Many local history enthusiasts know of the name John Lesher, a merchant-patriot and supplier of General Washington’s troops with military equipment and goods during the American Revolution, earning him the distinction of Colonel. Lesher was heavily involved in the iron industry and had numerous buildings at his 1744 Oley Forge to store his wares and exports. His 1750 Oley Forge Mansion was highlighted recently in my (Dec. 17) column concerning the Colonial practice of storing grain in the attic. However, little mention is made, and rightly so, by historians in his additional export trade of rye flour also shipped to the port of Philadelphia from Lesher’s enterprises.
It was a most common crop among PA Dutch farmers and overproduced on the frontier, because freshly cut forests left the ground too sour to support wheat until tamed over by a number of years of cultivating rye crops. Thus, rye was 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 namely the Oley Hills, overplanted rye as a cheap crop. As elsewhere, on the East Penn Valley frontier, it was inevitable that a percentage of rye grain was distilled into whiskey.
Lesher, who had a town house in the port city of Philly, 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 then regular basis and transported to Philadelphia via his Conestoga wagons. In fact, during Colonial times, frontier rye crops out-produced precious wheat grain for flour, and many wise Pennsylvania Dutch farmers made only cheap rye bread to feed their households and hands since the value of rye grain was hardly worth the trip to Philadelphia. Thereby, the idea of converting rye mash into whiskey and sending the more valuable commodity to the port city was a more practical idea. Since rye was also the tallest grain crop, it was used to thatch roofs and bed animals, like the number of six-horse teams used by Lesher to operate his business.
But after those frontier years, there were not as many farmers in Berks County “burning rye” (distilling whiskey), yet there remained an avocation for farmers in the fall and winter, whether they paid the later Federal Whiskey tax of 1791 or not. Those that did continue the trade were often in our remote northern Appalachian region. Eleanor Raymond, in her 1930 book, Domestic Architecture of Pennsylvania, includes 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 where pure rye whiskey was produced 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. A large spigot on the left allowed 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 her photo, though, is the copper hood, which was placed on the pot to receive the steam for the condensation coil when in use.
More on this next week…Richard L.T. Orth is assistant director of the American Folklife Institute in Kutztown.
