Gehman, John, Farm

Hilly farmland on a dirt road in Hereford Township, Berks County, holds a group of stone and log buildings begun in the 1760s by the Gehman family. The farm was bought in 1767 by Rev. John Gehman, a Mennonite minister, and the Swiss bank house, a multi-purpose domestic building with a basement kitchen and a log upper floor, is probably his work. His son John S. Gehman built a large stone bank barn in 1806, dated on a wooden board, along with a stone farmhouse, a stable, a stone wagon shed and a springhouse dated 1847. The farm is regarded as a rare survival of an early nineteenth century hill farm. John S. Gehman was a farmer and distiller who sent applejack by wagon to Philadelphia. The farm's buildings, fields and fencerows have changed little since the 1800s, which gives the group its importance for understanding Berks County farm life.