There is no better a material cultural tie between Rhineland natives who settled the Pennsylvania Dutch Country than the medieval orange roof tiles that still protect our ancestral homes and buildings in Germany. Locally, there are still many surviving Germanic bake-ovens and outdoor buildings, smoke and spring houses and primitive cabins in the area, and especially in the Oley Valley. Here, one can still see these ancillary buildings beautifully dressed with orange clay tile roof tiles from the earth. Any Dutchman familiar with the orange clay Colonial roof tile still adorning our immigrant homes in the Oley Valley knows at a glance its rich Rhenish heritage.
These earthen tiles made from native clay in America were exactly like those German roof tiles fashioned by our ancestors in the picturesque Rhineland farming valley of Germany. Timbering virgin New World forests, Dutchmen had no shortage of lumber, building pioneer homes following German prototypes, but on vast tracts of farming land only dreamed about in Europe. On a 2009 trip to Germany and Scandinavia, these old rooflines from medieval times welcomed every descendant who shared Continental ancestry and was such a refreshing sight.
However, back home, two pioneer homes in the Oley Valley of Berks County are still adorned by these Colonial roof tiles, many of which are incised with a finger print of a tulip, gathering rain drops to fall from one tile to the other in an orderly fashion, not to be permitted to ruin the home’s interior. The historic pioneer stone house of Johan Deturk, dated 1767, with its main roof and Germanic pent roof in front covered with native Germanic clay tile is preserved by the Preservation Trust of Berks County.
The symbol of the local Oley Valley Heritage Association, the Deturk French Huguenot family was one of the earliest Rhineland families to settle in the Oley Valley, next to the Johannes Keim family whose son Jacob’s pioneer clay-tile roofed stone cabin is also preserved by the Historic Preservation Trust on Old Boyer Road. It is near to the 1745 village of Lobachsville, founded by another French Huguenot (Peter Lobach), who like most of the natives in the Oley Valley spoke their German Dialect language to one another as late as the 21st Century.
The huge Jacob Keim manor house he built (1753) still had its original clay tile roof in place as late as 1900 with a Medieval German kick at the eaves of the roof where the eaves were plastered shut with a white Colonial cove curve. These Colonial orange colored tiles were very heavy, and the weight was born by massive beams and upright trusses. But, since our ancestors were building their homes with virgin timber, wood shortage was not a problem. In fact, the folk tradition of storing grain in the attic, like with the DeTurk home (1767), also clay-tiled, followed the Jacob Keim farm where a balcony was built to handle lifting the grain up to the attic floor with orange German pent tile roofs on either side protecting the first floor windows.
Surviving examples of early steep-roofed clay tile Germanic manor houses in the Oley Valley are also dressed with beautiful salmon-colored brick arches over their doorways and windows to bear the weight of their stone walls. In the Colonial years when handmade bricks were scarce, the availability of native clay also afforded these Oley Valley pioneers the ability to build attractive brick chimneys with courses of brick corbelling. Thereby, the entire Oley Township has been made a National Historic District by the United States Department of the Interior for its heritage.
Richard L.T. Orth is assistant director of the American Folklife Institute in Kutztown.