The practice of storing grain in the attic
As evidenced by the 1767 Deturk house’s second floor or the 1753 Keim Homestead’s backside balcony, the practice of storing wheat at the Oley Forge Mansion was done by an attic roadside interior, gable stone wall that was plastered on the roadside for banking grain, whereby the opposite gable end wall of the attic was unplastered. In agreement with the late “Bob” Bucher, the practice of hoarding grain in the attic for both curing the kernels and security began to disappear by the 1770s. Thereby, large Oley Valley estates were building, at that time, the great Pennsylvania Swiss bank barns, commonly seen, with built-in granaries to store and cure their bountiful crops.
Gone were the days when Colonists took a bag of wheat from the attic depository to have it custom ground by the miller for their dietary needs or to barter for cash, directly. However, Steve and Margie Fisher, owners of the beautiful 1801 (Henry) Fisher Georgian mansion still have a storage room above the rear attached walk-in fireplace kitchen that stores household grain. A grain chute, connected to the later improved kitchen room below, allowed the occupant to go upstairs and send down the chute a quantity and type of grain the farmer wished to have ground at the local mill.
The Jacob Keim manor house of 1753 with a grain loading balcony on the backside of the home had a door that entered the second floor work room to hasten the taking of grain into the attic. In this room, ladder stairs accessed the attic through a large trap door in its ceiling for storage of grain. Perhaps, the most ideal arrangement to store attic grain was at the 1750 John Lesher iron mansion (or aforementioned Oley Forge), where a gable end attic door on the cliff roadside was easily reached for loading grain by using a plank from the nearby limestone cliff bank.
While other cultures in America consumed their corn breads, Pennsylvania was blessed with the climate and resources to be one of the largest producers of wheat and wheat products in Colonial times. Wheat grain, flour and bread were among the largest exports of the Colonial port of Philadelphia, and the port of Philadelphia was the second largest in the British Empire. Continuing a tradition, Pennsylvania Dutch housewives still provide the public with fresh breads at farmer’s markets. Unlike the earlier breads baked in stone ovens on brick lined hearths, the contemporary product is the result, most often, of a wood-fired cast iron kitchen stove.
So by 1767, at the time the Deturk House was built, the bulk of exports from Colonial Pennsylvania consisted of wheat, flour, bread, corn, pork, and beef, bar iron, pig iron, flaxseed and beer. Flour accounted for nearly half of the total value of exports and wheat a good deal, as well. However, one would not be prone to believe that “bread” too was an important export of Colonial Philadelphia, but it was nevertheless. As we look back over 250 years of American history, we cannot underestimate the value of bread.
Thus, trade between Oley Valley farms and iron plantations and “Philly,” was done on almost a daily basis and was good for both economies. Wheat, the Colonial plantation’s cash crop, had become so valuable in the early years that it was always stored in attics of Oley Valley Continental-styled homes like the Levan, Lesher, Kaufman and Keim manor houses of the mid-18th Century, and elsewhere. Pennsylvania Folklife writer Robert C. Bucher wrote an exemplary article published in 1962 concerning “Grain in the Attic” in Vol. 13, No. 2 of the Pennsylvania Folklife magazine.
Gone were the days when Colonists took a bag of wheat from the attic depository to have it custom ground by the miller for their dietary needs or to barter for cash, directly.
Richard L.T. Orth is assistant director of the American Folklife Institute in Kutztown.