The Dutch Barn of Maple Ridge Farm in the Switzkill Valley Near Berne, N.Y.
by Allan F. Deitz
The Origin of Maple Ridge Farm: There is evidence that in 1744, Johan Hendrick Dietz (1722-1785), a German Palentine emigrant, homesteaded a parcel of land on Switzkill Road, two miles south of Berne. A large portion of this land later became known as Maple Ridge Farm. Schoharie Reformed Church records show that on November 25, 1745, Johan married a Switzkill neighbor, (Maria) Elisabetha Ecker. Johan's son Adam Dietz Jr. (1746-1826) inherited the 159 acre homestead, requiring him to enter into a lease for the land with Albany Patroon, Stephen Van Rennselaer III on December 18, 1790. A deed shows that the northern 95 acres that became Maple Ridge Farm was conveyed by Adam Jr. to his son, John Bellinger Dietz (1772-1856) on April 4, 1812. Another deed shows this parcel was purchased from John on May 9, 1850 by Robert Ball (1809 1893) who had married John's daughter, Anna Barbara Dietz (1815-1897) on Sep. 5, 1833. It was later purchased on Oct. 3, 1899 by Robert's son Charles Ball (1856-1951) of Knox who moved onto the farm in 1900. It was then passed to Charles' son Clyde Ball (1888-1991), and, in the mid-1950s, to the Raymond Wright family that includes Clyde's daughter Alberta. It is still in that family today. Robert Ball moved to the farm in 1846, according to a Clyde Ball note in the William H. Ball family bible. A Walter Church rent ledger at the Berne Historical Society contains a page showing rent status of Robert Ball to the former Van Rensselaer Patroon System's West Manor for the years 1855 and 1856. Walter Church had purchased the land lease rights for Albany County farmers from the Van Rensselaer family in 1853. The farm is located on grid #538 of the Beers map of the Town of Berne.
The Dutch Barn: From age fourteen to nineteen, I spent my summer vacations from school and college during the 1950s living with my grandparents, Clyde and Alta Sholtes Ball, on Maple Ridge Farm. To save money for college, I worked at harvesting crops of hay, wheat, and oats. I also helped with the milking, and the feeding of cattle, sheep, and chickens, among other chores.
The center for all this farming activity was the three-aisle Dutch-style barn located on the rich dirt bank of the east side of the Switzkill. (A 1934 photo of the barn is attached). I was told, in the 1950s, that the barn was over one hundred years old. I believe the Dutch barn was built around 1790 by Adam Dietz Jr. The 1784 will of John Henry, Adam's father, stated, “Adam, my son, should build a barn, and my beloved wife should pay one half of the charges out of the land I have given them”. I believe Adam, already married 15 years, had his own house on the west bank of the Switzkill behind the later built Robert Ball farmhouse, but shared his father's barn across from the Drezlo farmhouse nearby where John Henry lived. Clyde Ball told Alberta that this site on the Switzkill was the original homestead of Maple Ridge Farm. Alberta discovered pots and plates there as a child. The 1812 unrecorded deed that transferred the 95 acres of the Adam Dietz Jr. premises to son John Bellinger required John to pay his share of VR rent. The annual rent for the entire 159 acre Adam Dietz Jr. land was 18 bushels of wheat, 4 fat fowls, and 1 days labor (with horse and wagon).
At age fourteen, the first task I learned was to drive the tractor that had replaced the teams of horses as the main power source for pulling hay wagons, mowing machines, hay loaders, and later balers, combines and other machinery through the farm fields and to the Dutch barn. As I became skilled at driving the tractor, I was given the responsibility of backing wagons full of loose hay onto the second floor roof covered ramp that ran through the first hay barn, over the sheep pen and horse stables, and into the back bay of the Dutch barn's second floor hayloft. Here the hay was pitched off with hayforks onto the loft and spread out. I remember the coughing caused by hay dust while pitching loose hay off the wagons.
In earlier years, one could drive the horse drawn hay wagons up the ramp and straight into the side of the barn's second floor, unload it, and continue west out the other side of the Dutch barn and down a ramp that touched ground about fifty yards from the Switzkill. But the west ramp had been removed by the time I began working on the farm. It may have become unsafe from Switzkill flooding, or from other causes. Soon after I began, the ridgeline of the Dutch barn was equipped with a steel rail track and pulleys from which a rope was attached to a large two pronged hayfork, and to the tractor. The fork was set deep into the loose hay on the wagon and locked. The fork and hay were pulled up out of the wagon by the tractor I drove south from the barnyard up the lane toward the house. I stopped when I heard the signal from the barn, or the relay by one of my cousins from the barnyard. When the fork load of hay was over the area for storage on the barn floor, the fork was tripped by my uncle up in the loft by pulling on a second rope attached to the fork, and the hay dropped to the desired location to be spread out.
The next change in this process came when tractor power take-off operated hay balers became popular. We then unloaded hay by throwing hay bales, held together with twine, from the wagon to be packed carefully to allow air to circulate among them. Several people would pass the bales through to fill the large hayloft. The hay was used for cattle feed and for sale. On one occasion, I backed a full wagonload of baled hay into the side of the east hay barn at the entrance of the long ramp and had to pull out and try again. It took skill and signals from others to back loaded wagons through that long ramp to reach the storage area in the Dutch barn. When the hayloft in the first two bays was full, hay or straw was stored on the ramp floor in the third bay. A door near the back gable peak provided access to fill the third bay. An elevator was used for baled hay. The large hayfork was used for loose hay.
The east ramp entrance was located off a single lane dirt road that came down a steep hill from Switzkill Road, past the barn, and through the barnyard to the Switzkill where it was shallow enough to cross with hay wagons to reach the large fields west of the creek. Backing a wagon loaded with hay or straw halfway up the hill onto the ramp was difficult. The earlier design, with two side barn hay wagon entrances onto the second floor, allowed the horses to pull the wagons into the barn from either direction and drive through. With the west entrance ramp removed, we had to back in or back out as described earlier. This second floor hay wagon entrance design designates the barn as a Dutch barn hybrid, as opposed to those barns with wagon entrances only through the first floor front and back gable-ends. This helped date the barn, although consideration has to be given to the possibility that the original Dutch barn was later modified by adding the east hay storage barn and the connecting ramp to the second floor of the Dutch barn's third bay. I believe this modification was made, because the back gable wagon doors were sealed. I never saw a wagon enter the first floor front or back gable doors in my day. Such alterations to New York Dutch barns were not uncommon, according to Gregory Huber. (see Outside Sources below). The benefit was more barn hay and straw storage room on the first floor where wagons once moved through. Whether Adam Jr. or John B. Dietz made the additions is not known. Barn building was not recorded in deeds or newspapers. But because of their importance to the family, they were probably built before a permanent house was built. A nearby relative or neighbor sometimes housed a family while the barn was being built. In this case, Adam Jr. had probably already built his house, while his family lived with his parents, before he built his own barn and shared his father's On the first floor of the Dutch barn were two rows of stanchions (devices that fit loosely around a cow's neck to limit forward and backward movement) for the secure stabling of milk cows that faced the center of the barn. They were located on opposite sides of the large wood planked threshing floor, and near the outside barn walls where animal doors allowed cows to enter. I remember an old threshing machine on that floor. But in the 1950s, I spent many August days riding the back of a combine tying off full bags of wheat or oats with twine, and setting them on the ground while the next bag was filling. During my time working on the farm, steel stanchions replaced wooden ones, and concrete floors replaced wooden floors, mangers, and gutters for the cattle. A large hinged door in two leaves in the center of the barn's front gable wall, an original hay wagon entrance, provided an entrance for the storage of hay, bedding straw, equipment and pens for animals. One of the leaves of the front and back gable wagon doors was a Dutch door, meaning it was divided in half horizontally so that the bottom half could remain closed while the upper half could be opened. This controlled the wind flow through the barn, important during early grain threshing methods, according to Evertt Rau of the Dutch Barn Preservation Society. By the 1950s, however, the rear gable wagon doors had been sealed shut. Water pipes and individual steel water bowls allowed the cows to drink water, pumped from the Switzkill, while in their stanchions. We carried large pails of water from the creek to the barn for calves, and for cleaning milking machines.
Underneath the long covered ramp from the road to the Dutch barn were sheep pens and horse stables. Entrance to these areas was from the barnyard. A granary room of several grain bins was located in the northeast rear side aisle of the Dutch barn with access to both the cows and the horses. A small outside door through the back gable wall gave access for filling the granary bins. I remember being shown the wooden pegs that held the Dutch barn beams together. No nails were used in the frame when it was built, I was told. A silo was added to the barn in the 1950s.
The richest dirt on the farm was in the field behind the barn. Located next to the Switzkill, this field often flooded in the spţing. Across the creek, the flat ten-acre field also flooded in earlier years providing rich nutrients and good crops of hay, oats or corn. Much of the Switzkill valley contains rich land. This was a major factor in the settlement of the early Ball, Dietz, Becker, Sholtes, Ecker, Engle and other families along the Switzkill and the Foxenkill in the 1740-50s.
The Dutch barn described in this article is no longer at Maple Ridge Farm. Nearly fifteen years ago it was sold. It was carefully taken down and each piece marked to be re-assembled at a location somewhere in Michigan. A measurement of the stone foundation showed the barn to be 40 ft. wide by 42 ft. long. I have fond memories of that barn and the activities of farm life in the 1950s when many Dutch-style barns in the Berne-Beaverdam area were still the center of the family farm.
Outside Sources:
For genealogy: Bernehistory.org web site, family bibles, deeds, mortgages, and oral history. For Dutch barn construction dating: The New World Dutch Barn, By John Fitchen, 2nd edition by Gregory D. Huber(2001)pp.xxx,31 For Van Rensselaer land lease records: Harold Miller.
March
Allan F. Deitz 7 Pinewood Road, Guilderland, N. Y. 12084 ADEITZ@nycap.rr.com
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