When we think of early houses in the region, the images that usually come to mind are the large, stone farm houses and the associated bank barns.
But these were almost all built in the 19th Century, and often represent the second or even third generation house on any particular site. The first houses in our region during the colonial era were almost all log houses. “Log House” being the more accurate term than “log cabin,” which is an invention of 19th Century romantic literature and political campaigns describing candidates whose humble “log cabin birth” showed them to be plain, sturdy and unpretentious.
The first settlers in the Delaware Valley and the first people to build log houses in this country were the Swedes, soon followed by the Germans who brought their design with them from the homeland. The English usually did not build log houses. In the colonial era, the majority, and probably the vast majority, of structures in the Swamp, New Hanover region were log. Both the Lutheran and Reformed churches and the associated school houses were log.
It was in 1961 that some of the people who formed the nucleus of the Goschenhoppen Historians – Alan G. Keyser, Clarence Kulp and Robert Bucher, along with Dr. Alfred Shoemaker – began documenting the Continental-type log house that the German settlers first constructed throughout southeastern Pennsylvania following the design with which they were familiar from the homeland.
Varying in size, the footprint of the German log house is everywhere the same. Close to the center of the house was a massive stone chimney stack. The ground floor kitchen was quite narrow with a gable wall on one side and a cooking fireplace as much as eight or more feet wide on the opposite side. The gable wall might have one small kitchen window. The other side walls each had a split or “Dutch” door opening into the narrow kitchen. The top door could be opened to admit light. On the other side of the chimney stack was the “Stube” or “the room.”
In the early days, before about 1770, this room was heated by a jamb or five-plate stove built against the chimney stack. This stove had no door but was fed through an opening in the back of the cooking fireplace. Common stovepipe was not yet invented, so the smoke went back out the fueling port and up the kitchen chimney.
This heated room was the dining room, work room and living room of the house. In those houses, families didn’t live or work in the kitchen. The kitchen was for food cooking and food storage only.
The larger houses of this type also had a kammer or downstairs sleeping room for parents, which was paneled off from the Stube with vertical boards. A winding stair or straight-ladder stair in the kitchen led to the half-story second floor. It was called a half-story because the roof rafters rested on the side walls, which stopped at the attic floor. So the roof was quite low along the sides of the attic. The second floor was used for storage and sleeping quarters for older children and hired help.
These log houses in no way resembled the modern “log house” which arrives as a pre-cut kit. Nor did they resemble the Lincoln log houses with round logs extending out a few feet from the corners. Rather, these houses were built of logs hacked square with broad ax or adz in the fashion learned in the Germanic folk-culture regions of Europe. Apprentices who learned the craft continued to build in the same way into the late 19th Century. These houses were typically small as exemplified by the Johannes Neuss house on Colonial Road, the original section of which measures only about 18X30.
Doubtless the oldest log house in the greater region, the Johannes Neuss house has construction dated about 1730. A new addition has the date 1750 carved into a plank. This is a plank house with dove-tail corner joinery. The house is constructed of sawed white oak planks four inches thick laid edge wise one atop the other. Some repair work revealed that a layer of tow was set between the logs for insulation. There is no chinking as the logs have sawed edges and lay tightly together. However, the most common type of log structure in this region used squared logs with “V-notch” corner joinery.
The preferred species of wood for log construction was white oak. Heavy, strong and long-lasting if kept dry, oak was, however, the toughest wood and most difficult to work. Chestnut and tulip poplar were also used for log structures. They were much lighter to handle and less resistant to ax and saw.
Most early log houses were roofed with long (a yard or more) red oak shingles riven (split) from log rounds and smoothed with a draw knife on a “schnitzelbank.” By splitting shingles from log rounds, they got a shingle which was slightly “pie”-shaped in that one side was thin and one thicker. They would overlap these in a “ship-lap” manner – the thick side of one atop the thin side of the other. These two would then be held in place with just one nail, a distinct advantage when each nail was handmade by a blacksmith.
The exterior walls were open to the weather and sometimes eventually whitewashed with the interior walls plastered. During the 19th Century, the exterior walls were often clad in siding or stuccoed. The tops of the gable walls were fitted with vertical boards. A generous eaves overhang tended to keep the walls dry as moisture was the enemy of log construction.
Log houses continued to be built well into the 19th Century, and many are standing today. More than one current house owner has been surprised when workmen started to drill through house walls to install utilities and such and discovered the drill bit turning out wood chips. An excellent example of this is the dwelling at 1844 Swamp Pike. This is a three-story tan house with red shutters located a short distance up the Swamp Pike (toward Boyertown) from the Wawa. It is of log construction and was stuccoed in the 1930s. The house was in the Yerger family for many years and was known as a trolley stop along Swamp Pike. Earl Yerger was a trolley driver on the Pottstown-to-Boyertown run for more than 40 years (see New Hanover Township History 1741-1991).
The Historian is produced by the New Hanover Historical Society. Call Robert Wood at 610-326-4165 with comments.