A couple weeks back, I was pleased to write about the rare Americana weathervane on the Levan barn in the Oley Valley. But ironically, Clarence Shirk had a local farm auction with an identical weathervane for sale at an Emmaus farm auction Sept. 6.
Both antique weathervanes were about four feet high, and in good shape. Emmaus, is a Moravian town, which dates back to the Colonial period pioneered by the PA Dutch people, whereas more locally, the Oley Valley had a Moravian school house built by local Moravians in 1748 who were missionaries among the local Lenape Indians.
Auctioneer Clarence Shirk who advertised the auction and also operates an auction house in downtown Kutztown, realized that this early Americana Weathervane was a one of a kind item that was made by a local Dutchman. In this case, the tin weathervane was made by Charlie Haas when he was a young man for the farmer’s use on the barn. Well at the auction that morning, sold for an outstanding price of $2,500!
According to tradition, an Indian weathervane was a good luck symbol among PA Dutch farmers who shared their harvests with the native Indians. In fact, Mrs. Trexler whose husband founded Trexlertown in 1760, fired up her bakeoven on Fridays. But before she was able to put her bread dough in the bakeoven, the local Indians having seen her smoke fired bake oven, came to sit alongside it near her farmhouse.
According to Mrs. Trexler’s neighbors, these local Lenape Indians did not cause her trouble. But being a Christian woman and an excellent baker of bread, Mrs. Trexler shared her weekly allotment of bread with her Indian friends who always remembered that on Fridays she fired up her wood-fired bake oven to make the weeks supply of homemade hearth bread. One of the white man’s culinary treats; they shared with their Indian neighbors in the Colonial forests of Pennsylvania. The Moravians of Pennsylvania thereby baptized several Indians in the early Oley Valley where freedom of religion was shared by both citizens.
Although many PA Dutch farmers grew crops of potatoes to supplement their diet, when they harvested these potato crops, they usually looked for native Indian artifacts and arrowheads, besides native Indian tools to collect as souvenirs of the previous countrymen whose artifacts in the 20th century were a reminder of our frontier culture.
Richard Shaner is director of the American Folklife Institute in Kutztown.
