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.
(I)