Thus, early American village trade fairs among the PA Dutch were a common occurrence in the springtime when craftsmen, after long winter months, wished to market their trade items locally instead of sending them to the distant Philadelphia urban market. Additionally, butchers with smoked meats and housewives with fresh butter saw an opportunity to improve their sales at these local trade gatherings as a sort of spring celebration. So, the American Folklife Society held their Cherry Fair over the three-day Memorial Day weekend for modern urban Americans, but by the second or third annual Cherry Fair, moved the expanding event to the 1753 Keim farmstead, outside of the village of Lobachsville, after its owner offered the grounds as a more suitable public meeting place.
Mutually beneficial, Dick Boyer, Shaner’s new benefactor, did not use this farmstead and Shaner’s use provided protection from would be vandals, since Boyer himself lived at far away Pine Grove. One of the most authentic Colonial farms, dating from the 1750s, the Jacob Keim farm Boyer inherited just outside Lobachsville, was where later proceeds from Cherry Fairs were spent to provide adequate parking and restoration of its historic surviving Colonial structures. However, the original Keim barn was torn down years earlier when Dick Boyer’s father timbered the virgin land, but in November of 1972 after the success of the first springtime Cherry Fair, the newly formed Board of Shaner’s sponsoring American Folklife Society published their first multi-page issue of the American Folklife Journal (1972-1975) with Shaner, as editor.
A newsletter, approximately 12 inches by 17 inches with large photos (thanks to board member Robert S. Walch, a Life-Time photographer and Shaner’s colleagues), new membership was key to its longevity. Operating American Folklife on a shoe-string budget, as a teacher at Oley High School, Dick received fliers from school printing houses and approached a company out near Pittsburgh and asked them if they would give his American Folklife Board the same financial break they gave to public school newspaper publications. Realizing they were a nonprofit corporation, the company agreed and continued to print their local historic American Folklife Journal for seven years with outstanding quality photos.
Meanwhile, the American Cherry Fair had become the Lobachsville Folk Festival now held at the historic Keim farmstead over the annual three-day Memorial Day Weekend, but ending in 1979 along with the newsletters. Displaying Conestoga wagons and demonstrating Pennsylvania long rifle shoots and other Americana inventions at the Keimstead with its early Rhenish Colonial architecture, the American Folklife Society also debuted struggling American folk singers at each annual event along with PA Dutch folk music. But, after a considerable investment in the Keim farmstead with the restoration of the early American Hartman lever apple cider press, a downturn in the business cycle forced Dick Boyer and the American Folklife Board to turn the historic Keim property over to the Preservation Trust of Berks County to be preserved for posterity in 1979.
Although members of American Folklife (Society) assisted in the transition period, in 1995, the desire of Richard Shaner and a new, ambitious board member, Richard L.T. Orth, in an attempt to record American Folklife created a revamped organization called the American Folklife Institute. Now, as a fledging duo of fellow researchers, they wrote articles for the Berks County Historical Review magazine, Early American Life, and numerous other publications.
But ultimately, in the end, it was Dr. Alfred L. Shoemaker’s vision and inspiration that recognized the true Americana spirit that was born out of our frontier immigrants to create a new Republic filled with fresh ideas and inventions better than the Old Country, where American pacifist groups thrived and the Bible and plow followed almost every day, blotting out the terrible oppression of the Old World.
Richard L.T. Orth is assistant director of the American Folklife Institute in Kutztown.
