Clymer Weir Cox Genealogy » John Moyer Swartley (1829-1900)

Persoonlijke gegevens John Moyer Swartley 

• Hij is geboren op 18 september 1829 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
• Woonachtig:
• in het jaar 1870: New Britain, Bucks, Pennsylvania, USA.

  Residence Post Office: Line Lexington

• in het jaar 1900: New Britain Township, Bucks, Pennsylvania.
• in het jaar 1880: New Britian, Bucks, Pennsylvania, United States.
• Hij is overleden in het jaar 1900 in Chalfont, New Britain Twshp, Bucks County, Pa, hij was toen 70 jaar oud.
• Alternatief: Hij is overleden op 24 september 1900 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, hij was toen 71 jaar oud.
• Hij is begraven in Line Lexington, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, United States of America.
• Een kind van John Rosenberger Swartley en Mary Magdelena Meyer (Meyer) Moyer
• Deze gegevens zijn voor het laatst bijgewerkt op 20 april 2023.

Gezin van John Moyer Swartley

Hij is getrouwd met Elizabeth Moyer (Myers) Moyer.

Zij zijn getrouwd op 18 oktober 1853, hij was toen 24 jaar oud.

Kind(eren):

1. Mary Ann Moyer Swartley  1855-1873
2. Amanda Moyer Swartley  1856-1878
3. Oliver Moyer Swartley  1857-1885
4. William "Upper Billie" Moyer Swartley  1860-1922 
5. John Moyer Swartley  1861-1935
6. Emma 'Emmie' Jame Moyer Swartley  1863-1878
7. Lizzie Moyer Swartley  1865-1884
8. Elmer Moyer Swartley  1873-1899

Notities over John Moyer Swartley

Toy/Lapp Family:

The Pennsylvania German settlers were known not only for their industrious farms, but also for a
distinctive type of building, a two level barn. This barn has become an apt symbol of their whole
culture. The popular image of a Pennsylvania Dutch barn is of a large red-painted building with
geometric decorations. But the so-called "Hex signs" became popular in our home state only after
the original settlers had departed, and the Erie County barns do not have such decorations.

The value of the Pennsylvania German barn as a symbol, however, is not in its decoration but its
design. A classic bank barn of this type had a stone basement level, to house livestock, built half in
and half out of a hillside. Above the exposed stone wall of the lower level, a large timber-frame
superstructure was built cantilevering out over the wall to provide overhead protection for a series of
stall doors in the wall. The upper level of the barn could also be entered from ground level, but from
the opposite, high side of the hill. The upper level contained a center threshing floor with hay mows
on each side. A granary consisting of a series of tightly boarded storage bins was built into the
unsupported overshoot of the cantilever to provide protection from rodents high off the ground. In
winter the livestock level was insulated by the earthen bank and the hay stored above. The design
remains a paradigm of structural and functional efficiency. By searching for these characteristics, a
traveler can identify an historic Pennsylvania farmstead even from a distance.

Sadly, most of Erie County's Pennsylvania German barns are now gone. Many have disappeared
only recently. The largest one built in our area was the Abraham Erisman barn, which stood on the
south side of Genesee St. near Pavement Rd. in the Town of Lancaster. Measuring 60 X 90 feet, it
was demolished in 1982. The Abraham Martin Barn on Clarence Center Rd., built circa 1830, still
stands. It has the most dramatic cantilever of all the local surviving barns of this type and a striking,
uneven "salt box" slope to its roof.

One of the best preserved and largest of all the Pennsylvania German bank barns built in Erie County
is the one on the John Lapp Farm. Dated 1832, it measures 35 X 75 feet. A five-foot cantilever
protects a series of stable doors and wood-barred windows that open directly into the barnyard.
The heavily braced hewn timber frame of the superstructure features double tie-beams (the only
known local example). On a door plank of the 165 year old structure are inscribed many names of
those who worked on the barn over the years, a who's who of the area, including the historic names
Krehbeil andKelkenberg.

The building is remarkable not only for its age but for its construction. It is truly organic architecture
built into, not on, the natural landscape, utilizing indigenous materials and craftsmanship, and
employing the structural principle of cantilever. Frank Lloyd Wright would have admired it.

Ironically, to experience such a building close-up, Western New Yorkers must travel to Ontario or
Pennsylvania. The Genesee Country Museum does not have a Pennsylvania German barn because
there was no such settlement in Genesee County. At the Black Creek Village north of Toronto one
can find one of these barns on its original site, as well as a Conestoga wagon - two pieces of
Americana that are part of our heritage in Erie County.

A "lost" example of a house of this ethnic type should be familiar to many in Western New York.
The building long known as the Evans House, on Main St. in Williamsville, was built in the year
1800 at the specific instruction of Joseph Ellicott, who required that it be constructed of hewn logs
because there was no better architecture. The labor intensive effort was covered with clapboards for
protection and soon people forgot that it was built of logs. Chrisfield Johnson in his 1876 History of
Erie County refers to this house as a "venerable brown edifice...unquestionably the oldest building in
Erie County." Venerable as it was, the building was demolished in the 1950's. Austere in the
extreme, without any stylistic ornamentation, we know that the house measured 28 X 34 feet and
that it had seven rooms. These scant facts come from Ellicott's journal. No study or documentation
of the building's interior was ever made. Gleaning information from a few old photos, we see that the
house is clearly recognizable as a Pennsylvania German vernacular asymmetrical four-bay type. It
was built by a member of Ellicott's surveying team who came from Chester County, Pa., and
apparently built a structure with which he was already familiar. Perhaps the prototype of the Evans
House still exists in Chester County. If so, it would be worth some serious study.

The John Lapp farmhouse is a large two-story asymmetrical four-bay building of the exact same
vernacular type as the Evans House. Within its thick walls it measures 28 X 34 feet. Under the
clapboard sheathing, the thick walls of Lapp's house are constructed of hewn logs. We have the
repeated prototype here, built in 1828. The John Lapp farmhouse is the only log structure of the
Evans House type in Western New York. It is one of a kind.

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