Musing On The Great Conestoga Road Mystery – Part One

Curator Finds His Assumptions Must Be Tested – Again

(from the Hans Herr Foundation Fall 2002 Newsletter)

I developed a three-point interpretation of the house. The 1719 House is about five or six times larger than the average house in colonial Pennsylvania. Why is the house so large (by 18^th century standards)? Well, first, it was the home of a successful, socially respected, and fairly wealthy man. Second, it was a Mennonite meetingplace for worship for a substantial community (maybe two or three hundred). Third, it was a sort of public house, in the absence of any taverns or inns per se in the neighborhood, and in this regard it stood as a kind of billboard for Mennonism. The first two interpretations remain sound, wherever the Great Conestoga Road may have been, but the third really relied on the Road travelling within sight of the house. Or so I thought.

My reasoning was that anyone travelling between 1719 and the construction of the King’s Highway ("Old Philadelphia Pike" today) in the mid-1730s from the major cities of the province, Philadelphia and Chester, towards the west would inevitably have passed the Herr House towards supper time on the second day of the journey from the Delaware Valley. In the absence of other places to stay, the traveler would naturally approach the closest private home. The large size and convenient location of the Herr House would naturally draw visitors, who could then be entertained in a Christian fashion (pun intended) by the bishops’ family, who thus acted as a means of defusing any animosity towards the Mennonites which travelers might harbor.

Now, I am presenting this briefly, but I think it’s a sound interpretation. In it one has a link between material evidence and the culture of the 18^th century, an entrée for the discussion of Mennonite belief, and the possibility for an examination of the reasons for the Mennonites’ immigration. All of this is based on an understanding of the size of the house and its proximity to the road.

However, recently I have been doing a bit more research on the way early German settlers built their houses, and where they settled in respect to the roads. Typically, it seems that settlers preferred to be somewhat isolated from the main traffic patterns. (This certainly was not the case in Lancaster city, but it is thought to be the pattern in the country. See, for example, James T. Lemon’s treatment of settlement in The Best Poor Man’s Country [New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1972], chapter 4.) It seems that the general understanding of the location of the Great Conestoga Road in our neighborhood places the Road at the same location as what is today called Beaver Valley Pike. The other candidate is Penn Grant Road. If either of these were the original Great Conestoga Road, then the 1719 House would conform to the supposed pattern. If, however, the Great Conestoga Road was located just "behind" the Hans Herr House, the House would be placed in an unusual relationship to the road in two ways: first, it would not be at some distance from the road along a lane (which is said to be the common pattern); second, the "back" of the house would seem to be to the road. I clearly need to rethink some of my assumptions and try to find out more about the "facts": Did any (other) German house have its "back" to the nearest road? What evidence, physical or documentary, exists for the supposition that the Beaver Valley Pike (or Penn Grant Road) is the same as the Great Conestoga Road. As I often say to my students at the Pennsylvania School of Art and Design, "We’ll come back to that…"

II

Musing on the Mystery of the Great Conestoga Road – Part Two

The Curator’s Driving Habits Lead to Hypothesis on Old Roads

(An abridged version of this essay appeared in the Hans Herr Foundation Spring 2003 Newsletter)

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (Book III, Chapter 5 "The White Rider"), the wizard Gandalf is accused of talking to himself; he responds by noting that it is a "habit of the old" to do so, since they speak to the "wisest person present." I am not particularly old by contemporary standards, and I hesitate to make claims about wisdom, but I do spend a fair amount of time talking to myself, particularly when driving alone. Five years ago, this appeared more eccentric than it does today. Now, with hands-free cellular phones, I see a fair number of people apparently talking to themselves, but one can’t be sure: perhaps they are talking on the phone. So, if anyone should see me talking to myself (which really is what I am doing), perhaps they will just think me more affluent and up-to-date than I am and assume that I am calling Switzerland for information about my accounts. But my point is this: I talk to myself a lot, but comparatively privately, in the car, and not when I have a passenger.

Recently, as I was talking to myself (or to my car), I was driving along what locals call the Beaver Valley Pike. Because of some accident or road construction, I was diverted onto Penn Grant Road, which runs parallel to the Beaver Valley Pike for a few miles through Willow Street. This change in routing led me to consider what Paul A.W. Wallace wrote in his monograph on Indian Paths In Pennsylvania (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission). Wallace proposes that although the usual practice of Natives in travel was to seek out the most direct and driest path, in many cases the local routing of a path would wind around a bit. In his book – and it is well worth examining particularly for the tourist in Pennsylvania, because it is designed for the motorist to follow the routes of the ancient paths – Wallace presents most Native pathways as essentially straight lines between two points. For example, rather than following switchbacks over mountains Natives, unencumbered by wagons or even horses, would take a hard climb and stay on course. Natives also followed ridge lines between watersheds as much as possible, to avoid multiple crossings of watercourses. The variation of this theme resulted from obstacles in a path such as a rockslide or fallen tree. In some cases, for example large sections of forest blown down in windstorms, this could cause the radical re-routing of a roadbed, but not the overall direction of travel.

The original 1710 Christian Herr plantation straddled the divide between the Conestoga watershed and the Pequea watershed. To the north, the ground slopes away and the small creek beginning in springs south of the 1719 House flows into the Big Spring Creek, thus to the Mill Creek, and finally to the Conestoga. About a quarter mile south of the 1719 House, an east-west ridge screens the view to the south from the House; beyond this ridge, the land slopes south rapidly to the Pequea.

On the north side of the 1710 plantation, Pennsylvania Route 741 follows a fairly straight course along a series of ridgetops from Gap to Rock Hill, southwest of Millersville. Locals know this as a series of roads: Gap Road from Gap to Strasburg; Beaver Valley Pike from the bend west of Lampeter to Willow Street, and Long Lane from the Willow Street Pike to Rock Hill. The gap in this progression of roads, between Strasburg and Lampeter (which is also the point at which the modern traveller is most apt to become lost), is where the road dips into the valley of the Pequea. Here the modern motorist travelling from east to west has basically two options. One can follow route 741 along Village Road, which will take one steeply downhill around some rock outcroppings on the right and the huge former mill which once housed the Eagle Americana Museum, across a narrow stone bridge, and up again over a ridge into the town of Lampeter, and then on a rolling course to join the Beaver Valley Pike (US 222), where it makes a great bend from an east-west to a north-south path on its way from Lancaster to Quarryville. The other option is to go more or less straight west, abandoning 741 and making a series of dog-leg turns onto Penn Grant Road, then winding fairly gently to a crossing of the Pequea by a covered bridge. Here until about five years ago the remains stood of another mill. Continuing along Penn Grant Road by a winding way up the hill, one comes to the intersection with Lampeter Road. From there, one could go north to Lampeter and join 741 again, or one could go another mile or so to the Beaver Valley Pike and turn north there, or one could simply follow Penn Grant Road west.

Penn Grant Road, it would seem, forms the southern boundary of the 1710 deed to Christian Herr, the son of Bishop Hans. Notice the name, Penn Grant Road. Locals seem not to grasp fully its significance, or that of other local names. "Penn Manor" today is (in most people’s minds) merely the name of a school district. Few people seem to grasp that the name derives from an actual manorial holding of the Penn family established in this district: the Blue Rock Farm. Hence, for example, the name of the local route Blue Rock Road (for newby locals, that equals PA 999 from Millersville to Washington Boro). The point at which "Old" Blue Rock Road splits from 999, Central Manor, also derives its name from this holding. If Penn’s plans had been fulfilled, a second Philadelphia, subdivided out of Penn family land, would have been established along the Susquehanna north of Turkey Hill. As for the Penn Grant Road, the earliest land grants in the area of contemporary Strasburg, Lampeter, Willow Street, and West Willow, given by the provincial administration during William Penn’s lifetime or very soon after his death in 1718, are all bounded or bisected by the Penn Grant Road.

Penn Grant Road begins just west of Strasburg and ends at Main Street, Conestoga at a strange little five-point intersection at which Silver Mine Road also terminates. However, while the name of the road across Main Street may be Tanyard Road rather than Penn Grant Road, it is essentially a continuation of the route, and by following it, with a slight dogleg onto Stoney Lane, one comes to an intersection with Long Lane at Rock Hill. Notably, the venerable Rock Hill Hotel (now somewhat dubiously claiming to date to 1700, but certainly a very old house of refreshment) is located within yards of this conjunction.

Now all of this exposition of roadways is sure to be bewildering to anyone without a map or a good knowledge of Lancaster County roads, or both. In a sense, those who don’t know the roads aren’t helped much by the description, and those who do, don’t need it. What I want to convey with this information is fairly straightforward, however. I include the information about routing here to back up my hypothesis, to which I am slowly moving. (If my car could talk, I am certain that at times it would say to me, "So what is your point, exactly?")

In the Fall, 2002, newsletter, I wrote that two possible routes for the Old Conestoga Road in our immediate area are offered by historians: the Beaver Valley Pike and Penn Grant Road. But Wallace, in his book on Indian Paths, notes that at times where paths shifted to accommodate to some natural feature, they might take multiple routes for some distance before coming together again. If one were to glance at a road map of Lancaster County, or better yet, the US Geological Survey map of Lancaster County, the situation is clear. The route moving east to west from Gap to Strasburg is straightforward, south of the Pequea Creek and in its watershed, running through rolling land along the northern edge of Georgetown Hill.

Today, driving in a car, the presence or absence of watercourses in Lancaster County is usually moot. Many drivers, I have found, simply do not recognize streams and rivers as landmarks. Flooding sufficient to block a road is rare. But for a person travelling on foot, or with a team and wagon, every creek is a potential obstacle. Over millennia, walkers travelling between the Delaware and Susquehanna basins had established paths on the ridgetops, and their routes, taken up long ago by the European settlers, today are altered only by historical land grants or the special demands of vehicular traffic.

The Gap Road does cross a few small streams, but none of real consequence. However, the Pequea poses a different situation. Here the ancient traveller faced an obstacle: the creek must be crossed, but where?

The straightest route west from what is now Strasburg is Penn Grant Road. By following this "southern" route, one stays in the Pequea Creek’s watershed, but on the "right bank" (facing downstream) instead of the left, at least for the next five miles or so, to the point at which Tanyard Road reaches the crest of the hill above Main Street Conestoga. Once one begins moving downhill on Tanyard Road, one has entered the valley of the Conestoga. The disadvantage of this route is that the Pequea at the crossing on Penn Grant Road is narrow, but deep and swift. I might add here that I have myself actually leapt across the Pequea at two places: in Silver Mine Park in Pequea Township and at Suzy’s Hole in the State Game Lands near Martic Forge. The ancient traveller, with sufficient athleticism, might have done the same. But at the Penn Grant Road crossing, the width of the stream is too great to permit such a feat. It would need to be waded, with some care. The other streams along this route are all small enough that one can easily leap across them.

The other, "northern," route west is what today is called Village Road to Beaver Valley Pike. This, as I said, winds down along the edge of a ridge to a slackwater area where the creek is comparatively shallow. On climbing up from the Pequea on the north side, one travels up over a ridge and then enters the Conestoga Valley within two miles of the crossing, and then one remains in the Conestoga watershed the rest of the way to Rock Hill. By this route, one must cross several larger streams, such as Big Spring Run and Stehman Run, but none which present a real check.

These two routes, the northern (following Beaver Valley Pike and Long Lane) and the southern (following Penn Grant Road), are never much more than a mile and a half apart, essentially on either side of the ridge dividing the Pequea watershed from that of the Conestoga. In essence, we may well ask whether they represent really two routes, or a single way with a variation. Today, it is easy to go back and forth between them, and I imagine that in ancient times it would not have been very difficult to do so. But since the end points of the routes, where they diverge, are the same anyway, in certain respects the choice between them is "six of one and half dozen of the other."

Native Relations of the Pequea Mennonite Settlement, Part I and II

(This article in a slightly different and serialized form appeared in the 2001 Foundation Newsletters)

To understand the relationship between the earliest Mennonite settlers of the Pequea region and the aboriginal peoples of this area, we need to examine not only those few facts we can gather about this relationship, but our existing notions about this relationship which are likely to color our perceptions of those facts. We generally have the idea that although elsewhere Europeans had unhappy and often violent relations with aborigines they then displaced, here in Lancaster County no truly unpleasant interactions occurred until the 1763 genocide of the Conestogas at the hands of the Paxtang Boys, who, after all, were Presbyterians from the area of modern Harrisburg. While none of this is completely incorrect, it is not the most faithful depiction of the circumstances of the 18^th century Mennonite settlement in Pequea.

C. Henry Smith, in his book The Mennonite Immigration To Pennsylvania, paints a picture of the setting of the Pequea Mennonite settlement in the following words: "In the year 1710 the region now included in what is known as Lancaster County was still a primitive wilderness. The panther and the wolf still roamed at will through the dense forests of maple and hickory. The Indian had not yet been forced from his native haunts by his pale-faced brother, and his wigwams dotted the banks of both the Conestoga and the Pequea which flow through the heart of the county in parallel courses in a southwesterly direction toward the Susquehanna. Not a single foot of the rich limestone soil had yet been turned under by the plow of a white man. It was only occasionally that a white trapper or licensed trader found his way into the region to barter with the native Indians. The Mennonite colony which was established that year on the Pequea [and Smith notes "The colony is frequently referred to as the Conestoga settlement, but Pequea us used in this chapeter because the first settlers located on the Pequea, not the Conestoga"] was a pioneer settlement planted right in the heart of Indian country, many miles ahead of the rapidly advancing frontier line."

This is largely the image that most of us have of the situation in 1710 in the neighborhood where the Hans Herr House now stands. It is important to recognize this image. It is a romantic image, although in the case of this passage from Smith it can largely be verified despite the author’s evocative language.

There are a few points worth noting here. First, "primitive wilderness" is a slippery phrase. If it means, "undeveloped by European 17^th century standards", it certainly is true that the Susquehanna Valley was that in 1710. But "primitive" is comparative, and this area was only "primitive" in certain ways in 1710. The area of Lancaster County was used intensively by the native peoples of this region. "Wilderness" implies a lack of any degree of human culture, and this is quite wrong. By European standards, this area may have been wilderness, but to the natives it was a region very far from being "wild".

In the 17^th century in this region of the Conestoga and the Pequea, although "wigwams" may certainly have been used, there were several towns or villages with populations substantial enough to merit comparison with most European communities in North America at the same time. One village along the Susquehanna, at least, was surrounded by a wall on which European cannon were mounted. To support the populations of the towns along the Susquehanna, considerable gardens and fields would have been required, and much of the land in the western townships of what is now Lancaster County had been cleared for centuries before Europeans arrived.

We are considering the relationship of the early Mennonite settlers with the Natives in the area.