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Family History
The Oley Valley Keims are descendants of Johannes Keim who first emigrated from Landau, Rhineland-Palatinate around 1698. Johannes was born in Speyer, Germany in 1675 and left Europe after the French invasion of the Palatinate (1688-1697), which had ruined him financially. Johannes immigrated through the port of Philadelphia and staked out his warranted land claim in the Oley Valley, acquiring 300 acres. He soon returned to Germany, where he married his first wife Katarina in 1706. Johannes had sixteen children by two wives, but only nine of the children survived past childhood. He was one of the first few settlers in the Oley Valley and thrived there for about a half-century until his death in 1758.
Jacob Keim, born in 1724, was the youngest son of Johannes and Katarina. Jacob married Magdelena Hoch and in 1750 acquired from her parents a 300- acre farmstead located one and one-half miles northwest of his father’s farmstead near present-day Pikeville. Having constructed and lived in the surviving Germanic house since 1753, Jacob Keim was listed in 1767 as a woodturner and in other records accordingly as a spinning wheel maker, owning 126 acres, 2 horses, 3 cattle, and taxed 9 pounds. When Jacob died in 1799, Magdalena received the right to remain in a room of the house, but the homestead was inherited by their son, John. The wording of this bequest suggests that the 3-bay addition to the 1753 house was not constructed until after 1799, since, if the addition existed when Jacob wrote his final Will, it seems doubtful that he would have confined his elderly widow to one room in the substantially expanded dwelling.
Architectural History
Now located in Pike Township, formerly a portion of Oley and Rockland, the two coursed rubble native limestone structures on the site are excellent examples of 18th century German-influenced architecture. The original house was inhabited by Jacob and Magdalena and their descendants until 1911, the last survivor being Elizabeth (“Aunt Betsy”) Keim.
The house, measuring approximately 36 by 18 feet without the addition, is a 2 ½-story building with a cellar under the stube and first floor Kammer. The walls are of coursed rubble limestone, including a vernacular version of the structurally reciprocating “quoin” corner-blocks so typical in prominent stone houses of the second half of the eighteenth century in the region. In more formal buildings, these joint-binding corner blocks are more rectilinear and typically more massive. In the Keim House, they serve the same mechanical function, but less precisely delineate stone courses in the wall pattern. According to early photos, the building originally had a red clay tile roof but currently is covered by standing-seam metal. A tile roof will be restored, borne by the necessarily robust rafter-and-purlin framing stabilized by braced “queen” posts, when financial resources and enough old tiles become available.
The Germanic character of the 1753 Keim house is convincingly indicated by:
- The direct kitchen entry in the southern elevation and lack of interior passages between rooms;
- Division of the floor plan into three iconic spaces: the kitchen (“Kuche” in High German, “Kiche” in the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect.); stove room (“Stube”) for dining and family activity (“parlor” in the Anglo-Pennsylvania lexicon), and chamber (“Kammer”) for sleeping, domestic tasks, and storage;
- The centralized chimney serving the kitchen fireplace and the “jamb” stove in the “stube” which is fed with firewood through an aperture through the back wall of the fireplace. The stove from the 1753 house has not survived on the site, though the massive stone corbel that supported it in the cellar remains in place. Similar evidence indicates an early jamb-stove on the 2d floor above the stube stove below. The chimney is of stone through the lower two stories and in the attic to a leveling course supporting its brick projection through and above the sloped rooflines.
The plaster cove cornice originally adorning the eaves spaces was restored on the southern elevation in 2014 on hewn plaster lath applied to the radial profile of the original rafter-tail cuts. Although primarily of English origin, plastered cove cornices appeared on several and early important buildings in Philadelphia, on houses in Germantown prior to 1753, and is a surviving feature on the Pottsgrove Mansion, built about one year before Keim and less than ten miles away. Any of these examples could have influenced use of the coved eaves transition on the Keim house. The century-old box cornice on the southern elevation has been replaced with a plastered cove on the original “outlookers”. All of the coved cornices and gable barge-boards on the 1753 house and the addition will be restored to their original forms when resources permit.
The original house-block has segmented brick “relieving” arches over all exterior openings. During the Federal Era, as suggested by molding details from that period, as the family grew larger the northeastern 3-bay addition was constructed as a dwelling for aging family members or a younger generation. There is currently no interior access to the addition except through the attic. The two-wall porch along the southern eaves wall and the western gable wall, removed c. 2012, had been constructed in the 1930s according to convincing photographic evidence. On the southern façade, a second-floor door originally opened onto a balcony which interrupted the pent roof line. The balcony has been temporarily replaced, with rectilinear balusters in the absence of evidence of a turned original profile. The finish woodwork and door hardware in the house are for the most part original. The current balcony/gallery and pent roof on the southern façade are restorations supported on original projecting-joist “outlookers”.
Ancillary Turner’s Shop and Kitchen Building
Located adjacent to the main house is a rubble-stone outbuilding, or multi-purpose ancillary structure, sited on a north-south axis and also dating to circa 1753. Based on analysis of architectural detail the ancillary craft-shop building is from the same period as the house. The 1 ½ story embanked structure, over a cellar having exterior access only, was used as a turner’s shop utilized by Jacob and his son Johannes II. A channeled spring-run flows through the cellar. The window and door openings are spanned by brick segmental arches similar to those on the main house. The fenestration layout of the ancillary building is asymmetrical, and the windows’ dimensions vary. The variation in size and placement likely reflects the need for natural light within the separate working areas of the structure.
There is an aperture for a jamb stove in the kitchen. The chimney is centrally located, and the restored roof is covered with tiles laid on lath boards nailed to rafters.
There is a great deal of evidence in the ancillary house showing aspects of its use as a turner’s shop by Jacob Keim and his son Johannes, named after Jacob’s father. Remnants of stanchions for the pole lathe are attached to the ceiling and there are racks for chair parts. There is a depression in the floor where the foot treadle for the lathe abraded it. To the left of the lathe was a large iron door that opened into the flue of the fireplace below; workers could open the door and sweep shavings into this fireplace. Originally, there was an enclosed chamber adjoining the chimney stack used as a drying kiln for the turner’s wood (this was previously thought to be a smoke chamber).
By 1958, the structure was vacant and used as a storage space. The Ancillary is currently closed to visitors in preparation for structural and historical architectural restoration.
Other Outbuildings/Dependencies
In the 1970’s, a cider press was moved to the Keim property from the Hartman farm off Route 61, now in Muhlenberg Township, Berks County. It was placed in a new shed on the foundation of a former chicken coop which had been torn down. A cider mill was used for pressing the juice from crushed or broken apples. The press itself was joined with extensive chamfering and some ornamentation. It is still in working order. Dedicated at its new location on May 21, 1975, the Cider Press was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 1, 1988.
The Jacob Keim Homestead, including the 1753 house and the craft-shop ancillary as “contributing structures”, was designated a National Historic Landmark in December 11, 2016. Below is a link to the nomination application prepared and submitted by Philip Pendelton.
In 2017 Preservation Pennsylvania granted a Preservation Stewardship Award to the Trust for Restoration of the 1753 Jacob and Magdalena Keim House.
The property also contains a small stone barn, built in the 19th century, which housed livestock in the cellar; the hay mow above was used for grain storage.
Also located on the property to the east of the Federal addition is a small barrel-vaulted stone root (“ground”) cellar, now protected from weather-erosion by a modern metal roof with a viewing-door, originally located under a small stone gabled structure, possibly a bakehouse. None of the buildings on the property has any modern utilities, except for project-and-event electric service in the addition cellar and the barn.
Later Property History
The 1854 Berks County Atlas shows a J. Keim as the resident of the home and the 1862 Berks County Atlas shows a Jacob Keim as the owner. By the late nineteenth century, the property contained 320 acres mostly in Pike Township. As late as 1913, there were 100 acres of virgin forest on the property. Mahlon Boyer purchased the farm in 1913, erected a modern sawmill, and cut down the old-growth wooded acres. By 1955, the property was owned by Charles Boyer and used as a rental property. The Keim property was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 1, 1974 and in 2016 was designated as a National Historic Landmark. In 1978, the Historic Preservation Trust of Berks County acquired the farmstead as a gift from Mr. and Mrs. M. Richard Boyer.
The Keim Farmstead is open for tours by advance appointment. Please contact the Trust office at least 10 days in advance of your visit by email to info@historicpreservationtrust.org
The Keim Farmstead is located on Boyer Road in Pike Township, Berks County, PA. From Rt. 12 (Pricetown Road), take Rt. 73 East to Bertolet Mill Road. Turn left on Bertolet Mill Road. Proceed to intersection at Hoch Road. Turn left onto Hoch Road. Proceed to Boyer Road. Turn right onto Boyer Road and proceed approximately 500 yards. Keim Farmstead is on the right-hand side of the road.
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