Ohio History Journal


ORIGIN AND SIGNIFICANCE OF PENNSYLVANIA

ORIGIN AND SIGNIFICANCE OF PENNSYLVANIA

DUTCH BARN SYMBOLS *

 

By AUGUST C. MAHR

 

On a great number of Pennsylvania Dutch barns, there are

geometrical ornaments painted on the outside walls; ornaments

which, as a rule, show      some sort of star within a circular disk

(Figs. 1, 2, 8, 10b). They occur most frequently in Berks and

the neighboring counties; less frequently, in other parts of Penn-

sylvania; and, locally, even in Ohio and other states of the Union

where Pennsylvania Dutch farmers have settled.

Due to Ohio's close proximity to Pennsylvania, as well as to

its importance, in early frontier days, as both a temporary and

permanent place of settlement for eastern farmers venturing west-

ward, it is in Ohio that not only barns of Pennsylvania Dutch

structure are more frequently found than anywhere else outside

of Pennsylvania, but here one may also see the barn symbols that

are so striking a characteristic of the Pennsylvania Dutch counties

mentioned above.

The Pennsylvania Dutch barn in question is of the so-called

Swiss bank-barn type. It means that it is erected along an em-

bankment in such a way that its main entrance door leads to the

heavily planked floor of its wooden upper story.          This floor is at

the same time the ceiling of the lower story formed by the stone

base structure which contains the stables for the livestock and is

 

* This study grew out of a paper read before the Anthropology Section of the

Ohio Academy of Science, at its annual meeting, in May, 1943, at Columbus, Ohio.

The writer is glad to express his gratitude to Professor Edgar N. Transeau of Ohio

State University for the photographs taken in Pennsylvania, of barns shown in

these pages; to Dean Carl F. Wittke, and Professor Clarence Ward, both of Oberlin

College, for photographs and scholarly aid; to Professors John W. Price, and Wilmer

G. Stover, both of Ohio State University, and to Dr. James H. Rodabaugh and Mrs.

Margaret Stutsman, of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, and Mrs.

Mary Jane Meyer, of the Ohio War History Commission, for helpful field-work; to Dr.

Jean Weltfish, of Columbia University, for valuable bibliographical advice; to the Grad-

uate School of Ohio State University for generous help in securing the illustrative ma-

terial; and, last but not least, to the publishing houses, in London, of A. Zwemmer,

Macmillan. & Co., and Methuen & Co., Ltd., for their permission to reproduce pictures,

from works published under their imprint, as illustrations of this article.

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