Tomorrow will be another day for me to guide visitors at the Hans Herr House. So come along with me.
The Hans Herr House is the oldest building in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and it is the oldest Mennonite Meeting House in the Americas that still stands. It was a dual purpose building, used as a residence for the Herr family, and as a meeting house for the Mennonite community. Built in 1719, it followed southwestern German styles. The builders copied what they knew in Germany.
The roof is very steeply pitched and covered with doubly lapped shingles that lap top-to-bottom and side-to-side. The walls are stone, in a very heavy masonry construction. There is no emphasis on style, polish, or symmetry. The windows are small and irregularly placed. The front door is to one side on the front. The chimney is not centered, being set to one side, but still well within the interior of the building.
As we approach the front door, notice the inscription over the door which says "17 CHHR 19". There is also another symbol, which cannot be reproduced here, which says "AD". The letters CH stand for Christian and the HR stands for Herr. The building was actually owned by Christian who was the son of Hans and Elizabeth Herr. These parents were elderly at the time the building was built and they lived with their son. Both Hans and Christian were religious leaders of the community and Hans is sometimes referred to as a bishop. Christian was a minister, while at the same time he was a farmer, orchardist, and distiller. Hans and Elizabeth, being old, had no desire to build any elaborate structure in which to live and so they lived with Christian and his family. The house became known as Hans Herr's even in the early days.
The house is much too large for the needs of one family, even with the grandparents, the parents, and the eight children. It was made larger for the needs of the community, as a meeting house or place to worship. The size also indicates that the community pitched in to construct it. The use of homes for worship was common in the Anabaptist tradition, because of the restrictions placed on them which forbid them (in Europe) to build churches. A branch of Anabaptists, known as the Amish, continues this tradition today, though the Mennonites now use church buildings.
As we enter the house, we come into the combined kitchen and hallway, functional uses typical of German design. The room is dominated by a large fireplace. Most people visualize a large fire with lots of flame but this was not the case when the Herrs lived here. The fireplace was not used for heating. Heating was done by the "stube" which was fed from the fireplace. The stube or stove was in the next room and might be visualized as a beehive oven with a small opening to its interior from the fireplace. Fires were built in the stube and this radiated heat through its masonry walls into the next room. So most of the heat was caught by the walls of the stube and radiated into the interior of the house and not released up the chimney.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.