Outbuildings at the Log Farmhouse

 

 

Above: 1829 Spring house rescued and relocated to the homestead in 1989.

This spring house has a datestone inscribed "JB 1829" for Jonas Bucher, a great-great-great-great grandfather of Clarke Hess. The spring house was threatened with  demolition at the nearby Bucher farm, so Clarke relocated it intact to the Hess Homestead, to the site of a previous spring house which had been demolished by a previous owner.

 

Above: Springhouse datestone: Built by Jonas Bucher 1829.
 

 

Above: A ca. 1785 Pennsylvania Flürkuchenhaus. Formerly used as a Civil War field hospital near Hanover, PA.

 

This log house was rescued, disassembled, and relocated to the homestead in the 1990s. It previously was located west of Hanover in York County. At that Hanover location the house had served as a Civil War field hospital after the Battle of Gettysburg. The structure's original doorway (on the reverse side of this view) opens from the hillside into the kitchen.

 

The house's cooking fireplace has been rebuilt, along with its interior squirrel-tail bake oven. The building's three-room floor plan is typical of numerous early Pennsylvania houses known as Continental German houses, or a Flürkuchenhaus (hallway-kitchen house). A central chimney is characteristic of this form. Some of the region's best-known early houses have a similar Flürkuchenhaus floor plan, including the 1719 Hans Herr House and the 1752 Miller's House at Millbach.

 

 Above: A 1930s spring house at the end of the log farmhouse's driveway.

This spring house was built on part of the foundation of a retirement house built by Preacher John Hess and wife Esther (Hershey) Hess. They had lived in the log farmhouse until their retirement in 1815. The retirement house had a spring in the basement. The retirement house was demolished in the 1930s, but a portion of the basement remained, with its spring. So this small structure was built to protect that water source.

 

 

Above: A historic pigsty with hand-hewn timbers. Rescued and relocated intact from Schaefferstown, PA.

 

Above: The tool shed. Part of its stone foundation is for an earlier structure, probably a former smokehouse.

 

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