKER:
During the dark days of World War II, when the local term for German toast, “oyer brode” was changed to “French toast,” and the Pennsylvania German dialect tongue was silent in U.S. public buildings, there emerged a dynamic Pennsylvania German scholar, Alfred L. Shoemaker, a son of a farmer from Schnecksville, Lehigh County. He eventually became the nation’s leading ethnologist, and founder of the first Department of Folklore in America in 1948.
Alfred earned his Ph.D. researching the Pennsylvania German language and folklore among the Amish of Arthur, Illinois and received his degree at the University of Illinois in 1940. Coming back to Pennsylvania he joined the staff of Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania where he founded America’s first Department of Folklore. During the post war period, he had compiled a checklist of Pennsylvania German imprints (books) for both the Lehigh and Northampton County Historical Societies.
While at Franklin and Marshall College, Dr. Shoemaker’s Folklore Department published an eight-page academic newspaper entitled, The Pennsylvania Dutchman, with his folklore colleagues, Dr. J. William Frey and Dr. Don Yoder.
The Dutchman with a biweekly circulation of 12,500 was widely read by citizens in southeastern Pennsylvania, and later a national audience, who wanted to learn about Pennsylvania Dutch culture as Dr. Shoemaker’s scholars researched it. Reading about their ethnic heritage in an academic context, Pennsylvania German people gained great esteem for their American accomplishments and overcame anti-German embarrassment cast upon them during the WWII years.
Later when Dr. Shoemaker published his folk cultural studies, Eastertide in Pennsylvania and Christmas in Pennsylvania, the public realized the degree to which America has assimilated Pennsylvania German folk customs, crafts, and culinary arts but wanted to learn more. However, Dr. Shoemaker went beyond academic studies when joined by his two F&M folklore colleagues, Yoder and Frey, their love of country and native heritage brought about the founding of the Kutztown Folk Festival in 1950 at the Kutztown Fairgrounds in Berks County, Pennsylvania.
Dr. Shoemaker’s Folklore Center at Franklin and Marshall College used proceeds of the first Pennsylvania Dutch Folk Festival in 1950, which ran for four days ending on the patriotic 4th of July, for further folklore publications. Various folklorists and Pennsylvania Dutch humorists shared the unique outing at the Kutztown Fairgrounds with demonstrations, folk games, seminars, and dialect storytelling. Obviously, the public came to see the three doctors of folklore they had read about in The Dutchman newspaper, and the folk festival attendance swelled to 30,000 people the very first year.
The timing of the folk festival coincided not only with the patriotic 4th of July but with the grain harvest season for the vast number of Pennsylvania German farmers, who also participated at the folk festival, harvesting a four-acre wheat field adjacent to the fairgrounds, demonstrating with old-fashioned grain cradles. The festival celebration was greatly enhanced by farmwomen wearing their usual “Dutch” bonnets and men their big brimmed straw hats under the sweltering summer sun. This traditional dress has continued to be in vogue at the Kutztown event even up to the present.
As the folk festival developed, one of Dr. Shoemaker’s greatest assets was the Herbert Miller family who lived near Kutztown. Herb’s sons, who understood and spoke the dialect, had a working knowledge about farm activities Dr. Shoemaker planned for the folk festival. Today, Herbert Miller’s son Lester still provides hoe-downing groups to entertain the public at the current Kutztown Pennsylvania German Festival.
It was perhaps the overwhelming readership of their bi-weekly newspaper among the ten counties of Pennsylvania German people, which convinced Dr. Shoemaker and his staff that such a festival showcasing folklore and folklife practices would be received favorably by the American public. The open-air museum activity was not popular among all the academic community, but from its very first inception the public was excited about the Dutch food, seminars, and rural activities which made it a wonderful experience.
The time was right: the decade of the 1950’s was the booming modern age of push button living, television, and urban high rises. People caught up in cultural shock were yearning to get away from TV dinners and rediscover home cooking and country life. Year after year, the Annual Kutztown Folk Festival sponsored by Dr. Shoemaker’s F & M Folklore Department at the Kutztown Fairgrounds grew larger, and his bi-weekly newspaper became a successful quarterly magazine. The large tourist trade of Lancaster County also benefited from guidebooks and booklets published by the Folklore Center on Pennsylvania German dialect and short subjects.
Always concerned with academic excellence, the material Dr. Shoemaker published was well received by the public. Meanwhile, the week long Kutztown Folk Festival had become a major tourist attraction drawing beyond a hundred thousand people annually by 1955. Having been able to travel abroad and observe the folklife studies movement in the British Isles and on the Continent of Europe, Dr. Shoemaker updated the name of the Dutchman magazine in 1958 to become Pennsylvania Folklife, which expanded its scope to include all folklife practices.
By the decade of the 1960’s, the Kutztown Folk Festival encompassed many more surviving folklife craftsmen and practitioners in the contemporary local culture, but foremost interest for tourists was the family styled eating tents featuring homemade Pennsylvania German food. Admired for his academic dedication, “Doc” was joined by many folklife researchers like Vincent Tortora, Robert Bucher, Clarence Kulp Jr., Alan G. Keyser, Donald Roan, and Russell and Florence Baver. All of whom wrote articles for the Pennsylvania Folklife magazine, including myself.
The Kutztown Folk Festival had now become the largest in America and an American tourist institution whose open-air seminar tents provided amusement and education to tens of thousands of people who wanted to enjoy and understand this colorful rural culture. A man of the people, Dr. Shoemaker never endorsed the bookish term “Pennsylvania German.” He referred to it as foreign to the culture and used only the term Pennsylvania Dutch which is the only way natives speak of themselves, because it is a time honored colloquialism in the Pennsylvania Dutch psyche.
Revenue from his successful folk festival allowed Dr. Shoemaker to establish a Pennsylvania Folklife Society office on the Main Street of Kutztown. In the modern age of the 1960’s folklife studies were relatively unheard of in America and some elitist Pennsylvania Germans were fearful that Dr. Shoemaker might expose the backwards side of the “dumb Dutch” to the American public. Nevertheless, the public was delighted to share our home cooking recipes, quaint customs, unique craftsmanship, folk music and dancing, and did not find any dumb Dutch people!
A graduate of Kutztown State College, I met Dr. Shoemaker in 1960 and began researching Berks County folklife for his Pennsylvania Folklife magazine. This was at the height of the magazine’s popularity, and I considered myself very fortunate to have him as a mentor. I introduced Dr. Shoemaker to my eccentric uncle, Freddie Bieber, who made a living making split oak baskets on a “schnitzelbank.” Dutch as sauerkraut, and a good basketmaker, Freddie was featured in Pennsylvania Folklife in 1964. If it were not for Dr. Shoemaker’s excellent command of the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect this Pennsylvania German recluse would never have left the hills of the Oley Valley to demonstrate at the folk festival that year.
Dr. Shoemaker’s secretary in his Kutztown Main Street office was Herb Miller’s wife, Viola, from a farm North of town. When the New York Times editor verified the annual festival dates by phone and would ask her to speak Pennsylvania Dutch, she obliged him in the dialect that he had indeed communicated with the heart of the “Dutch Country.” The outstanding feature of the Kutztown event was the fact that these people were not portraying a pageant of America, but were portraying themselves in everyday life!
The early success of the folk festival had a lot to do with Alfred Shoemaker’s amicable personality. He wanted to share with America not the fact that the Pennsylvania Germans are different, but in our diversity, we remain a unique part of American versatility.
Having witnessed the holocaust in Nazi Germany, Dr. Shoemaker established a meaningful relationship with Louis Schlosberg, a Jewish wire editor on the staff of the Reading Eagle newspaper. Louis was a key advisor, who assisted the folklife society in advertising their folk festival in important metropolitan newspapers, and made sure the wire service carried the event over the week of the 4th of July.
Paul R. Wieand, a folklorist from Lehigh County, brought his exceptional dialect singing group to perform at the folk festival. He also created a large general store in one of the Fairgrounds exhibit buildings, complete with a potbelly stove and a cat in the cracker barrel!
Educational photographic display boards were produced by Olive Zehner-Merritt, an art teacher from the Reading School District, which accompanied several folklife exhibits for visiting tourists to learn at a glance the local Pennsylvania German culture in-depth. If the tourists got a laugh out of the Dutchified Kutztownian, the opposite was true, too. Some urbanites did not know the difference between straw and hay, nor a mule and a horse, but everyone laughed together, and the world became smaller.
A feature of the Folk Festival for which Dr. Shoemaker was immensely proud was a huge 18th Century two-screw wooden cider press, which was turned by hand. This farm apparatus stood ten feet tall and about twelve-foot long. The roof of the press was thatched with rye straw, which added to the crushing weight of the apple pomace. The rustic press was the property of the Berks County Historical Society, where Dr. Shoemaker served as curator from 1947 to 1948.
Among the Berks County farmers who made the Folk Festival come alive was John Fox from Bernville, who still farmed with horses, and brought a six horse team to the festival to drive his Conestoga wagon around with a jerkline tied to the lead horse.
Ellsworth Bieber, a Lions Club member, remembers how “Alfred” did not want commercial french fries on the fairgrounds and told them about the good old days when mother cut slices from a potato and fried them on the stove top of an old cast iron kitchen stove. One of the men figured out how to make a machine to slice the potatoes and the Lions Club has been selling “Dutch Fries” ever since.
Each 4th of July, the week of the summer that the Annual Folk Festival is held, George Adam one of our local farm participants threshes rye and builds a tall grain stack in the middle of the grass commons, which after the traditional 4th of July parade of festival craftsmen is topped with a United States flag. Some years the grain stack consists of 600 sheaves of rye reaching a height of near twenty-feet which Howard Geisinger and family helped thresh.
Over the years many of Dr. Shoemaker’s original folklife demonstrations continued even though the Kutztown Folk Festival was acquired by Ursinus College, Collegeville, Pennsylvania and operated as late as 1995 under their sponsorship. His 18th Century fieldstone bakeoven at the fairgrounds still fills the air with the aroma of fresh baked bread since the Folk Festival at Kutztown was acquired by a joint committee of the Kutztown University Foundation and Kutztown Fair Board in 1996.
Although the original Pennsylvania Folklife Society no longer exists, folklife practitioners around Kutztown continue to paint hex signs on their Swiss bank barns, and the churches and farm granges still serve large family styled dinners of Pennsylvania German food. Since the 1950’s, eighty-five Old Order Mennonite families have settled in the Kutztown area from Lancaster County and drive to market with their wagons and buggies. Their presence portrays Kutztown as a model Pennsylvania German community. It hardly seems like folklife practices in this historic community have changed, as we continue into the twenty-first century.
Dr. Shoemaker’s crowning achievement in his lifetime was hosting the nation’s people at the highly successful Annual Kutztown Folk Festival to dance, sing, and taste our mouth watering country food. His desire later to establish a permanent ethnic Pennsylvania German open-air museum in the heart of Lancaster County’s Amish territory in the 1960’s caused the bankruptcy in 1963 of the Pennsylvania Folklife Society and eventually the loss of his leadership. The foremost researcher of Pennsylvania German folklife, his excellent scholarship still inspires others to observe the diversity of American lifestyles.
Although Pennsylvania Folklife paid off its bankruptcy debts honorably, the loss of Alfred Shoemaker’s leadership of the Kutztown Folk Festival during bankruptcy receivership brought about his mental depression. Forced into early retirement at age fifty during these years, attorney Mark R. Eaby ran the Pennsylvania Folklife Society to pay off creditors. Dr. Shoemaker was at first put up in the Hotel Brunswick in Lancaster City, then later transferred to the state hospital at Allentown, Pennsylvania for treatment of his mental depression.
Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Folklife Society open-air museum on route thirty, east of Lancaster City, with a plain Dutch farmstead in place and a model “fancy Dutch” farmstead just begun, fell into ruin. However, its real estate was quite valuable.
Not quite able to come to grips with himself, Alfred wondered aimlessly to the City of New York looking for a folklife benefactor, where it is presumed he died in spite of friends who tried to reach out for him. On occasion, he did make a bus trip back to Berks County and visit Viola Miller, who now lived in Lenhartsville.
Today, Dr. Shoemaker’s academic monument consists of more than a hundred field research folklife articles, and the Pennsylvania Folklife Index of Pennsylvania German Culture comprised by him over the years which consists of over 50,000 entries.
(Post script)
Dr. Don Yoder, author and retired professor of the University of Pennsylvania, whose dedication to the American folklife studies movement has never wavered over the years, continues to provide new insight for Stackpole Books who have reprinted some of Dr. Shoemaker’s books.
FOOTNOTE PAGE
1 In World War II, Dr. Shoemaker served his country working for Army Intelligence in Europe. He became a pacifist after seeing the wholesale destruction of cultures and intense violent hatred of peoples for one another. Forced to carry a weapon, he carried it unloaded. He experienced depression as a prisoner of war.
2 During the World War II years many bilingual Pennsylvania Germans out of courtesy to the United States Government spoke only English and did not speak their native German dialect. The Kutztown Folk Festival was one of the first post war events of a large scale where Pennsylvania Germans were encouraged to speak and be proud of their Colonial heritage. Speak and listen, they did as they came to the Kutztown Fairgrounds in droves to celebrate America’s melting pot.
3 Dr. Arthur D. Graeff’s report to the members of the Pennsylvania German Society in 1955, Volume XXI Pennsylvania German Folklore Society, Allentown, PA.
4 In the modern atomic age of post war America, educated Pennsylvania Germans, proud of their station in life, were embarrassed about superstitious stories promoted by infamous metropolitan newspapers of yesteryear.
5 Viola Miller is best remembered as the person whose mother-in-law had the famous “drechter kucha” (funnel cake) recipe which was served at the very first festival.
6 The judge who presided over Dr. Shoemaker’s bankruptcy case appointed a Lancaster attorney, Mark R. Eaby Jr., to oversee the affairs of the Kutztown Folk Festival until creditors in Lancaster County were satisfied. Mr. Eaby proved to be a good businessman and remained in charge of the festival up to 1995.
7 The numerous field research files of Pennsylvania Folklife are in the Myrin Library of Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA.
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DR. SHELLEY’S PENNSYLVANIA GERMAN COLLECTION
By Richard H. Shaner
Of the many philanthropic Pennsylvania German Collections in our nation, few are as important as those antiques and artifacts studied and acquired by the celebrated Dr. Donald A. Shelley (1911-2006). Having a Masters degree in Art History from Harvard University, he acquired his Ph.D. in American Art from the graduate school of Fine Arts at New York University in 1953. Being a traveled researcher of Rhineland and European Folk Art, his renowned expertise in native Pennsylvania German Folk Art was eagerly received by the academic community.
Shelley was born in York County of Pennsylvania German ancestry. His early leadership among Pennsylvania’s Historical Institutions, and later New York State Historical and Fine Arts Institutions, culminated in his becoming the Executive Director of the Ford Museum, and Greenfield Village (Dearborn, Michigan) in 1954, and for many years later as President.
His passing away in April of 2006 at his cherished home in the architecturally important Oley Valley of Pennsylvania has left a void in the academic world among Pennsylvania German authorities. Attending his Memorial Service there at Historic Douglassville’s St. Gabriel’s Episcopal Church, I sat with officials of the Pennsylvania German Society. The audience was a veritable “Whose Who,” among authors and collectors of important Pennsylvania German Americana artifacts.
In his early years, Donald Shelley was rarely photographed, but his scholarship in the field of Pennsylvania German studies brought him peer acceptance. At the time, Dr. Shoemaker’s Kutztown Folk Festival became a national event, the Pennsylvania Folklife magazine published a photograph of the three greatest authorities in the Dutch Country, namely: Dr. Donald A. Shelley, Frances Lichten, and Dr. Earl F. Robacker.
Now that Donald’s wonderful wife Esther is in retirement, the second of two magnificent auctions of their Pennsylvania German Collection has taken place at Pook & Pook Auction Gallery, Downingtown, PA. Auctioneer Ronald Pook sold a number of rare Fraktur at the first auction held in October of 2004 at which time Esther and Donald were present to receive a standing applause by a packed house of bidders, scholars, and fellow citizens.
A well-traveled antique collector in the Pennsylvania Dutch Country, Donald Shelley acquired fine antiques from the most important dealers. He knew top-notch dealers on a first name basis, as well as major nationally acclaimed collectors like the illustrious “Harry” Francis DuPont. Most everyone enjoyed his expertise and judgments on folk art. Dr. Shelley was always a gentleman; I admired his politeness and ability to achieve long range objectives without being impatient! I only regret not having enough time in his presence to share his magnificent knowledge.
As a tribute to the Shelleys, Pook & Pook Auction Gallery has printed the Shelley Collection catalogue in a hardbound cover to be used as a reference for many years to come in Academic Libraries. A trained scholar of Folk Art History, Donald rarely acquired an object that did not come from the wellspring of Pennsylvania Dutch ingenuity. The Shelley’s lifetime collection was housed in a 1768 Germanic styled Georgian Mansion located in scenic Oley Township.
As an educator visiting the Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, I always took special interest in the Americana Collections, knowing that Dr. Shelley was in charge. In those early decades the nation was fortunate to have philanthropists like: John D. Rockefeller Jr, Henry Ford, and Henry Francis DuPont chronicle our nation’s humble Americana roots by establishing major Decorative national museums. But when it came to authenticity and the material cultural tools, and domestic goods of the Pennsylvania Germans, there were few as knowledgeable as Dr. Shelley, who as a native of the Dutch Country (York County) brought more insight to bare on the subject. His twenty some years research on his book: Fraktur Writings or Illuminated Manuscripts of the Pennsylvania Germans, in 1961, has become a classic in the field of American Folk Art.
Few antiquarian collectors have canvassed more antique shops and private collections than Donald in his quest for knowledge and to amass an outstanding Collection. As an activist for architectural preservation and the development of museums for human understanding, he had no equal. But most of all he was an educational icon for Pennsylvania German folk art, placing his name next to Frances Lichten, who like Donald indexed the esthetic attributes of Pennsylvania German Folk Art. An exceptional lecturer on Folk Art, Shelley’s writings were widely read in the academic community. But perhaps his knowledge and love of architecture by the Pennsylvania Germans was not as well known. His farmhouse in the Oley Valley was a large 1768 Georgian mansion built for a local German with hand-cut keystones.
As an architectural preservationist, Dr. Shelley not only preserved and restored the 1768 Johannes Jaeger (John Hunter) wayside inn where he and Esther lived, but its early massive barn. The farmhouse, which served as an inn, was built very similar to John Lesher’s 1750 Oley Forge House down the road, where I lived and became his neighbor while teaching at Oley Valley High School.
An admirable restoration, the John Hunter Mansion was similar in floor plan to Lesher’s House with numerous fireplaces. However, the 18th Century Stone “English” bank barn, without forebay had massive brick-arched doors above the stables in front, where two threshing floor doors opened to pitch straw down to the barnyard. In disrepair, possibly because of the limestone quarry explosions nearby, its restoration was a major fete by the Shelleys. In fact, when Donald restored the wooden shake-roof to the later 1793 George Focht built barn, he had each wooden shingle dipped twice in wood stain. For one appearance on the underside of the roof, and an older appearance outside, this was a rare structure.
As an activist who was concerned with preserving America’s early Colonial architecture, Donald Shelley was appointed to the Board of the Oley Valley Heritage Association where he and other citizens researched the entire Oley Township and had its early structures put on the National Register of Historic places; one of the first “National Historic Districts” approved by the United States Department of the Interior.
Dr. Shelley was also a key archivist on the Historic Preservation Trust of Berks County Board of Directors where he encouraged historic measured drawings of Oley Valley’s landmark buildings. A significant financial contributor to our Berks County Historical Society, Shelley was an “extraordinary researcher.” As his neighbor while teaching at the Oley Valley High School, I sold him an important Lancaster County Conestoga Wagon for him to preserve on his historic bank-barn threshing floor protected from the weather outside.
When restoring the bakeoven on the back of the Hunter Mansion, Donald was a purist and instructed the mason to use the same Colonial materials they discovered when they took it apart. He asked me to take slides of its restoration during reconstruction. Rarely did I meet a “purist” like Donald who was methodical in sticking to Colonial specs, venturing his own capital.
Entering the central hallway of Donald Shelley’s 1768 Hunter Mansion, one is aware of his mastery of Pennsylvania German Decorative Arts as his massive Germanic Colonial wardrobe standing there sets the mood of his colorful and tasteful interior leading to other more decorative surroundings. The carved panels of the native “schrank,” let you know it is a one of a kind Americana crafted piece of furniture.
As one goes into a rear room off the hallway, a wooden Colonial barroom reminds one that the residence was once a wayside inn. Everywhere one looks there is rare period furniture that makes the 18th Century come alive. But most of all, the vibrant colors of the Shelley Fraktur and furniture provide a unique glimpse into a bygone period of local history.
When the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission moved the early 18th Century Bertolet Log Cabin from Oley Township to the Daniel Boone Museum complex, local preservationists were happy that it was saved from destruction located near an active limestone quarry operation. But this act reminded Shelley that there was another good example of a Germanic log cabin in nearby Lehigh County. Theorizing that his John Hunter farmhouse had an original pioneer log cabin before they built the main house in 1768, Shelley single handedly saved the “Haaf log cabin” from near Fogelsville from demise.
As usual Donald was tedious with its relocation to his Oley Valley farm where he restored the log cabin near the back of the John Hunter Georgian mansion. Now there are two exceptional Germanic log houses saved for posterity in the Oley Valley.
Having restored some historical Oley Valley properties myself, I always sought Dr. Shelley’s advice when he was available. But my major project was the restoration of the Jacob Keim farmstead in the 1970’s for the American Folklife Society as an Oley Valley farm museum. Contributing members of the American Folklife Society from its inception, Donald and Esther provided financial assistance, besides Donald’s expert advice.
A modest collector of Pennsylvania German Fraktur, I was fortunate any time I had a chance to share my specimens with Donald. Open for discussion, he would ask me if I checked for any discernable watermarks in the paper’s manufacture.
He enjoyed anonymity and protected his privacy from the public, living in the picturesque Oley Valley. Bumping into George Meiser, President of our Berks Historical Society, he once kiddingly said: “I forgot your name, for the moment, but I know there are Roman numerals at the end!”
In regards to Dr. Shelley’s dedication to preserve and collect important Americana furniture, I once said I did not have room in my house for another piece, to which he seriously and amusingly remarked: “Use a shoehorn, there is always room for an important piece of our heritage!”
When you have exceptional people like the Shelleys looking over your shoulders, together with spirited citizens of the Oley community, you certainly go the extra mile. So many others and I are indebted to this special couple for encouraging excellence in many Americana projects.
FOOTNOTES TO DR. SHELLEY’S PA GERMAN COLLECTION
1. Dr. Shelley was the first Curator of paintings and sculpture at the New York Historical Society, 1938-1949. He was Curator of the Chrysler-Garbisch Collection of Primitive Art in New York City in 1949.
2. Donald Shelley served as Consultant and acting Director of the York County Historical Society, 1978-1980.
3. Dr. Donald Shelley served for twenty-two years as Executive Director of the Ford Museum and Greenfield Village. After retiring as President in 1976, he was named President emeritus.
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CIDER TWICE? AMONG OLEY FORGE COMMERCE WITH PHILADELPHIA
By Richard H. Shaner
In the late 1960’s when I purchased the abandoned 1750 O1ey Forge Mansion in Oley Township, a fellow historian and book collector gave me a glimpse at one of the rare Colonial Oley Forge Ledgers. “Cider Twice,” bar iron, rye flour, and wheat flour were among the Colonial commodities sent to Philadelphia by its owner, ironmaster John Lesher.
The ledger, written in English, was scribed by a meticulous Colonial clerk and listed “cider twice” several times. I have always wondered what he meant by cider twice, since there were no other notations. The clerk was obviously English, and did not use the native German term known to bilingual John Lesher, a prosperous Pennsylvania German. A trade term possibly used at the port of Philadelphia, cider twice, has lost its meaning in antiquity.
However, every Oley Valley plantation, including those owned by land baron Lesher, had an apple orchard or two and this staple was harvested in the fall of the year and pressed on their farms by giant hand-hewn wooden cider presses. These Germanic apparatuses, like those found on the Continent of Europe, operated on a fulcrum lever principle and were capable of pro¬ducing an unbelievable amount of cider. The huge wooden beam that did the squeezing was actually as large as a tree.
The Hartman lever, for example, is twenty-eight feet long and 16X19 inches square. The Hartman one-screw lever cider press removed from the Hartman farm along route #61, in Muhlenberg Township has been relocated to the Jacob Keim Farmstead near Lobachsville in its original building, and is one of the finest examples of this type of press in America.
This huge one-screw lever press as opposed to the smaller two-screw cider presses used by the English to press apples in Colonial times more than likely served the needs of the entire neighborhood, in the frontier's cooperative spirit of the harvest. Located adjacent to their Pennsylvania German barnyard, the bed of the cider press was at least above the height of a wooden barrel when laid on its side to fill the barrel at its bunghole.
The apples were then crushed beforehand in a two gear mechanism called a pomace mill, which was powered by a slow- moving horse or mule that turned a large tree sapling around in a circle setting in motion two wooden gears. The apples were then fed into its hopper and crushed between the teeth of the wooden gears onto the plank floor of its trough. The fresh apple pomace was then gathered up and sandwiched between layers of long rye straw until the layers reached the giant lever above the seven-foot square bed of the press.
Like the older Elam Fox lever cider press (now demolished) near Pricetown, the pomace layers were shaped in a circular wooden form similar in size to the surviving Hartman one. The Hartman cider press has a carved circular channel about six foot in diameter chiseled on the pressing bed, which brings the free flowing cider to the front of the press ready to be barreled.
The giant twenty-eight foot pressing lever is lifted high above the pressing bed for stacking the pomace by turning a ten-inch, ten foot tall carved wooden screw at the end of the lever that has a threaded carved wooden nut toggled to it. A carriage of rocks framed at its base stabilized the screw. If more pressure is required to squeeze out cider from the pomace, the screw attached to the end of the lever is screwed up carrying the weight of its stone carriage onto the end of the twenty-eight foot beam, exerting almost thirty tons of pressure when the beam is blocked at the front of the press.
After the apple pomace has been freed of its juice and the cider barrels stored in a cool place, either the root or spring cellar, the pomace was fed to the pigs to root out what nourishment was left. Ironmaster Lesher, who had as many as fifteen slaves in 1780, could boast of the largest wine or cold storage cellar in the entire Oley Valley, capable of storing sixty barrels.
This brick-arched vaulted chamber was under his mansion cut into a limestone cliff. The sweet cider made was consumed as a drink, and a good portion of it manufactured by Pennsylvania Germans into a staple called apple butter, which sustained them throughout the year. Not to forget, a number of barrels, which were aged in storage to be turned into vinegar for sweet and sour food dishes at home, and to be sold at market.
Of the farms where one-screw cider presses are located in Berks County’s Appalachians, none were as primitive as the Merkey farm along route #419 in Bethel Township, near the village of Schuberts. The farmhouse, an 18th Century Continental German log house, was built around a central stone walk-in fireplace with a log house appendix in the rear.
Old timers tell the story that the first occupants were massacred during the French and Indian War. Then, a farmer updated the homestead in the Federal architecture-style of the early 1800’s, and built the later stone bank barn where the cider press was housed in a lean-to shed. A very early press, the end of the beam where the wooden screw raises and lowers the timber lever, may have been repaired at some time and measures twenty-six feet long and approximately 16 X 24 inches thick.
The stones, which were still incased at the base of the screw, are of considerable weight and may have put extra stress on the lever. Saved from ultimate destruction by Robert Bucher and his historian friends, the Merkey cider press has been relocated to historic Schaef¬ferstown, in hopes of being setup and preserved for the public.
On the David Hottenstein plantation, a few miles east of Kutztown, I came upon the one-screw lever cider press that was housed in a shed on the north side of route 222 behind his 1783 Georgian Mansion when at the time (1960’s) the property was being sold to a descendant. After acquiring the cider press, I turned it over to the Quiet Valley Museum in the Poconos.
Still investigating the puzzle of cider twice, I discovered that local German dialect-speaking Oley natives did not remember the term in English but that their best guess was that it was hard cider, which many of them could recall. While recently speaking to Pennsylvania German historian and linguist, Clarence Kulp, Jr. he informed me that there was indeed an old German dialect term used for hard cider, and had the inference of “cider twice.”
Sweet cider without a preservative will turn sour in the fall, however, hard cider with a kick was popular, and as a fermented drink, was an excellent substitute for beer at social gatherings of yesteryear. A native recipe to make hard cider called for putting raisins and rye grain in the barrels for fermentation before aging.
Although distilled apple jack is often associated with New Jersey, a poor man’s applejack was achieved by Oley Valley natives waiting for hard cider barrels to freeze in fall and wintertime, then breaking through a layer of ice, and sipping the more potent proof beneath it in a straw. Thus, cider twice may possibly have become a euphemism for a practice that often led to drunkenness, which Lesher may not have approved being a member of Philadelphia’s aristocracy and a member of Pennsylvania’s Constitutional Convention in 1776.
Rye flour, which was also shipped to the port of Philadelphia from Lesher’s enterprises was common and overproduced on the frontier where freshly cut forests left the ground too sour to support wheat until tamed over by a number of years of cultivating rye crops, a prerequisite for growing wheat. So as Lesher's Forges and Furnaces continued to harvest wilderness tracts and manufacture charcoal for his iron interests, more and more frontier farmers in the Oley Hills over planted rye as a cheap crop.
Like elsewhere on the frontier, it is inevitable that a percentage of rye grain was distilled into whiskey, and Lesher who had a town house in the port city as well as iron interests in the Oley Valley, was an import-export capitalist hauling whiskey made from rye harvested on his frontier lands on a regular basis and transported to Philadelphia by his Conestoga wagons.
Surviving to this very day is one of his merchant Conestoga wagons that were auctioned at the Oley Furnace where he was part owner, and now is in the basement of our Society’s museum on Centre Avenue, a quite impressive vestige of the past. In fact, during Colonial times as frontier rye crops out-produced precious wheat grain for flour, many wise Pennsylvania German farmers made only cheap rye bread to feed their households since the value of rye grain was hardly worth the trip to Philadelphia.
Thus, the idea of converting rye mash into whiskey and sending the more valuable commodity to Philly was a more practical idea. But of course, rye, which is the tallest grain crop, was used to thatch roofs and bed animals, like the number of six-horse teams used by Lesher to operate his business.
But after the frontier years, there were not as many farmers in Berks County “burning rye,” (distilling whiskey), but it re¬mained an avocation for farmers in the fall and winter, whether they paid the later Federal Whiskey tax of 1791 or not. Those that did con¬tinue the trade were often in our remote northern Appalachian region.
Eleanor Raymond, in her 1930 book on Domestic Architecture of Pennsylvania, shows a photo of a Colonial-style copper still plastered into the side of a large walk-in fireplace on a farm at Kutztown, Berks County. This possibly could be at the old Jacob and Adam Stein farm, which produced pure rye whiskey in Greenwich Township.
As was the Colonial practice, the large bulbous copper still pot was buried under clay and plaster, with an opening for the steam hood at the top making a perfect seal to connect the flu to the chimney in the rear fireplace thereby concentrating heat from the fire box beneath it.
In the photo, a large spigot on the left allows a flushing pipe to be opened and closed when the still pot needed to be washed out, without removing it from its bed of clay and plaster. Missing in this photo, though, is the copper hood, which was placed on the pot to receive the steam for the condensation coil when in use.
A few years ago a still, which was found in the Kutztown area, may be the same, identical still pictured in Raymond's book and had the same flushing spigot down to scale. The condensing coil (worm) that was with it could have been in a large wooden tub, which stood alongside the plastered still, and into which ran cold spring water to condense the steam from boiling the rye mash.
The Stein Whiskey House has since been demolished and even though it may have operated with an 18th century distillation pot in the early years, the business was still very productive, distilling apple and rye whiskey well into the 19th Century.
A merchant-patriot and supplier of Washington’s troops with military equipment and goods during the American Revolution, John Lesher had numerous buildings at the Oley Forge to store his wares and exports. One surviving colonial foundation at this site had a secret chamber in which military stores were hidden within a double stone wall “according to legend” so the British could not discover his “contraband.”
Sidebar: Cider Twice Article
Researching Pennsylvania German cider pressing while he was curator of our historical Society in 1947, Dr. Alfred L. Shoemaker acquired a local Berks County two-screw cider press together with its pomace mill that had been stored in a shed near Birdsboro. This two-screw press became the centerpiece for his successful Pennsylvania Dutch Folk Festival at Kutztown in the 1950’s (see Vol. 67 No. 3, page 110) of the Historical Review. The cider press might possibly be the Wentzel press, originally located on Friedensburg Road near Pennside, since they were similar! In 1960, Shoemaker erected a Germanic one-screw lever press that year at the Kutztown Festival to dramatize the difference between the two presses.
Although the Pennsylvania lever press he erected did not have its screw and the beam was raised and lowered by two poles, the crowd was amazed at its weight and power to press apples from the pomace mill. Ironically, the Merkey lever press from Bethel Township, Berks County could also be the surviving Michael Baeshore lever press from the same northwestern section of the township, whose cider building was collapsing from old-age pressing Appalachian apples.
OLEY FORGE—CIDER TWICE ARTICLE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Susan Small, Director of Historic Schaefferstown, Inc.
Donald Roan, Director of Goshenhoppen Historians
Cynthia Marquet, Librarian Cocalico Valley Historical Society
CONVERSATIONS WITH: Robert Bucher, Clarence Kulp, Jr., and Herbert P. Miller of the Kutztown Folk Festival.
Montgomery, Morton L. Historical and Biographical Annals of Berks County, PA. J.H. Beers, 1909.
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The Shelley Barn. An 18th Century Stone “English” bank barn, without forebay, had massive brick-arched doors above the stables in front where two threshing floor doors opened to pitch straw down to the barnyard. In disrepair, possibly because of the limestone quarry explosions nearby, its restoration was a major fete by the Shelleys.
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RUSSELL R. STAHL, TAVERN KEEPER OF FREDERICKSVILLE
IN THE OLEY HILLS OF BERKS COUNTY
By Richard H. Shaner
After graduating from Kutztown State College in 1960, I taught history for the Allentown School District while living on my parents’ farm in the Oley Hills near to Macungie, Lehigh County. My maternal grandmother, a former resident of Rockland Township, Berks County, descended from the Jacob Bieber family whose roots stretched back to the Oley Valley as early as 1744. She and her brother, Freddie Bieber, a basketmaker, inherited vast tracts of farmland in the Oley Hills near to the village of Fredericksville (District township), Berks County.
Of which, one thirty-three acre tract was converted into a family picnic grove for relatives to vacation in the hot summer months. Since the small village of Fredericksville had a hotel and modified general store, my family became very familiar with its tavern keeper over the many years, especially because we and the local mountain inhabitants were so secluded in that region of the geographic Reading prong of the Appalachian Mountains.
The Fredericksville Hotel was acquired early in the 1950’s by the famous Russell R. Stahl, the last of the Stahl redware potters, after he returned home from World War II to his father’s pottery shop at Powder Valley, Lehigh County. Pottery business was dwindling and Russ Stahl’s investment in the purchase of the Fredericksville Hotel and Store was a wise choice, for his deed included almost the entire village plus seventy acres of nearby countryside. However, the electrification of the Oley Hills around Fredericksville was barely completed by the 1950’s.
The territory was primitive with very little traffic going through the village except to the villages of Huff’s Church, Dryville, or Landis Store. A tavern keeper and owner of the town, Russ energetically refurbished the Hotel-Store building, repairing the Erb home across the street as well as fixing up the rental compartments adjacent to the once fashionable two-storey Victorian hotel. Perhaps his most striking improvement was to have an itinerant folk artist paint all the plaster areas above the wainscotted walls of the bar and the interior dinning room vicinity with an old-time country landscape.
As an outpost hotel far from Reading and Allentown, its rustic charm was unique in the post war period, since much of America was being updated in the modern age. Realizing that visitors of his father’s old fashioned pottery works loved its antiquity, Russ did not modernize the Fredericksville Hotel, but instead he continued to have three kerosene hanging lamps on the ceiling in front of the old fashioned handmade back bar. The shelves were elegantly dressed up with earthenware pottery Russ made at the Stahl pottery, amid bottles of whiskey, brandy, and tobacco products.
Even though Joe Stahl, a brother to Russell, suffered a stroke in 1955, he and his wife, Alma, continued working with Russell in the tavern venture, and the three of them lived on the premise together with a few hotel borders. Alma proved to be an exceptional Pennsylvania German cook, working very hard at the business enterprise. All the meat Alma prepared for the hotel meals came from Shupp the butcher, who was located on Crow Hill, near to Alma’s father’s farm at Bally, Pennsylvania.
On special occasions, Alma would prepare meals such as baked pig stomach stuffed with smoked sausage, parsley, and potatoes. During the hunting season when the tavern would be frequented by a large number of game enthusiasts, Alma made several of her mouth-watering soups with barbeque sandwiches seasoned with bacon drippings.
Like many Pennsylvania German country hotels of the bygone era, the focal point of Russell Stahl’s tavern was the old circular card table in the middle of the barroom, where villagers and guests convened regularly to compete in harmless games of chance. If card players felt they were unlucky that day, they would often get up out of their chairs and walk around them to break the spell of bad luck!
“Haas and Peffer” was the most popular game played and the small numbered cards were removed from the deck, so the game would be played quicker and thus, more games played within an enjoyable hour. Additionally, villagers were able to play a pinball machine, jukebox, or shoot pool in the side dining room, or just be socially content with their station in life talking about the news of the day.
Both Alma and Russ took turns bartending and their opinions and friendships were appreciated by many patrons from far and near. Alma was a devout Catholic whose benevolent care of the poor and needy could not be doubted. One of the only sources of help in the wilderness, the tavern operated by the Stahls was an important part of community life. An itinerant farm hand, called “Old Oscar,” who only spoke Pennsylvania German quite often was helped out by Alma’s charity, but liked his whiskey.
Old Allie Dey, who lived at the edge of the forest, was also a regular at the Fredericksville Hotel and assisted Russ spending many a day whiling away hours, playing a friendly game of cards with Alma and George Hilbert. Respecting her for human compassion one day Allie, a widower, gave Alma a big hug in the kitchen for all she had done for him. He then shrugged his shoulders and said that he had not practiced powwowing lately and needed to pass some of his healing overload onto her body.
As a bartender, Russell Stahl was able to listen to all of his customers and sympathize with their plight, but never at the cost of getting them drunk. There were plenty of hardship cases in the mountains and Russ always led by example with his hard work and belief, “God takes care of those who help themselves.”
Down at the five points intersection, a block from the hotel, was a small patch of houses in the woods where downtrodden inhabitants lived called, “Little Korea.” In spite of the outward looks of poverty in the hills of the Reading prong of the Appalachians, it was really not that bad, but a level of poverty many people would aspire to. Most everyone had a good garden patch, hunted for game in season, and had a side income from some type of occupation.
Russell Stahl, a dialect speaking Pennsylvania German, was a well liked tavern keeper in the Hill Country. His thrifty ability to make a profit selling chewing tobacco and ice cream with other sundries during a down turned economy in the middle of nowhere was inspiring. Of course, he would always attend local farm auctions collecting items, which were of value to his hotel operation, but wisely never overpaying.
In the 1960’s, when I bought my Great Uncle Freddie Bieber’s farm in Rockland Township, I often stopped over at the Fredericksville Hotel for lunch and drinks, or to pick up pointers in farming from farmers who frequented the hotel like “Honey” Miller, Alma’s brother from Bally. As I got to know Russell personally, sharing with him his love of early American pottery, he would always lament that one of these days he is going to give up the hotel and begin making pottery once again at the family business at Powder Valley. Although he never neglected his hotel enterprise, every weekend he drove down to Powder Valley, religiously, in preparation for the day he would once again open up business.
Among several potters who visited Russ Stahl when he operated the Fredericksville Hotel was Lester P. Breininger and his wife, Barbara. Lester was persistent, coming back several times to learn the “tricks of the potter’s trade” from this old master! Barbara Breininger would eventually take apprentice classes with Russ at his Powder Valley Shop in 1978.
However, as more and more people discovered the ambiance of the rustic Fredericksville Hotel with original kerosene hanging lamps and artistic Stahl redware pottery showcased on the back bar, Russ’s livelihood there became too comfortable. Nonetheless, he did manage to bring one of his pottery kick wheels up to the vacant general store side room to throw earthenware pottery in his off-hours, but was interrupted too much. In time the Fredericksville Hotel gained a following of people from Reading as well as Allentown and Philadelphia. In part, this patronage was because of the prestige of collectable Stahl Pottery, but equally so, was the unique seclusion of this surviving rustic tavern in the Oley Hills.
In 1878 my grandmother’s uncle, Jeremiah Bieber, once operated the historic store alongside of the Fredericksville Hotel and also ran the popular bandstand for the youth of the day. Freddie Bieber, my great uncle supplied chickens for the hotel kitchen and special events like the great Ascension Day auctions run by past hotel owner John Frey. I felt quite at home going to the Fredericksville Hotel and learning about my family history from the Day brothers: Allie, Uni, and Charlie. But most of all, it was Russ Stahl’s personality, which renewed the frontier hospitality in which this fraternalism could take root.
The old auction shed across the street from the hotel became the depository for tools and antiques that Russ bought at the country auctions. In the earlier days when the hotel was owned by John Frey (1892), this building was the center of the famous Ascension Day vendues, which brought a large number of hill folk together to buy horses, equipment, and various other animals for their farms. A religious day when Pennsylvania German people did not work on the farm, Ascension Day was then devoted to fishing and collecting herbs and mushrooms.
In the hills and old orchards around Fredericksville, inhabitants still hunted for morel mushrooms, which are a delicacy. Allie Dey’s grandson, Carl, and the Gambler family eagerly waited for the right weather in early spring at which time spring showers sprouted the fungi. Alma Stahl would bread the halved mushrooms and cook them in a frying pan drenched with butter and serve them in bread like an oyster sandwich. There was no better treat. In years that the mushrooms were plentiful, the excess ones would be frozen and saved for a later time.
With little or no amusement in the mountains, many people came to Fredericksville to drink and dance to the music on the jukebox every Friday and Saturday night. Weekdays, the television perched on a shelf at the end of the barroom provided a window to the outside world updating the news.
A hunter himself, Russ was always willing to allow the local coon dog club to have coon trials at the hotel on certain weekends. A trail was then made through the woods by dragging a coon hide and having it end some distance from the starting point outside the hotel at a tree. The dogs were run in heats over the scented trail and the first dog to reach the proximity of the coon tree was called first line, etc. The dog, which marks the raccoon tree by pawing the tree trunk and barking to signify this, is called “first tree” and so on.
The trials were usually held on a Saturday afternoon and drew a large crowd. In the early years, each dog would be paraded through the barroom for patrons to bid on. If the dog you bid on won, you would share in half the cash raised by its bidding. In this way the club financed its expenses. Russ would often kid old John Stahler, the eldest of the borders that lived at the hotel. When John Frey owned the hotel, Stahler’s chore was to slop down the pigs in their pen. He did this regularly and continued to do it long after the pigs were sold! One day he became quite embarrassed when he exclaimed to the tavern owner that the pigs were no longer eating their food!
A serious pottery craftsman, Russ could not wait until the point when he was financially secure and be able to reopen the famous Stahl pottery, whose huge, stone kiln was still not unloaded from the last firing several years ago, behind its secure bricked up door.
Nevertheless, the romance of the Oley Hills and its people who preferred to speak the native Pennsylvania German dialect enchanted Russ into staying. A large softball diamond was built for patron recreation and business remained good. Russ even bought a cantankerous pet donkey, which ate cigarette butts, and even walked it into the barroom I was told. Alma and Russ Stahl each had their own separate lives, but as business partners or sister-in-law and brother-in-law, they were very compatible and well matched.
One night to break up the long winter hours in the barroom, Alma Stahl who played games of chance like bingo, allowed myself and folklorist Donald Roan to have a traditional raffle with seven antique large copper pennies. We offered a ham as the prize, and one of the tavern patrons let us use one of his old leather raffle boxes. This particular one had been used at Henry Fox’s raffles, which were held traditionally on New Year’s Day at the Dryville store.
The inside of the lid was tarnished green from having copper coins dumped on it, but was in relatively good shape. We had no problem taking turns, and counted the heads-up to discover who had the highest number out of three dumps in a match. However, I was embarrassed when my friend Donald won the prize and Russ Stahl tending bar during the event, only shook his head in disbelief!
Often the high altitude of Fredericksville’s location brought many severe snow storms and Russ would call down to his beer distributor, Barney Bieber at Kutztown, that his snow bound road guests had drank all the beer. But, Alma always had plenty of food in her kitchen for emergencies.
Barney would phone back that there were no roads passable to reach the Pricetown Ridge and Russ had to wait for several days for more supplies.
Later in the hotel’s operations in 1963, a clandestine person decided to rob the hotel one Halloween night. When the robber entered the barroom wearing a mask and brandishing a shotgun he announced that it was a “stick up.” However, the people at the bar paid no attention and called him a spooker, so he shot off his gun into the old metal ceiling to alarm them. Still having little effect on the patrons, the robber ran away. Perhaps he could not speak Pennsylvania German!
Russell was never a tavern keeper. To anyone who knew him, he was a displaced potter yearning for the day he would again return to his true calling. The redware pottery he displayed on his back bar was all made by him except for the crowning piece on the top shelf- an Irish ring jug made by his father, Isaac. According to tradition, these ring jugs were first thrown at the Stahl pottery by an Irish journeyman.
These wood fired works of art made from common clay, with beautiful glaze, had magic meaning here in the backcountry where the hill folk still tilled the earth for a living. Frances Lichten, the folk art historian of the Pennsylvania Germans, would have noted that Russ was in his rural element. Little by little Russ sold some of his handcrafted pottery, but ever so reluctantly.
Eventually, I did buy the prized ring jug along with a pair of shielded hurricane lamps from the early American back bar. Time marched on and eventually Russ did reopen the Stahl pottery, but unfortunately never fired the huge pottery kiln again, which he was so longing to fill with greenware.
Encroachment of the modern American lifestyle was later felt in the hills and the aroma of fastnachts frying from the Erb home opposite the hotel was gone and the ambiance disappearing. There was no more of Alma’s delicious pig stomach, and the elusive morel became harder to find. Russell Stahl eventually died in 1986 at the age of seventy-four, but not before passing on his ancient craft, teaching classes at Powder Valley. Shortly thereafter, in 1988, Alma Stahl too would pass away along with the legacy of the Fredericksville Tavern.
NOTES ON FREDERICKSVILLE TAVERN KEEPER
1. Jacob Bieber, a pioneer in Rockland Township, built a sawmill on the Bieber Creek below Dryville- adjacent to the Oley Township border.
2. “The Oley Valley Basketmaker,” by Richard H. Shaner, Volume XIV, Number 1. Pennsylvania Folklife, October 1964.
3. “Stahl Pottery: An In-depth Study,” by Holly K. Green, Volume LI, Number 4. Historical Review of Berks County, Fall 1986.
4. Most of the local people relied on Pilgert’s General Store at the village of Huff’s Church, and with Henry Fox’s store and butcher shop at Dryville.
5. Many people of Pennsylvania German origin enjoy a friendly card game of Haas and Peffer, which becomes the sole reason to socialize with one another. Stahl’s tavern was one of the most popular spots to play.
6. Since I knew Allie Dey practiced powwowing in his community, his hug was innocent. The belief is that a powwower has to pass his power to a member of the opposite sex only.
7. The elevation of the Reading Prong of the Appalachian Mountains is locally referred to as the Pricetown Ridge.
8. “The Village of Fredericksville,” by George M. Meiser, IX and Gloria Jean Meiser, The Passing Scene, Volume IX, 1994.
9. Conversations with Richard Stahl, son of Joseph and Alma Stahl, January 2002, Bally, Pennsylvania.
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Dr. Donald Shelley (left) with Pennsylvania Folk Art authority,
Frances Lichten, and Earl Robacker.
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The Bird Whistle Potter, James Christian Seagreaves
By Richard L.T. Orth
The passing away of James Christian Seagreaves on May 11, 1997 at his Breinigsville residence on the Berks-Lehigh County line east of Kutztown, Pennsylvania has brought about a new resurgence among Pennsylvania German collectors and antique dealers alike to seek out the remaining pieces of his almost fifty year career in the art of pottery making. It has also called for a re-evaluation of other 20th century contemporary Pennsylvania German Renaissance (1) potters such as Russell R. Stahl, Lester P. Breininger, and Ned Foltz to name a few.
The field of contemporary Pennsylvania German Renaissance pottery, which has occurred since World War II may very well be, attributed to Russell R. Stahl the last potter of the Stahl family whose shop was located at Powder Valley in Lehigh County. When Russell returned home from World War II without any other job prospects in a booming post war economy, he decided to resume his family apprenticeship with his father Isaac Stahl (2). He became a very competent master craftsman to continue the family business, even though the popular postwar “modern style” did not seem a likely time to sell ancient Pennsylvania German redware.
A significant number of others soon followed him inspired to revive this earthenware art and diligently acquire the skills of slip and sgraffito decoration, and like all other 20th century revival potters (3) who took the gamble with Stahl, James Christian Seagreaves combined the new clean cut modern fifties style of pottery with the more traditional type to create his own unique style which was accepted by his customers.
Seagreaves beginnings as a serious potter can be tracked back to his experimenting on the rear porch of his home at Alburtis in 1948 (4) when much of his creative artistry was influenced by the modern style, which was coming in vogue during the decade of the 1950’s. Having developed a successful style, he decided to build a pottery shop on route 222 half way between Kutztown and Allentown at Breinigsville in 1951.
During these early years an itinerant Greek potter named George Karras from the Aegean Islands of Karpathos would stop in Jimmy’s shop (5). His father had a pottery shop making tiles, bricks, and dishes in the old Country. He would visit the Breinigsville wayside shop and share his journeyman’s secrets with Jimmy, one potter to another, and threw objects on Jimmy’s pottery wheel. That was Jimmy’s only training as far as technique, and with the scientific approach of pottery such as the firing process, Jimmy’s learning had become mostly from reading books, etc.
Seagreaves’ reputation preceded him and met with Russell R. Stahl for a one-time visit. Jimmy had also met with another revival folk potter, whom he shared his technique of using copper oxide in glaze (6). Seagreaves and Breininger did later collaborate to replicate some redware fat lamp stands.
Having moved the shop to a more traveled location, Seagreaves had still another eventful visitor during those early years. A local farmer by the name of James Fetterolf from the small town of Fetherolfsville near Kempton stopped at his Crossroads shop and offered Jimmy as much native clay as he wanted in exchange for a piece of pottery. Jimmy had only ever used local clay as opposed to commercial clay, most of which came from the Fetterolf farm, now owned by Joseph and Barbara Freeman. He asked a friend, Jimmy Epler, to dig and load up bins and bins full of this good quality clay.
Jimmy keeping his end of the bargain made the farmer a magnificent presentation piece of a sgraffito-decorated plate with the design of a cow in a pasture. Pleased with the quality of the clay from the farmer, Jimmy made a duplicate of the bartered plate and kept it in remembrance of James Fetterolf which is still in the hands of his beloved widow today. Verna, his wife, says that this plate is the only one that he had ever duplicated.
Jimmy was proficient on the potter’s wheel, and made elaborate fat lamps, mugs, jars, dished, and a select number of miniatures.
Of all the techniques Jimmy did, his love of the sgraffito style (7) of decorating as opposed to the slip art method compelled Seagreaves to create many more bowls and plates and other objects. Jimmy’s wife Verna also recounts that Jimmy really enjoyed spending hour after hour carving intricate sgraffito designs in his shop and was sure that he probably mad fewer slip decorated plates because of that.
Seagreaves quality sgraffito works with Pennsylvania German motifs coincide with the outstanding examples of early sgraffito wares popularized during the 18th century (8) and his love for the sgraffito technique allowed Jimmy to excel in this art form over any style he attempted.
The rustic Seagreaves pottery shop for Sunday drivers in the 1950’s and of course all of those travelers going between Allentown and Reading. In later years, the shop was moved 3 miles closer to Kutztown on the north side of 222 in the shadow of the massive Bell Telephone Laboratories is now Lucent Technologies.
Unlike all other contemporary potters seeking to produce Pennsylvania German earthenware facsimiles in the 1940’s and 1950’s, the Seagreaves interpretation of this ancient Pennsylvania German art had a unique “ultra Germanic twist” (9) which made his ware both desirable and unusual. The Seagreaves school of pottery was as definite and individualistic as the wares of the original master craftsman he sought to replicate.
Perhaps the Pennsylvania German bird craving on the tops of wooden walking canes made by Simmons and Schimmel (10) caught Jimmy’s eye in those days, and with almost the same simplicity and amusement, he began to make stylized bird whistles by the score. Pennsylvania potters have always had a great deal of fascination and amusement making animal whistles, rattles, and ever water whistles (11). Seagreaves was no exception and produced a great number of bird whistles of varying sizes but always artistically executes with colorful glaze.
Jimmy also created owl and fish whistles but only a rare few. John H. Snyder (12) of Mohrsville, Berks County was known for making duck whistles in the 1850’s and many potters before him bearing the same name produced earlier bird whistles using the initials JS on their wares at the same location. The John Drey (13) pottery in Rockland Township, Berks County, famous for their beautiful slip tulip plates, made bird whistles as early as 1809 at Dryville, Pennsylvania. The early bird whistles made in Berks County were free molded and rarely incised with designs.
Seagreaves took pride in creating elaborate folk bird whistles which were so attractive they astonished the prospective buyer that they were in fact whistles, and the hole at the end of the tail was to be blown into, so the buyer could hear its high pitch as well as anyone else who was visiting the pottery shop. What Jimmy was to refining the traditional bird whistles from being simply a toy to becoming a work of art.
The hallmark of Seagreaves pottery is its uncommon Germanic character as well as its molded style. Of the contemporary potters, no potter has done more press molding than Jimmy, and his animated freestanding birds with whimsical expressions have no equal. Almost all of his glazed items are treated with bold Pennsylvania German colors. His sgraffito plates are well balanced with authentic Pennsylvania German motifs and over laid with yellow slip.
Seagreaves collectors of yesteryears and today such as Richard Shaner (14) of Kutztown and Mary Snyder (15) of Reinholds who knew and observed James Christian Seagreaves using his natural talent attest to the fact that Jimmy was always a professional craftsman and his sgraffito art motifs such as the single or double headed eagles contained near perfect symmetry and were flawlessly carved.
Since it was impossible for antique pottery collectors to find authentic pottery dogs, birds, and other clay animal forms of their pottery collections, Jimmy did a thriving business press molding all types and sizes of free standing birds and animals. These polychromatically glazed animals enhanced pottery collections; old and new, and today the better antique shops feature them for primitive collectors.
James Christian Seagreaves pottery pieces are signed on the bottom JCS with a rare few of them signed VAS, which were molded and painted by his wife Verna A. Seagreaves. His earliest pottery only bore the initials JS (16) which are ever rarer and could be mistaken by a novice pottery collector for John Snyder. Only very few of the Seagreaves pottery is dated. Many of Jimmy’s birds other than his whistles were made from molds that were cast from his original work of art (17).
When Seagreaves died in 1997 almost all the molds were destroyed (18) so they could not be duplicated. Although it would seem a temptation for the potter to mass-produce these works of art, that was not the case. When in later life museums gift shops and the Kutztown Folk Festival begged Jimmy to go into production for their visitors, he refused, because he shunned publicity and felt that it took too much valuable time away from creating more original pieces. So there is actually only a limited number of each work of art.
Jimmy’s true gift in the field of free molding pottery objects was in his imaginative genius to take a true life form such as a bird and innovate its features as true German folk artists did then take it one step further to accentuate its positive features in clay and later elaborate them again with colored glaze. With this attention to detail it is rare for any two of his clay objects to be alike. Even press-molded objects were creatively refined.
One of the rare forms made by Seagreaves is a Federal style house made into a bank complete with a pediment doorway on its front facade. Some of Jimmy’s other rare pieced include his owl and fish whistles, other animal pieces such as a dog, candle holders which he thought were “too practical.” Among his unusual pieces is the Voodoo (grotesque) jus complete with the devil’s horns on top and embossed with hex signs. A learned scholar, Seagreaves utilized the best of Pennsylvania German folk art motifs as the North Carolina parrot and the flat heart.
Just as Jimmy’s bird whistles enticed the child in all of us to blow them and hear their high pitch, he seemed to have enjoyed purposefully giving his birds and animals whimsy expressions or “toy like” appeal just as early wood carvers did with their pieces to treat neighborhood children as well as previous redware potters before him (19).
Among the numerous potters replicating early Pennsylvania German Renaissance art than the late James Christian Seagreaves. The Renaissance school of outstanding potters also include Robesonia’s Lester Breininger and Ned Foltz of Reinholds who each have developed their own pottery style and found a ready market, and like the earthenwares of James Seagreaves are today respectable collectibles at auctions and in the art world.
Just thirteen days before Jimmy’s death the famous Sotheby’s Auction House auctioned off at Kutztown, Pennsylvania a small grouping of Seagreaves pottery which sold for almost nine hundred dollars including commission from the collection of Richard S. and Rosemarie B. Machmer (20). At Pennypacker-Andrews auction held at their Berks County Center at Gouglersville, Pennsylvania in 1998 a small grouping of Seagreaves Pennsylvania German styled pottery fetched triple its average value among a few eager buyers and antique dealers many of whom did not realize the potter was deceased.
Among the items that went under the gavel that day were prize sgraffito plates and several of Jimmy’s colorful folk birds one of which was a whistle which caused the auctioneer to halt the proceedings to demonstrate its loud shrill. Not one of the two-dozen items sold brought less than the eager crowd expected (21).
A special mention must be made of Jimmy’s wife Verna whom he married in 1941 and is an artist in her own right and who has decorated some of his pottery very colorfully. She is also a successful watercolor folk artist who never had any instruction and whose paintings were also featured in their shop. Verna recalls how even though Jimmy loved creating pottery and carving sgraffito her water colored paintings were his favorite items to admire. Many of his wife’s colorful paintings were of the local countryside and incorporated bold Pennsylvania German motifs and somehow reflected the romance their lives in this enchanted corner of Berks County.
James Christian Seagreaves pottery has been exhibited at the Lehigh County Historical Society Museum and the William Penn Museum at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Almost every major pottery collection in the United States would not be complete without a Seagreaves piece. The legacy left behind by this deceased potter of 84 years was one of joyous color for the world and the super whimsy expressions of his objects to lighten your heart.
SLIP
A light cream-colored liquid clay used in such methods of decoration as slip trailing and sgraffito art most likely found on plates.
SLIP-TRAILING
A method of decoration where slip is trailed, not painted, to make designs such as flowers and birds on the surface of newly formed pottery using clay or steel cup with a hollow turkey quill. A cup with many turkey quills is used to make plates with wavy lines.
SGRAFFITO
After the plate is formed and sitting awhile, the same slip is painted on the entire surface of the plate. After the slip dries, a sharp knife is used to cut through clay, leaving exposed red clay. To add a touch of green to the pottery, a special glaze is used which is made from copper oxide.
ULTRA GERMANIC TWIST
Unlike many popular imitators of decorated earthenware in the 1950’s and later who often refined motifs of the early masters seeking to produce art which was less crude and more “pretty,” Seagreaves sought to enhance the geometric crudeness of these German motifs. For example his boldly applied clay hex sign medallions placed on the tails of folk birds and other objects.
PENNSYLVANIA GERMAN RENAISSANCE POTTERS
Use native clay such as the early masters did, including New Jersey “white” clay for their slip decoration, as was the traditional custom.
Pennsylvania German potters create objects of utility, beauty and amusement from God’s earth.
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Verna A. Seagreaves' paintings were equally colorful as husband's James Christian Seagreaves' pottery and both represented the couple’s innate talents and shared lifelong interest in their Pennsylvania Dutch culture. An accomplished artist in her own right, Verna demonstrated an unusual exuberance for painting and recording the Pennsylvania Dutch lifestyle.
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FRENCH HUGUENOT CRAFTSMANSHIP AND THE
HOTTENSTEIN GEORGIAN MANSION AT KUTZTOWN
By Richard H. Shaner
Until recently, the master builders of the exquisite 1783 David Hottenstein Georgian Mansion have remained a mystery. However, with Chris Machmer’s acquisition of the early 1792 Jacob Bieber clothespress found in Virginia and research by Jonathan P. Cox on Lehigh County woodworkers: 1753-1805, historians have a better idea as to who the Pennsylvania German family of Colonial joiners was who built this American architectural marvel.
Long considered one of the nation’s great treasures of early American architecture, this Georgian limestone mansion was built by David Hottenstein (1734-1802) the same year Great Britain signed the Treaty of Paris, recognizing the independence of the thirteen original colonies. The young Republic was already reaching its Golden Age when enterprising Hottenstein, a French Huguenot of considerable means, built a home with grandeur that rivaled the best English architecture in the Port City of Philadelphia.
Facing the Great Easton Road (modern route 222) leading from Reading via Easton to New York City, Hottenstein’s mansion with elegant pediment doorway and windows trimmed with cut sandstone keystones is located approximately two miles east of Kutztown, founded in 1779 by George Kutz. But in the 1950’s when preservationist Henry Francis du Pont traveled America in search of significant architectural treasures to be included in his Winterthur Americana museum in Delaware, he stumbled across the unique Pennsylvania German, great chamber room of the Hottenstein mansion, with Edgar and Charlotte Sittig, noted antiquarians.
A major collector of Pennsylvania German arts and primitives, du Pont was impressed with the second floor ballroom’s elegant English architecture with elaborate fireplace surround and Queen Anne corner cupboard. However, the ballroom also had the unusual distinction of being paint decorated by a Pennsylvania German craftsman who used old Continental techniques in painting the interior to enliven the great chamber with vibrant colors.
The artist had painstakingly highlighted all his blue and ivory simulated marbleized Georgian raised wooden panels with white paint to achieve a dramatic affect. Upon getting over the impact of these rich Germanic colors and rare stylized marble wood panels on the fireplace, du Pont and the Sittigs realized that the craftsmanship of the carved moldings themselves were uniquely Germanic, not at all in the typical English mode.
Deciding to buy this unique room’s interior and use it for a backdrop for his illuminated folk art frakturs, du Pont came to terms with owner George Grim via the Sittigs in October of 1950. After purchase, du Pont had his carpenters carefully remove the room’s interior, including the fireplace surround and corner cupboard. By this time the Pennsylvania German people in Kutztown’s countryside, hearing of du Pont’s ambitious plan, were not so much envious of his wealth as they were amazed at the importance and value of a folk art decorated room in a local farmhouse. The room’s dramatic interior was then meticulously reassembled at his Winterthur Museum, where many visitors cherish it today.
The last Hottenstein mansion antique to be acquired by Henry du Pont with the help of the Sittigs was the 1781 walnut clothespress, schrank in the German dialect, which was also intricately carved and inlaid in the Continental German fashion. In Colonial times, it was the custom to have your furniture built at the same time as your mansion was under construction. Thus, the same master joiner who carved the beautiful interior may have made the walnut Hottenstein clothespress.
The hallmark of this gifted Pennsylvania German craftsman was his particular carved wall of Troy moldings incorporated in the raise paneled wainscoting, which runs throughout the mansion painted with bold earth colors. Since there are very few, if any, Georgian mansions with this unique German carved wall of Troy molding technique in this area of Pennsylvania, it was almost impossible to determine which Colonial joiner could be credited with this unusually fine craftsmanship.
More asymmetrical than most Georgian classical mansions in its formal interior appearance, the master carpenter who constructed this double-pile house reflected the German heritage of its owner and his neighbors. At first, experts assumed that such a well executed Georgian home had to be built by English artisans brought up from Colonial Philadelphia, but a later appraisal of superior mansions built in nearby Oley Valley changed their minds.
David Hottenstein’s father, Jacob (1697-1753), lived in the Oley Valley before coming over to the East Penn Valley and David was naturally acquainted with the large number of French Huguenots, who like the Hottensteins, came to Pennsylvania to seek their fortunes and being successful, built large, ostentatious country estates. Living further out on the frontier at Kutztown, it is likely that David, a Huguenot returned to the Oley Valley to select a master carpenter to build his mansion in 1783.
The smartly carved sandstone keystones on the front facade of the Hottenstein home highlight its English heritage, but the two Germanic Queen Anne date stones flanking the front central window with twin hearts carved at their base, announce to the world the owner is Pennsylvania German.
Fortunately for us, several years ago antique dealers discovered a rare Oley Valley Pennsylvania German paint decorated schrank (wardrobe), which was taken down south to Virginia and later found stored in a vacant chicken coop behind a general store. The discovery was just in time for the tercentenary exhibition of the Pennsylvania Germans (1683-1983), held jointly by the Winterthur Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which had its opening in October of 1982, at the latter institution.
Devoted collectors of Pennsylvania German antiques, my wife and I eagerly attended the exhibition. One of the major pieces in the exhibit was this Oley Valley paint decorated 18th Century clothespress found in Virginia, dated 1792. Besides admiring its excellent polychromatic decorated raised paneling, I marveled at its handsome crown molding with two rows of hand carved wall of Troy trim, the same “unique” carving technique used by the master carpenter of the Hottenstein mansion. The best surprise was the inscription, lettered on the cornice frieze of the schrank, the name and date “JACOB 17*92 BIEBER.”
Since my maternal side of the family were Biebers from Oley Township, Berks County, in the northern section of the Oley Valley, I was very interested. From reading my family genealogy, I knew the Biebers settled there about 1744. Johann Bieber, a French Huguenot, brought with him a son Jacob (1731-1798) from whom I was descended. The family had built an early water-powered sawmill on the Bieber Creek, which cut across the homestead adjacent to the Keim and Hoch farmsteads near Lobachsville, founded in 1745 by Peter Lobach also a Huguenot immigrant.
At the same time the Philadelphia Museum of Art was hosting the tercentenary exhibit: “The Pennsylvania Germans: A Celebration of Their Arts 1683-1850,” they announced the acquisition of an extremely important folk art decorated Pennsylvania German dower chest also dated 1792 (illustration #227 in Monroe Fabian’s The Pennsylvania German Decorated Chest book). According to the museum’s research, this dower chest with two large colorful marbleized hearts was the work of joiner, John Bieber of the Oley and Lehigh Valleys.
John Bieber (1763-1825) was the son of Jacob Bieber who operated the sawmill on our family homestead in the Oley Valley. Around 1786, Jacob left the Oley Valley to start a homestead in the Lehigh Valley with son, John, purchasing 460 acres of land in Salisbury Township, Lehigh County. While there, John was recorded on the township tax lists of 1788-89 as being a joiner. His father, however, who had title to the land was not listed with an occupation.
In Morton L. Montgomery’s, History of Berks County (1909), Montgomery quoted John Bieber, a descendent at Oley Line, who had possession of the 1792 Jacob Bieber clothespress as saying: “Jacob Bieber [who was reared on the old homestead at Bieber Creek] was a farmer and carpenter of unusual ability, being a master of the wood-working craft.” Thereby, Jacob and son John were both joiners. In 1783 Jacob Bieber (1731-1798) would have been fifty-two years of age and likely the master carpenter appointed to build the Hottenstein mansion, of course with the help of his eight sons he fathered with his wife Christina Steinbrenner in Oley Township, a few miles away from Kutztown at their productive family sawmill, cutting timber from the Oley Hills.
Age of Jacob Bieber’s Children in 1783 when Hottenstein Mansion Is Built
Dewalt (born 1759) age 24 John Michael (born 1769) age 14
Jacob, Jr. (born 1761) age 22 Conrad (born 1771) age 12
John (born 1763) age 20 (folk artist)Christian (born 1774) age 9
Christina (born 1764) age 19 Abraham (born 1777) age 6
John George (born 1768) age 15
One of Jacob Bieber’s sons, Jacob Bieber Jr. (1761-1835) served in the Continental Army (1777-78) and married Esther Lesher, the daughter of Oley Valley ironmaster John Lesher in 1786, the same year his father and folk artist brother John set out for the Lehigh Valley. Whether or not the wealthy Esther Lesher helped Jacob Jr.’s father finance his 460 acres in Salisbury Township, Lehigh County we are not certain, but the ties between the two families were strong. Today, both French Huguenot families share a cemetery on the old Bieber homestead.
When Jacob Bieber, Sr. and his wife Christina died in Lehigh County, a valuable schrank was listed in their will. Whether it was acquired by an heir back in the Oley Valley and is the 1792 schrank found in Virginia which was seen by Morton Montgomery at Oley Line in 1909, we do not know. But it is likely that folk artist John built a schrank for his brother, Jacob Jr., who was a man of considerable wealth having married Esther Lesher and acquired the 170-acre family plantation in Oley Township. Eventually, at an estate sale, the 1792 Jacob Bieber wardrobe was bought and taken down below the Mason-Dixon Line by a southern antique trader.
However, from tax accounts and written history, the Bieber family of sawyers in Oley Township were likely a traditional Pennsylvania German family of skilled joiners who passed their ancient trade down generation after generation. Their distinctive woodworking craftsmanship is evident in the beautiful interior of the Hottenstein Mansion, David Hottenstein paying a large sum of money for their artistry.
The fact that John Bieber is attributed to so many decorated Pennsylvania German dower chests with the large, double heart motif entertains the possibility that he or his father inscribed the two date stones on the front facade of the Hottenstein mansion. These date stones with twin hearts at the bottom of their tablets were a “Bieber” moniker. The ability of the Hottenstein master carpenter to carve intricate relief compass designs on the pulvinate friezes on the pedimented interior doorways of the Hottenstein mansion classifies him as an outstanding worker in wood. These compass designs are a definite signature of John Bieber’s dower chest motifs.
On all four exterior corners of the Hottenstein mansion’s cornice trim the craftsman carved large sunflowers under the eaves to accent the elegance of the roof’s ornate wall of Troy moldings. Equally important is the fact that one of the Biebers’ may have been involved with carving the original wooden patterns for German five plate stoves with multiple flat heart designs cast in iron at the nearby Oley furnace in 1760 owned later in part by Jacob Jr’s father-in-law, John Lesher.
The dominant use of flat hearts used only in the 1760 motif of the “Elijah and the Ravens” iron stove plate cast at the Oley Furnace, and few other iron companies is conspicuous. However, it reveals a possible connection of the local Bieber family carving wooden patterns for the iron industry, such as the early fan motif cast by Thomas Rutter (Fig 5) at Colebrookdale Furnace, used by the Biebers on the 1788 George Schall double heart dower chest.
Furthermore, the Bieber moniker of flat hearts skillfully inscribed on the wood shop door of the 1753 Jacob Keim stone cabin, a neighbor of the early Johann Bieber family at Lobachsville, leads one to the conclusion that flat hearts were a common design used by French Huguenot pioneers or that Keim too played a role developing this dower chest motif. Nevertheless, local two heart motif chests were discovered with dates too early to be done by John Bieber. They probably were the early work of his masterful father, Jacob, or possibly a talented grandfather, Johann.
At the time the colorful Hottenstein ballroom was paint decorated, John Bieber would have been twenty years old, and as an apprentice to his father was very capable of doing the work. Later, dower chests with marbleized painted two heart motifs attributed to John show advanced proficiency with superior design. Carnation flowers, which are incorporated in the 1792 Jacob Bieber schrank inscription were a favorite motif of John’s art, theorizing that the father was the joiner and the son the folk artist in later years.
Jonathan P. Cox, who researched the dower chest folk art of John Bieber, was of the conclusion that the painted quarter round outlines, interlocking semi-circles, and large twin heart designs incorporated in John’s dower chest formats were a throw back to early Alsatian designs popular in Europe. The many French Huguenot immigrant families in both the Oley Valley and Lehigh Valley would therefore subscribe to his joinery-art.
My maternal grandmother, Mary Bieber Hilbert (1893-1981), told me that when she lived in the Oley Valley, they were not allowed to dance or play cards which other young people were permitted to do, because of her stringent French Huguenot father. Although the Bieber family, which lived near Lobachsville, always spoke their native German dialect, they did not use the euphemism, “Pennsylvania German.” They and their French Huguenot neighbors preferred the term, “Oley Valley Dutchmen.”
It is likely that the infracultural folk art aesthetic mode developed by these Huguenot immigrants who hailed from Alsace, living at Lobachsville, created one of the most desirable Pennsylvania German dower chest motifs in Americana folk art. My grandmother’s brother, Freddie Bieber inherited a signed, Bieber blanket chest from their Rockland Township homestead: a chest on frame, made in the late 1700’s, but we do not know which Jacob Bieber signed the lid, since their grandfather was also named Jacob (1815-1890). Since French Huguenots are not vain, no craftsman’s signature on a Bieber dowry piece of furniture has ever been found, but it most likely would be written
in early German Script.
While examining the Hottenstein mansion in 2001, currently preserved by the Historic Preservation Trust of Berks County, we did discover a large 18th Century work box in the unfinished attic, atop the staircase entrance with an early painted signature. On the side of this hand planed storage box were the large initials “Jcb.” That could have been the artistic monogram of Jacob Bieber, he being limited in the English language in 1783 or it possibly was an early shipping crate for Jacob’s tools and patterns. A makeshift lid to this old box has an address inscribed in cursive black paint: Heinrich Kutz, Kutztown, Berks Co. Pa., which could be a further clue.
The obituary of folk artist John Bieber, who died in 1825 in Wayne Township, Butler County, Ohio recorded him as an exceptional “dovetail carpenter” in the local newspaper, thereby attesting to his skills. John had married Catherine Holland in 1795 and resided in Harleysville, Montgomery County before venturing out to Ohio, where he raised four sons and a daughter.
Concluding, there are almost an equal amount of double heart John Bieber type motif dower chests built for families in both the Oley Valley and the Lehigh Valley surviving today. But, the 1775 Philip Deturk schrank made for a French Huguenot neighbor of the Biebers, while they lived in the Oley Valley, would have probably been made by Jacob because his son John would have only been 12 years old. This schrank done in the Bieber school of art shows a high degree of sophistication in its brilliant polychromatic color scheme. It is probably this skill in artistry, which attracted David Hottenstein and other affluent settlers to employ the Bieber father and son joinery team to build their mansions.
(Inset Article)
A MEMORY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
According to Rockland Township oak basketmaker Freddie Bieber (1885-1978), descended from Dewalt, one of Jacob Bieber Jr’s (1761-1835) five sons, the reason his great grandfather Dewalt moved away from the Johann Bieber homestead on the bottom lands of the Oley Valley was because of stealing and lawlessness. Johann, the progenitor, (1710-17_) lost his life sometime between the French and Indian Wars and the American Revolution on a trip to the port of Philadelphia during the grain rush.
Certainly, the Colonial letters of John Lesher to the Continental Congress bear witness to the turmoil and stealing during the Revolution, which was committed by transient peoples in the Oley Valley. This may be the ultimate reason why Jacob Sr. and his son John moved over to the Lehigh Valley in 1786; also why grandson Dewalt moved farther into the Oley Hills of Rockland Township to start Freddie Bieber’s branch of the family.
(Post script)
The Bieber homestead and sawmill were located at the end of Water Street, as it runs north from the village of Oley to the Rockland Township border, near the quaint Solomon Peter’s gristmill. The Bieber family still owns a hundred acres in the hills of the Oley Valley. Among the acreage are some tracts that John Lesher had mined in the eighteenth century for iron ore, while the Biebers may have timbered the surface.
FOOTNOTES: HOTTENSTEIN HOUSE
# 1 Swank, Scott T. Arts of The Pennsylvania Germans. A Winterthur Book, by The Henry Francis Du Pont Winterthur Museum, 1983. W.W. Norton & Company, pp. 93, 95, 86.
#2 In Conversations with Chris Machmer, Summer of 2001. Antique dealer from Annville, Lebanon County who sold the 1792 Bieber schrank in Pennsylvania.
#3 Garvan, Beatrice B. & Hummel, Charles F. The Pennsylvania Germans: A Celebration Of Their Arts 1683-1850. Illustration # 27, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1982.
#4 Rev. I. M. Beaver. History And Genealogy Of The Bieber-Beaver Family. I.M. Beaver, Publisher, 222 N. Sixth Street, Reading, PA, 1939, p. 406.
#5 The “Old Bieber sawmill” as it was called, was probably built in 1760 in Rockland Township close to the main road leading from the Oley Valley to Kutztown through Stony Point (now Dryville). Having access to timberland, the Biebers supplied lumber for many early farmsteads.
#6 Cox, Jonathan P. “Woodworkers in Allentown, Salisbury Township, And Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania, 1753-1805: A Study Of Community And Craft.” University of Delaware (Winterthur Program), M.A., 1982, p. 52. University Microfilms International, MI.
#7 Rev. I. M. Beaver. History And Genealogy Of The Bieber-Beaver Family. I.M. Beaver, Publisher, 222 N. Sixth Street, Reading, PA, 1939, p. 404.
#8 The 1762 Double heart dower chest which belonged to the mother of Philip Vesco of Wescosville, a village West of Allentown on route 222, is now in the collection of the Lehigh County Historical Society.
#9 The Freddie Bieber blanket chest with Jacob Bieber’s signature in English cursive was acquired from his estate by Esther Shaner of Allentown, Pennsylvania.
#10 Cox, Jonathan P. “Woodworkers in Allentown, Salisbury Township, And Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania, 1753-1805: A Study Of Community And Craft.” University of Delaware (Winterthur Program), M.A., 1982, p. 54. University Microfilms International, MI.
OTHER WORKS CITED: HOTTENSTEIN HOUSE
Fabian, Monroe H. The Pennsylvania German Decorated Chest. Universe Books, New York, 1978.
The Historical Committee of the Kutztown Centennial Association. The Centennial History Of Kutztown, Pennsylvania 1815-1915. Kutztown Publishing Company, Kutztown, PA, 1915.
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PA Dutch Watercolor Folk Artist, Verna A. Seagreaves
By Richard L.T. Orth
When Harold Yoder, executive director of the Berks County Historical Society, ask me to set up an exhibit of James Christian Seagreaves pottery in the Fall of 1999 at their museum gallery, he suggested that we include twenty-five water color paintings by Jimmy’s wife Verna A. Seagreaves as a back drop, because they were equally colorful and represented the couple’s innate talents and shared life long interest in their Pennsylvania Dutch culture.
An accomplished artist in her own right at age eighty-six, she demonstrated an unusual exuberance for painting and recording the Pennsylvania Dutch lifestyle. Urged by members of the society who wished to learn more about Verna’s talent and paintings, I interviewed her in December of 1999, a month with which she identifies since she loves to paint Santa Claus and Yuletide paintings.
As a child, one of Verna’s fondest memories of early childhood was how thrilled she was when she received a box of crayons containing as many as thirty-two different colors. Verna used Sears Roebuck catalogues instead of coloring books and anything else that was available to her for practice. In her public school, the art courses were meager. Even in later years at Emmaus High School during the 1927-1931 years, no art courses were offered, so her life centered on music, playing the piano and singing.
After her formal schooling and college, Verna with her musical inclination became a full-time music teacher for the Upper Macungie Township schools directing a group aptly named the Choral Maidens presenting spring concerts annually. She also sung in weddings, church services, and became organist and choir director at her local church. Having established herself as a quite successful musical person, a relative introduced her to potter Jimmy Seagreaves. They were married in 1941 and the following year was blessed with their daughter Claudia.
With added responsibilities, Verna carried on as a part-time teacher and Jimmy worked at Bethlehem Steel starting an antique shop in their enclosed back porch at Alburtis selling the usual smalls. Meanwhile, Verna being artistically inclined, worked on quilt cross-stitching in her spare time even incorporating Indian quilt symbols gathered from her visits with her now grown daughter whom resided in the American West.
Then in 1966, Jimmy and Verna Seagreaves joined the Reading-Berks Chapter of the Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsman. There she met Alma Strauss who encouraged Verna’s childhood fascination with the arts. Alma Strauss was a watercolorist artist whose colored pencil sketches of covered bridges and churches were very popular. Verna had admired Alma’s watercolor paintings and sketches so much that with the extra encouragement of her husband, she began colored pencil sketching.
Verna recalled how elated Jimmy was that she was occupied and not poking her nose into his pottery craft, so much so that Jimmy began buying Verna art supplies, Wensin-Newton paints as well as how-to-do books on painting. Self taught, she began painting sunflowers, covered bridges, church steeples, trees, birds, tulips, etc. Two artists, Austin Davison and Sigmund Gorney of New Jersey and Philadelphia respectively encouraged her and “even bought” some of her first paintings. At the same time, other antique dealers and pottery customers of Jimmy seemed interested and began purchasing her paintings as well.
Verna Seagreaves method of painting was developed using the dry as opposed to wet watercolor technique preferring watercolor to start out with and only if she needed, used stronger color directly from the acrylic tube. Thus, brilliant colors became her trademark.
As a housewife, all of her paintings had to be sandwiched in between her housework, and the responsibilities of marriage, so that Jimmy could devote time to creating his pottery. This was the best way she added, so if she had to leave her paintings, she could do so at any time and resume again when she was free. She practiced, and practiced, painting The East Penn Valley countryside.
During the years, Verna and Jimmy had purchased a large number of art books sometimes copying some of the paintings she encountered in books, but felt she always had to add her own touch to make the painting come more alive. While her style developed, Jimmy was quite surprised and provided Verna with the confidence and motivation to manipulate subjects, as she felt fit. Memories of her childhood surfaced in her paintings as well as places along Route 222 at Breiningsville such as the old Country Junction roadside stand of pumpkins and produce on display. Verna incorporated folk birds, tulips, and fraktur symbols, in her paintings especially the fraktur art shown in a book edited and given to her by Frederick Weiser.
Someone had also suggested painting Biblical themes, which she was at first doubtful, but began with “The Peaceable Kingdom” and “Noah’s Ark” (which was a great undertaking). Both subjects were featured in the James Christian Seagreaves pottery exhibit in fall of 1999. Verna was pleased with the reception her biblical paintings received thus prompting a demand for more. Over the years, she must have painted 20 of each, all different, for it was impossible for her to duplicate, because when she tried a new idea would always pop in her head and with one brush stroke was off on a different direction.
Customers kept asking for specific subjects and she felt overwhelmed yet had a great time fulfilling their wishes. The titles and subjects varied, while customers wanted everything from a painting to remember the Main Street in Kutztown to a visual depiction of Psalm 23. In addition, Verna did three paintings of the Stahl brothers and their pottery activities in Powder Valley. However, her Christmas paintings were of special importance to her. Verna loved the color, the music, and everything that goes with Christmas, and each year she did at least one painting. A “Christmas Sampler of the Twelve Days of Christmas” was one of her favorites. While thinking of the Santa Clauses ringing their bells on the city street corners gave her the idea of doing “December’s Onset” another painting featured in the James Christian Seagreaves pottery exhibit.
A special mention should be made concerning other artists who have had a profound influence on Seagreaves’ growth and paintings. In the 1970’s, Verna read Georgia O’Keeffe’s autobiography, which gave Verna a refreshed outlook on her own way of working and philosophy of painting. O’Keefes’ statement “I have things in my head that are not like what anyone taught me, shapes and ideas so near to me, I decided to start anew to strip away what I had been taught. I was working on my own, no one to satisfy but myself.”
This was just what Verna needed giving her new found faith in her own technique and talent, having no formal art lessons and disagreeing with some of the "rules" of painting. Verna was now encouraged to do just what she had wanted to do and include unusual subjects along with her trademark use of brilliant colors, simplicity, and directness in her paintings. Georgia O’ Keefe made a major impact on Verna’s philosophical art views such as the simplicity and boldness of colors that radiated O’Keefe’s works.
Another artist whose paintings Verna enjoyed was Henri Rousseau, especially the way his colors stood out, the foliage, and dreamlike scenes and animals. Rousseau’s jungle paintings helped Verna with ideas when she worked on the “Garden of Eden” another portrayal featured in the Fall exhibit, of which she also painted about 20 copies. Reading a description of the Garden of Eden, she felt she just had to add the angel that covered her eyes when Adam accepted the apple from Eve. However writers do not agree; some say the apple (Robert Graves in the White Goddau); others state the pomegranate. Whatever the case, Verna used both, whichever her customer preferred.
Another artist Verna admired was Ivan Rabuzin, a Croatian, whom she came across in an art magazine. She loved his presentation of flowers and trees done in pale pastel colors of pinks, blues, and greens. So she adopted this unusual technique, using Pennsylvania Dutch figures and bold color themes. Verna admired the unorthodox way Rabuzin presented his art with exaggeration, and abstract layout he formulated which also are evident in some of Verna’s paintings. For example, the oversized stems in “The Tulip Tree”, and the disproportion of size conveyed in “Birds, Houses, and Trees.”
The noted Lancaster folk artist Hattie Brunner, which I believe share some artistic resemblance to Verna’s work, was not known to her. The first Brunner painting that Verna saw was on a Christmas greeting which was a painting of a covered bridge and sleigh in snow. Verna also noted a similarity in their paintings and later when she read a short biography of Hattie Brunner’s life, Verna was amazed at the parallels in their backgrounds.
Both had painted in their later years, taught piano, dealers of antiques, painters of farm scenes, covered bridges, auction sales, and both celebrating the Pennsylvania German culture. Verna continued on about Brunner’s quote in an interview for the Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine (3/4/62), “You have to be a homebody and love it, in order to accomplish anything.” Which Verna agrees with being very content living in the Pennsylvania Dutch country.
In a personal memoir, Verna A. Seagreaves refers to her life and accomplishments as such: “As I look back over the years and my painting adventures, I am just beginning to realize how fortunate I am to have had these experiences. How much I appreciate the encouragement and loyalty of the people who loved Jimmy’s pottery and came to like my paintings. It is truly amazing how these special people influenced me and were a big factor in the development of my art.” (Verna A. Seagreaves Oct.12, 1999).
Although Jimmy loved creating pottery and carving sgraffito plates, Verna’s watercolor paintings were his favorite to admire and somehow reflected the romance of both their lives in this enchanted Pennsylvania Dutch corner of Berks and Lehigh Counties.
• Interviews and Conversations with Verna Alice Seagreaves at her home in Breinigsville, Lehigh County, 1998-2000.
• Conversations with Mary Snyder at her home Reinholds, Lancaster County, 1999-2000
• Conservations with Verna’s daughter, Claudia Murphy, 1999-present
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COLONIAL IRONMASTERS, WILHELM AND JOHN POTT,
SEEK THEIR FORTUNE ON THE OLEY VALLEY FRONTIER
By Richard L.T. Orth
Of all the Iron masters and Colonial captains of industry recorded in Pennsylvania’s historic iron industry, little is known of Wilhelm and John Pott from Lobachsville, in the upper Oley Valley, whose pioneer family founded that village and also laid out the town of Pottsville, Schuylkill County.
After the 1720 “Iron Ore Rush” begun by English iron pioneers, Thomas Rutter and Thomas Potts in the Manatawny region of Berks County, Old World venture capitalists were eager to seek fortunes in Pennsylvania searching for prized magnetite iron ore. Both iron master John Lesher (1711-1794) and Wilhelm Pott (c1704-1781) arrived in Philadelphia about 1734 and acquired tracts of land in this iron rich territory with adequate forests for charcoal burning, limestone minerals, and streams to access waterpower needed to pump giant leather bellows to produce quality iron.
Today, there are few surviving records, and little is remembered about these important iron industrialists whose trials and tribulations on a sometimes savage frontier brought about advanced civilization; let alone winning our freedom with iron manufactures and guns produced during the American Revolution.
In Wilhelm Pott’s trips to London he heard of the iron rich Manatawny region, and so he, his wife Gertrude, brother Deganhart, and six children ventured to America and arrived in September 1734 aboard the Ship Saint Andrew. Passengers with the Schwenkfelders, these pioneer families arrived before the first major wave of German immigration from 1749 to1754. While staying in Germantown-Philadelphia, they acquired title to land in the Manatawny District, where in 1760 Rebecca Potts also purchased a one sixth interest in an obscure “Spring Forge” in District Township, Berks County.
Settling in what is today Pike Township from the German Palatinate with their three daughters and three sons, Wilhelm Jr., John, and stepson Peter Lobach, they resided on an acquired large tract of land in a pioneer log cabin built over a spring, then in Upper Philadelphia County. Located in the forested Oley Hills along Pine Creek, a tributary of the Manatawny stream, the Pine Creek provided headwaters for the gristmill Wilhelm built in 1745, now the Lobachsville Gristmill owned by Stephen Kindig.
Architectural historian, Robert Bucher, in his article for Pennsylvania Folklife on “The Continental Log House,” described the Pott frontier log cabin, which may predate the arrival of the family in 1734. Bucher refers to the original casement window and first floor arched central fireplace as unusual features of this early log cabin. The primitive Pott cabin, which had running spring water in the cellar, had its cooking fireplace there under an original steep, German, orange clay tile roof. With this arrangement, the pioneer women could easily draw water from their position at the central fireplace to fill kettles without taking a single step outside.
Certainly, this was “central heat and running water in 1740”, as stated by folklorist Harry Stauffer, and perhaps was necessitated by warring Indians on the frontier. In addition to this German Continental log cabin, located today on site with the 1755 manor house, the Pott family established a large, productive farm. Wilhelm’s gristmill, which harnessed waterpower from the Pine Creek to grind their grain, was a half-mile south of the homestead.
In 1745, at the time of settlement, Wilhelm also sold stepson Peter Lobach a tract of land upon which Peter established the village of Lobachsville. Here where Peter resided, he built a water-powered fulling mill for processing wool, and a sawmill to cut lumber. Since the Wilhelm Pott gristmill was a house mill, one of the sons (John) probably lived there, because Wilhelm Jr. lived nearby in a stone home where he died prematurely in 1767. His brother, John, as history records, was the miller of the family.
In 1755, John (c1720-1805) married Maria Hoch, a twin daughter of John Hoch, one of the largest plantation owners of that hamlet. Thereby, Wilhelm Sr. and his son, John built a large stone manor house north of the village gristmill, adjacent to their first crude log cabin. The manor house still contains early wattle and daub interior walls and a hefty spring in the cellar, which flows to this day.
A likely scenario is the manor house was part of John’s marriage dowry in 1755, conspicuous by the large date stone that bore both father and son’s names at the manor house door. As was the German tradition, the daughter-in-law shared the household chores with her mother-in-law, and the two families lived together for a time.
The headwaters of Pine Creek were ideal for powering early industry and historian, Arthur Bining gives Wilhelm Pott Sr. credit for establishing District Furnace, although its very earliest history is vague. The District Furnace was a few miles upstream from Pott’s gristmill and nearer the later, Francis Heilig Forge (also called the Pott Forge) on Pine Creek, about a mile above the Pike Township line. This was an enterprising Colonial age when fortunes could be made or even lost, depending on the quality of the local iron ore.
Whether Wilhelm Pott originally built the District Township Furnace as historians, Croll and Bining have reported, we are not sure. However, sometime before 1784, iron capitalist John Lesher acquired the furnace and turned it over to son, Jacob in 1794. Wilhelm Pott’s son, John may have operated the furnace briefly upon his father’s death in 1781 or been a partner with the Leshers when they obtained it, or later when the furnace became an Iron works, after 1797.
Whatever the scenario, his son, John Jr. (1759-1827) married John Lesher’s daughter, Maria, and was associated with the next generation of ironmasters, including brother-in-law, Jacob Lesher. Since John Jr. married Lesher’s daughter at the time Lesher’s estate was settled, they inherited two of Lesher’s sixteen Negro slaves, as did Maria’s other two sisters, according to Peter Bertolet’s Fragments of the Past.
Ambitious John Pott Jr., grandson of Wilhelm Sr., continued the family’s iron interests, and with his father’s acquired tracts and inheritance in 1805, moved out on the frontier to Pottsville, Schuylkill County, where he founded and laid out the town of Pottsville in 1806. As recorded in the Blue Book of Schuylkill County, a straggling row of houses was built (1806-1808) to accommodate his workmen in that early village. Pott acquired the “Schuylkill Gap” Furnace near Pottsville in 1804, but tore it down, and instead erected Greenwood Forge.
He later purchased 227 acres of land, which covered the old site of Pottsville, in 1808 (some records indicate as early as 1796 with purchase made by John Pott, Sr.) from Lewis Reese of Reading, Berks County and Isaac Thomas to accompany the Greenwood Furnace built in 1807, and operated it for many years until his death in 1827. Though land was still owned in the Oley Valley, the Pott family is documented leaving the area permanently in 1810, and by 1816 had Pottsville laid out. With John’s move and the death of his father John Sr. in 1805, the Pott family’s presence in Oley Valley was extinguished.
John Pott Jr., while in Pottsville, also established an oil mill and distillery located today on the northwest corner of East Norwegian and Railroad Streets. He was regarded as a prominent citizen of the community with much prestige. His son, Benjamin took over the businesses upon his father’s death in 1827. Pott is also credited with founding Centerport, Berks County, in addition to Pottsville, in the heart of the coal country which replaced charcoal as the agent to smelt iron ore. Today, John Pott Jr. is buried in the Charles Baber Cemetery in Pottsville.
According to Dr. Peter Bertolet’s recollections, the early winters in the Oley Valley were so severe; deer hardly had a chance to survive in these blizzards. Thus, primitive conditions made it imperative for a growing Manatawny iron industry to manufacture native German five plate stoves that were butted to the rear walls of German central fireplaces to heat the “Great room” behind them, also called “stove rooms.”
Numerous iron furnaces, run by Germans in the broad Oley Valley, shipped pigg iron to the Mother country of England during mercantile trade, and often poured enough molten metal to make these five plate stoves to heat their crude houses, molded with famous Biblical scenes. Not until Benjamin Franklin invented his Franklin stove, about 1742, were there other options to heat American homes besides purchasing iron jamb stoves from Pennsylvania German ironmasters.
The large number of German indentured servants, which followed the iron furnace and forge trade, with a representative number of slaves, provided arduous labor required to mine ore, burn charcoal, and quarry limestone using the natural local resources of the Oley Valley. Soon, many more Germantown refugees arrived from the Rhine Valley and settled in the Lobachsville area, which became a cultural island of French Huguenot worshipers, above the lower English tracts of the Oley Valley where William Penn’s Quaker friends held land and practiced their faith.
Language was definitely a barrier for Rhinelanders in the early 1700’s, and the Germanic Lobachsville fieldstone homes and structures with their brick-arched doors and windows, and rooftops full of orange clay tiles that welcomed hordes of other French Huguenots to seek jobs and opportunity in the nostalgic upper Oley Valley. In fact, the German-speaking artisans who built the nearby 1753 Lobachsville manor home for Jacob Keim, who had married the twin sister of John Pott’s wife Maria Hoch, had built the Pott family a similar German manor house.
Although ethnic and religious differences of the people living along the upper Manatawny stream in Colonial days were many, the savage menace of the French and Indian War period (1754-1763) was real, thus, the turmoil eliminated some of these differences and welded this early American frontier industrial hamlet of Lobachsville into a unified community in Berks County.
Stuccoed over and forgotten by time, the large 1755 Pott fieldstone manor house with obscured brick-arched windows was acquired by an affluent Philadelphian suburbanite (Kathryn Soloman), and used only as a summer retreat. The manor eventually became neglected when no longer of use, and trees and briars reclaimed much of the property, and some of the farm fields were allowed to grow up in weeds. However, in March 2000, Attorney James McClean and wife Nancy purchased the abandoned farm to reside in the historic Oley Valley, and board their horses in the commodious bank barn.
In 2003, on a fact finding trip with Carl Snyder and Richard Shaner to investigate measurements of the earliest Germanic central walk-in fireplaces, I had the pleasure to see the architectural restoration that the McCleans had embarked upon, as they seek a realistic restoration of the Pott manor house, restoring this early Colonial ironmaster’s home. Careful not to chip the old salmon colored brick-arched windows, the McCleans removed the tedious cement stucco, and the house appeared much the same as the 1753 Jacob Keim manor house a short distance down the road where we had taken measurements earlier that day.
Until the McCleans had removed that outer covering, no one knew their historic house had the identical salmon brick-arched windows as the neighboring Keim manor house. James reminded us that the wife (Maria) of Wilhelm’s son, John Pott who lived there was the twin sister of Jacob Keim’s wife, Magdalena Hoch. Thereby, this close nit community of French Huguenots had built their homes and fireplaces almost identical. Of course, we expected that the ironmaster’s home would have a German jamb stove opening in the rear wall of the hearth fireplace, as was the case at the Keim manor house.
But we were astonished to find that Wilhelm Pott had a seat built into the stonewall on the right side of the fireplace, in which he or his wife could sit on a masoned two-inch thick wooden plank seat and warm themselves by the hot ambers of hearth fires in the wintertime. Having read of these seats and knowing of their rarity, I checked Henry Landis’ essay written for the Pennsylvania German Society on Germanic pioneer kitchens. Landis found that a niche in the fireplace wall to accommodate a seat for elderly people were extremely rare, however not unheard of among Rhineland immigrant housing.
Surveying the Oley Valley architectural landscape, the fireplaces that survive on both these plantations are among the best Colonial specimens in Pennsylvania. The fact that the Oley Furnace (Shearwell), circa 1744 or 1760, produced early cast iron five-plate stoves may or may not be the reason why the Keim farmstead readily had three iron jamb stoves in use, and the Pott manor two in its layout.
Certainly, there was not a shortage of iron ore for local furnaces and forges to fashion iron cookware and attractive iron fireplace cranes for Oley Valley homes. Some of which had arms that extended nearly six foot in length from the inner corner of the fireplace out over the brick hearth. Built in the European Medieval-style, both the Keim and Pott kitchens were long and narrow, and the heat, which radiated from the hearth, was thereby reflected back into the room.
The Jacob Keim walk-in fireplace opening is eight foot four inches (8’4”) l | |
