Linen Production

Today Jim showed us how to prepare the stems of the flax plant in order to create linen. I forgot my camera this morning, and it would have been mighty helpful to have some pictures to illustrate this process, but alas. The other interns will be demonstrating it later this summer anyway so I'll add some pictures then.

The first thing you have to do when you want to make linen is pick some flax. The average farmer in colonial Pennsylvania had about three acres of flax under cultivation for this purpose, that's about three football fields. Textiles were so expensive in the eighteenth century because they took so much time and resources to produce.

Once your flax is ready to be harvested in late July or early August you can't just cut it down like you'd do with hay. You have to pull it out of the ground BY HAND because most of the fibers are closer to the root. Jim tells us this is hard work. I'm taking his word for it.

Now that you have your flax you have to rot it or, eighteenth century speak, ret, it by soaking it in water for two weeks. This will soften up the coarse outer layer. After that you pull the flax through a big wooden contraption that kind of looks like an enormous hair crimper, called a flax break, in oder to break up the outer layer. Once the outer layer starts falling off you scrape by of it off by beating it with a big wooden scraper. Then finally, you comb it through hackles, which are pieces of wood with big iron spikes, until you get a substance that looks and feels a lot like hair. In fact flax resembles blonde hair so much that an eigteenth century term for it was "flaxen" hair.

After that you have to spin it and finally weave it to get linen. Quite a production! The most desierable flax fibers were the longer ones because you could produce fine linen with it. The shorter fibers we called toe, and they would produce a coarser fabric.

And there you have it!

The Keim House

If you ever looked at the cover of Phil Pendleton's book, Oley Valley Heritage, you've seen the Keim House. From afar it looks like any other big old stone Oley Valley House with an auxillary building, but really it's one of the best preserved houses in the valley. There are preservation efforts going on in the house right now to get it back to an even more prestine eighteenth century condition.

Jim, another intern named Dave, and I went to the Keim house in 100 degree heat one day. It was quite an experience.

The place has beautiful herring bone doors, one of which is original

The porch wraps around two side of the house. There were people renting this place up until the 90's. There is still no running water or plumbing in the house! I would rent a gorgeous place like this even if it didn't have running water too!

This is the fire place. There is a scar around it a few feet up the wall that indicates to is that there amy have been a raised hearth here at some time.

A Bedroom. You can see the Queen Anne's posts poking through the ceiling in this room.

Upstairs fireplace.

The Auxillary building. Once thought to be the house that the original settlers built, it is now believed to be a joiners workshop that was built later.

Barn. It has an overhaning bay on BOTH SIDES. I think this is the only banked barn ever to have this. Jim thinks its most recent use was as a pig stye.

And now for the peice that was worth braving the 100+ degree heat....

The cidar mill. So big it was built into the building that houses it. It's actually attached to the walls. Eighteenth century assesors considered it part of the real estate. That's a lot of apple jack!

Eighteenth Century Barns and Roofs:Ethnic Origins and Mixing

This morning Jim decided that it was a good time to talk to us interns about roof construction in the eighteenth century, and also a little bit about the architectural history of the barns that the Oley Valley is so famous for. First lets start with the roofs.

There are a few basic ways that roofs were constructed in the Oley Valley, and the mode fo construction was divided along ehtnic lines. British people did things one way and Germanic people another. The English way was meant to hold up a roof that was not that heavy, because the English cover their roofs with wooden shingles which are relatively light. Basically you have rafters which lay on a horizontal beam called a perlin, the perlin being supported by Queen beams that are either attached to a summer beam that runs paralell to the perlins or some other architectural structire particular to the type of building. The summer beam and perlins run from gable to gable of the roof. It kind of looks like this.

This is our barn roof.

In Germanic roofs the system is much more complicated becuase they typically used clay tiles for thier shingles. Since I don't have any pictures of that I'm not even going to try to describe it.

Another odd feature of the Germanic roof is the kicked roof. This happens when you need to support a heavy roof by driving a heavy beam at the gable ends of the structure into a beam that sits atop the walls. Kicked roofs sort of flair out on the ends like this:

This is our blacksmith shop.

In addition to the talk on roofs we also got a talk on barns. I had always been under the impression that the Pennsylvania Germans had the monopoly on the distinctive banked barn, but aparently this was not so. Swiss and Germanic people did build them in Europe, but so did people living in the British Isles. Plus, ground barns, something that the English were only supposed to build, show up in Germany and Switzerland. And Germans also built ground barns when they lived in Pennsylvania. Who knew?

This is our barn at the Homestead. Note the overhang in bottom left corner of the picture. This was a tradition that all ethnic groups in Pennsylvania would adopt. Some barns don't have the gable-end wall extend all the way out to the overhand like ours does.

Oley Valley Heritage

Oley Valley Heritage by Phil Pendleton was recomended to me as the most comprehensive social history of the Oley Valley in print today. I was not disapointed. Based on a plethora of original research, the book details every valuable aspect of life in the Oley valley during the eighteenth century.

The work beings basically enough with a description of the land. This is crucial to understanding the Oley Valley during this time period becuase the limestone soil in the northern section supported agriculture, while the red shale in the South left settlers with little choice but to work in industries like milling, iron, weaving, or smithing. Pendleton then moves on to structures, exploring housing styles, outbuildings, and the way they were used by various peoples. Next is religion, in a chapter entitled "Soul." Pendleton's treatment of the tension between denominations and the Moravians in the area is sound, and his discription of the New Born Sect is informative. The last chapter, on community, details how the diverse Oley Valley residents got along with each other.

Overall, Pendleton uses a great deal of primary documents for this study. Friends meeting minutes, legal documents, notices in newspapers, and court proceedings are all uniltized. The result is that the reader feel an intimacy with the members of the community, and gets a glimpse into their day-to-day lives.

Another result of so much field research is the overwhelming amount of pictures that Pendleton has on nearly every page of his book. Pendleton spent time in the Oley Valley for this study, and the imagery of this beautiful area is conveyed in the book. The unique architecture of the settlers of the Valley is not lost to the reader because photos of the buildings that happen to be still standing abound.

Overall, Pendleton has produced a thorough piece on a small area of Pennsylvania. The narrow geographical range does not limit the scope of the work however, as Pendleton links issues like econics, immigration, religion to the larger colonial scene. This book is a worthwhile read for anyone seeking to study colonial Pennsylvania.

The Sawmill

Daniel Boone Homestead is home to one of the few operational water-powered sawmills in the country. Today I got to see the sawmill running for the first time, and I learned quite a bit about how it actually operates. Conveniently, I have also been reading a little about the economy of the Oley Valley in Pendleton's Oley Valley Heritage, and so I know how the sawmill fit in to the economic scheme of the valley.

The Oley Valley was a thriving region in colonial Pennsylvania. The valley can be split in half in terms of soil, with a rich limestone in the northern portion, perfect for farming, and a less fertile red shale in the southern half. The Oley Valley also became a seedbed of early American Industry. It was home to iron furnaces, and a lot of mills. The two most common types of mills at the time were grist mills and saw mills. Grist mills grind up wheat or other grains into flour. Saw mills cut logs into boards, which I guess is pretty self-explanatory. The sawmill may seem like a pretty basic idea, but processing lumber without one can be a real pain. If a sawmill was unavaliable typically what one would do was use a pit saw. One person would stand inside of a pit, with another person standing over top of it on a support that they had rigged up. They would lay the log over the pit and each would hold an end of the saw and move it up and down. It was pretty backbreaking work, not to mention the person who was on the bottom was eating sawdust all day! So the sawmill was a true inovation and people were glad to have them.

Jim Lewars and Jeff Becker were the two who gave us the talk about the sawmill today. They explained that it worked by diverting water from a stream and storing it up in an underground tank. Once the tank was full a lever was pushed and a small door in the side of the tank was opened. The energy expended from all the water in the tank trying to squeeze through the whole is what makes the wheel turn. The wheel is attached to an arm that moves up and down and consequentially moves the saw up and down. The log that is being cut is laid hozontally onto a sort of holder that is also attached to a small wheel and operated by the force of the water. As the blade is moving up and dawn the holder is pulled by the spinning of the wheel slowly from left to right. This makes the log move as it's being cut, and allows it to be cut completly down the middle. The boards that are cut at the sawmill are rarely perfect. Usually they vary about a half inch from one end to the other, but the ease and time saved with the sawmill made up for any inacuracy in cutting, and with a pit saw the boards were rarely perfect either.

The sawmill we have at Daniel Boone was used commercially until the 1940's. This had important consequences for historians and preservationists. Usually historians can tell that a board in a house is old by looking for saw marks charecteristic of a sawmill. But if some water-powered mills were used up until the twentieth century, the marks on many boards can be deceptive. A piece of wood may have been made in the 1890's but an unknowing historian could date it from the eighteenth century if they were unaware that a water-powered sawmill was still used in the area.

It just goes to show that history is not as concrete as we may think.

Gardening for the Historian

For the past two days my supervisor, Marcia, and I have been working intermittently in the garden outside of the Boone House, planting a new set of crops (rather late in the season) for this year. Marcia had an idea to make the garden more historically accurate, so we started out by removing a few things that really would not have been in the Boone’s garden, like an ornamental flax plant. Next we began planting some things that they would have grown.

But before we did any of that we had to pull weeds.

These are so pretty, why do we consider them weeds?

Okay, so the first project we talked was erecting bean poles and planting our beans around them. These are the beans I was planting. Apparently they were a popular food item back in the 18th century, but they aren’t beans that I was familiar with.

Next we scattered buckwheat and flax over patches of the garden.

We also planted carrots, spinach, and cucumbers, all of which Marcia thinks the Boones or other people living in the Oley Valley would have planted.

In addition to all this we also have some herbs that have already sprouted up. They include leeks, dill, camamille, sage, and chives.

All in all gardening was a nice break from giving tours and running the cash register in the gift shop. It also made me feel a little bit like I was taking part in something that the Boones would have been doing in the 18th century. I think it would be a good idea to have a program on interpretive Sundays on plants, gardening, and herbal remedies of the 18th century, but I think I will leave the task to Marcia, as she is one of the most knowledgeable gardeners I have ever met. I'm glad I worked with her for these past two days because I really learned a lot about plants and plant care!

The First Pennsylvania Regiment

I am suspicious of reenactors. I have a problem with people trying to replicate the past. I don’t think it can be done, and I don’t see the point in it anyway. Recreating a battle in a modern world, and getting obsessive about little details like footwear, buttons, and using the right material in clothing does not make me feel closer to the past. For me it makes me feel like there is less continuity in history that the people of the past were radically different from all of us dwelling in the present. Still reenacting is extremely popular, and there must be a reason for it. Maybe it gives people a sense of history that they did not once have. Maybe it makes them feel more connected to a past that was once something intangible and worse incomprehensible. Maybe in this world of globalization, mass media, and mass culture, it makes them feel like they are carrying on cultural traditions that are really unique against a world where little else is.
These are the feelings and thoughts I had when I observed the First Pennsylvania Rifle Regiment hold their monthly target practice at the homestead on Sunday. The men were very personable, they invited me to stand close by while they shot, and several talked to me for about an hour answering all the questions I had. Unfortunately I forgot my camera that day, so you’ll just have to be content to imagine the men in their colonial garb with their muskets and rifles.
First things first, what is the First Pennsylvania? They’re a group of volunteers who get dressed up and shoot guns just for the fun of it. They participate in a lot of battle reenactments, and they get around. They’ll be in Maryland in a few weeks and at Washington’s Crossing next weekend. All of the men I talked to were very mellow, and no one seemed to be younger than forty. There was not a lot of the bravado and machismo that I expected from a group of younger men. These guys were doing it for the sheer enjoyment of it. They have a leader, who they called a commander, who was running the target practice as far as I could tell (all this included when I was there was telling the shooters when the range was closed because they were checking targets). I did not get a sense of the rest of the organization of the group from the time I spent with them. I don’t know if they have any other officers, or who they are if they did.
The men in the First Pennsylvania were very concerned with shooting traditional weapons in a traditional manner. Some of them make their own led balls, and they were dressed in full colonial garb just for target practice. The men I talked to were very knowledgeable about their weapons, and they explained to me at length the difference between the rifle and the musket. (I still don’t really understand what the difference is though! I’m just a girl). When I interjected with a commonly held notion that the Americans were the ones with the rifles and that’s why they were able to beat the British in battle they corrected me. The middle colonies had the rifles, but in New England the musket was typically used. However, they did show me why a rifle is so much more accurate than a musket. The barrel of the rifle is grooved and it makes the ball spin when it is shot, and this makes the ball go in a straighter line. They let me touch the riles and even offered to let me shoot them (I declined).
Overall my experience with the First Pennsylvania Regiment was an informative one. I still think reenactors are trying to connect with a past and a culture that they feel is lacking from their day to day lives, but is that really such a bad thing? The men of the First Pennsylvania Regiment were very knowledgeable, even more so than me, and I’m the academic. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I am going to join a reenacting club, but I do think that it is possible to learn a lot from this phenomenon called reenacting.