Dreibelbis, Joel, Farm

Near Virginville in Richmond Township, the Joel Dreibelbis Farm is a farmstead of 181 acres bordered by Maiden Creek. Its 2-1/2 story brick farmhouse was completed in 1868 by Joel Dreibelbis, who took over the family farm in 1857 and rebuilt the farmstead. The house keeps its original center hall, Victorian wallpaper, painted woodwork and furnishings. The complex includes a brick summer kitchen, a stone and frame smokehouse, a stone ice house, a large frame bank barn of 1908, a corn crib and wagon shed, and a brick chicken house. Buildings were arranged for convenient daily work, and the farm's fields, fence rows and lanes have changed little. The nomination regards the property as a well-preserved example of a self-sufficient late 19th-century Pennsylvania German family farm, and as a representative example of the farms drawn by Ferdinand Brader in Berks County in the 1880s.