Certainly, the Oley Valley’s iron industry with furnaces, forges and blacksmiths greatly enhanced our agrarian economy, making trade with Philadelphia possible by horse and wagon during the golden age of the Republic. Millers and the farming class in the Oley Valley were able to invest farm market revenues into substantial early American farm structures that are today national treasures, now listed as a National Historic Registered District by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Evidence of Oley Valley’s early agrarian participation with Colonial bread production is revealed by the overwhelming number of 18th Century bake-ovens built in the age when “Wheat was King,” just before 1800, at the turn of the century.
But perhaps Colonel John Lesher of American Revolutionary fame was the most versatile, forging iron and operating a very productive farm operation, complete with apple orchards sending Conestoga wagons down to Philadelphia loaded with barrels of cider. After Lesher’s death in 1794, Frederick Spang operated the Oley Forge for 70 years, and built his own Georgian mansion down the road from Lesher’s Oley Forge home (Spang Mansion). The Colonial Oley Forge dam on the Manatawny stream covered 40 acres and was in operation for a total of 120 years.
The stonewalled pigpen aside of Lesher’s Oley Forge home had a secluded double-wall to the backside, in which Revolutionary War supplies for Washington’s troops could be hidden (see earlier column), only to be reached through a trap door in its attic room at a time when British soldiers were an eminent danger to American patriots living in the Oley Valley. There were several types of Conestoga wagoners, besides farmers, who sent their wheat to Philadelphia during wheat harvest to get a good market price. Known as “The Wheat Rush,” hundreds of farmers were crowded on the roads to Philadelphia overloaded with newly harvested wheat pulled by Conestoga six-horse teams.
Among the most patriotic of leaders during the Revolutionary War period were two iron masters from the Oley Valley: French Huguenot John Lesher and Daniel Udree, a Scot (see Oct. 8 column). Involved with Udree’s Oley Valley Iron Foundry, John Lesher was an enterprising Pennsylvania citizen, and may have eventually been involved with the “underground railroad,” helping black slaves become free citizens. A religious American who believed in free private enterprise, and as giver of land to Salem Reformed Church in 1754, it is not impossible to think that this Christian citizen was an active participant of extending freedom to Colonial (Negro) slaves who escaped from the Southern Colonies. Colonel Lesher was a revered Pennsylvania statesman, besides being an honorable United States patriot, serving George Washington’s troops in the American Revolution.
The Oley Valley, a limestone-laced valley with deposits of iron ore and clay for pottery and earthen clay tile, was ideal for Rhine Valley Pennsylvanish Deitsch immigrants who sought a utopian agrarian paradise, similar to the one they had left in central Europe. Thus, Germanic immigrants who were denied freedom of opportunity in the Old Country more than made up for this inequality when they were able to acquire land grants in the beautiful Oley Valley. Seldom were they the victims of hostile American Indians; the Lenni Lenape Indians, who referred to this place as the “kettle,” allowed these American pioneers to develop a utopian frontier farming center in which both Native Americans and Europeans could share God’s eternal love for the earth by working together. Thereby, many of the industrious Rhineland farmers built large farmsteads with native stone homes and clay tile roofs, which were similar to the homes they had in Germany.
Richard L.T. Orth is assistant director of the American Folklife Institute in Kutztown.
