The American Folklife Institute journal, published in the 1970s was enamored in the field research of United States folk culture, architecture and antiques, mainly recorded throughout the greater Delaware Valley with area of expertise in Americana achievements and agrarian life, past and present, in its early years. The American Folklife Institute started the Lobachsville Cherry Fair in 1977, and at the annual Americana event featured folklife staff members feeding apples into the hopper of an ancient Appalachian pomace mill, while another worker turned the boom, crushing apples as they passed between two giant gears.
Housed in a rustic building, the 18th century cider press where the pomace (crushed apples) was squeezed to render cider was at the historic 1753 Jacob Keim Homestead. The crude mill and press are only among a few surviving specimens of the early Appalachian cider industry that once extended from Maine to Georgia. As the American Folklife Society grew, so did the name and location, as the imposing 1804 Valentine Stoll Georgian townhouse on the Main Street of historic Kutztown, Pennsylvania, which once served as a residence to the Town Crier, Town Doctor and Clerk of the Village Market, now became the headquarters of the American Folklife Institute by 1995.
This residence built or paid for by a wealthy farmer in nearby Richmond Township, the limestone home provided his family with the urban grace that came from such townhouse activities, prevalent in Colonial times, when country gentry maintained townhouses to reside in during the cold, winter blizzards. It is unlikely that Valentine Stoll’s townhouse matched the comforts of his country estate, and is probable he rented the home on occasion to Kutztown citizens, such as the Town Crier, when he did not have the need to live there himself.
Remembering that it was of the essence for a Town Crier to have a reliable time piece, and in keeping with authenticity, when one enters the Town Crier’s fashionable front doorway trimmed with Georgian keystones today, there stands an original Federal Tall Case Clock built by Kutztown’s 18th century clock maker, Daniel Christ. The Federal Eagle painted on the clock dial bears witness to the newly born Republic, and to the right of the clock is a rare copy of the Declaration of Independence reproduced by the Coca Cola Corporation in 1942.
The main parlor, as seen from Main Street, hangs a portrait of King George III of the German Hanover family over the paneled fireplace, flanked with book shelves on either side, as a doctor of the time would have had. But perhaps the most impressive feature of the house is the five original fireplaces. Rhineland immigrants who built Georgian or Federal mansions in southeastern PA did not do so because they were Auslanders (outsiders); far from it, they were devoted friends of William Penn and supporters of the United States Constitution as loyal American citizens.
But, among the many grand architectural English mansions built in the Oley Valley was the previously written about Henry Fisher farm mansion in Oley Township. Built in 1801 by the prestigious master carpenter, Gottlieb Drexel, he was the designer of several, beautiful early American Georgian English buildings. However, there are several English mansions built by Oley Valley citizens with just as magnificent an edifice, like the Fredrick Spang mansion in the Colonial village of Spangsville, or the 1805 Nicholas Hunter Mansion – so much to see and admire in architecture!
Richard L.T. Orth is assistant director of the American Folklife Institute in Kutztown.
