Building the Bowman House:
A Study of Tradition and Change

By Ray Wright, Curator of Historic Buildings

In 1835, early Shenandoah Valley historian Samuel Kercheval recorded that "There were none of our primitive immigrants more uniform in the form of their buildings than the Germans. Their dwelling-houses were seldom raised more than a single story in height, with a large cellar; the chimney in the middle, with a very wide fireplace on one end for the kitchen, and in the other end a stove room."1 When German immigrant George Bowman built such a home in 1773, he never dreamed it would be removed from the site that he so carefully selected and be exhibited in a museum. Some 47 years later, when his grandson, John Bowman, Jr. added the hall and parlor, he likely never considered that he was providing an architectural record of his German family's adaptations to the burgeoning Anglo culture of the Shenandoah Valley. Neither men considered what they were doing was out of the ordinary and worthy of preservation by and for future generations. Yet the architectural response of both men to their cultural and historical environments is precisely what makes the Bowman House so significant.

It is often difficult to define or describe vernacular architecture of the type built by the Bowman family. The house that they built in Rockingham County, Virginia embodies the social values and cultural experiences that shaped their everyday lives. Add to this the native building materials of the Shenandoah Valley and the regional construction practices transplanted from southeastern Pennsylvania, and the Bowman House took on its present form, which is preserved at the Frontier Culture Museum of Virginia.

The earliest phase of this form, built by George Bowman in 1773, is known as the Flurkuchenhaus, which is loosely translated as a hall-kitchen entry house. The Bowman example of this plan consists of a generally square footprint that originally contained two rooms, the Kuche and the Stube, or Schtuppe, as it was likely pronounced by George Bowman. This type of house was abundant in those areas of southeastern Pennsylvania that saw significant settling of Germanic peoples. George Bowman first settled in Berks County after arriving from Germany and lived there for more than two decades before removing his family to the Shenandoah Valley in the early 1770s. Variations of the Flurkuchenhaus had appeared on the Pennsylvania cultural landscape prior to his arrival in 1751.

Figure 1. The floor plan of the Bowman House. Room 1 is the Schtuppe; room 2 is the Kammer; room 3 is the Kuche; room 4 is the hall; room 5 is the parlor or dining room. The partition between rooms 1 and 2 was added during the 1820 remodeling

Although it seems that George Bowman built the two room plan at his new home in Virginia, there were several Flurkuchenhaus types with which he was almost certainly familiar. The simplest of these forms consisted of a single cell with a large open corner fireplace and enclosed stairs leading to the attic. As in all Flurkuchenhaus forms, the exterior placement of windows and doors were in no way symmetrical or evenly spaced.

The classic Flurkuchenhaus plan of three rooms divided the Schtuppe into a smaller space called the Kammer. The Kammer was partitioned from the Schtuppe by vertical siding nailed to the off-center summer beam that spanned the long axis of the house. This space served as a master bedroom of sorts and gives credence to the notion that Germanic settlers preferred private sleeping space when compared to the similar English hall and parlor plan, which lacks partitioned sleeping space.2

George Bowman opted to build the two room plan, which featured a large centrally-located chimney that formed part of the wall that separated the Schtuppe from the Kuche. The back of the chimney wall extended down into the cellar, where a large stone corbel was constructed flush with the floor joists to support the heavy stove that heated the Schtuppe, the room that served as the center of family life. The Kuche fireplace was large enough to accommodate a raised hearth and an opening designed to feed the Schtuppe stove in the adjacent room. Steep steps built next to the massive fireplace led to utilitarian space in the attic.

Prior to purchasing his Rockingham County tract in 1772, George Bowman undoubtedly scouted his potential farm for a suitable building site. He looked for a site located on a gentle hillside, ideally allowing for an easterly exposure that would relegate the rear of the house to a windward orientation. Most important, however, was a site that would allow for the construction of the walk-in cellar that he planned to locate beneath the Schtuppe. To achieve this, the hillside had to slope downward both towards the front and one gable end of the house to allow easy ground level access to the cellar. The site also had to provide a ground level entrance into the first floor of the house. This particular method of siting is a distinguishing feature of Germanic houses in America.3

A second important consideration was selecting a site that could provide ample amounts of the building materials needed for such a house, namely logs and stone. Perhaps it is no accident that George Bowman selected a site within a region known locally as the "Forest" which included a nearby area called "Flatrock", so named for the large flat slabs of limestone which protrude from its thin, rocky soils. To the south of his house site other large outcrops of limestone perhaps provided building stone that could be quarried from the surface. His 260 acre farm also included areas of fertile bottom land surrounding nearby creeks.

The first tool employed by the builder of the Bowman house was not necessarily made of iron. George Bowman had a plan. Perhaps it was scratched on a piece of paper or an old shingle, or perhaps it stayed firmly within his cultural consciousness and was articulated orally to his builders. In any case, the plan that George Bowman formulated was imprinted in his mind based upon some cultural and social model from Germany with which he was familiar, and further refined by his experience with the Germanic community in southeastern Pennsylvania.

The question that arises is what antecedents of such a plan actually existed in the Palatinate and other areas that drained emigrants bound for North America. Once generally assumed that the Flurkuchenhaus, as represented in the New World, was based upon an existing plan found in Germanic areas of Western Europe, some scholars have found that few, if any, pristine examples of the three room Flurkuchenhaus form exist in the Rhine valley. The most common plan found there was the two-room plan emulated by George Bowman. The Bowman House has a single summer beam running the length of the house from gable to gable, resulting in a variation known as the Einfirst4. The two-room example of the Einfirst was indeed found in southern Germany, but it was just one of several house types common in southern Germany. Interestingly, it found its greatest expression in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Armed with this New World expression of an Old World antecedent, George Bowman began construction of his of his house in 1773.5 His first task was to begin excavation of the cellar, a laborious task requiring the digging out the side of the hill that he had selected for just this purpose. This integral part of Germanic housing in both Germany and America was used to store large quantities of perishable foods at relatively cool and stable temperatures. Using spade and mattock, workmen excavated an approximately five foot deep hole to ground level at the bottom of the hill. The outside dimensions of the excavation had to accommodate enough space for the stone masons building the cellar walls to place a strong face on the outside of the cellar walls.

They constructed the cellar from limestone found on or near the Bowman Farm. After quarrying the limestone from the surface of the ground, or from larger outcroppings excavated from the sides of hills, the masons likely hauled the stones over the rough terrain to the building site with a horse-drawn stone boat, a sledge with runners designed to drag loads of stone over ground that would damage cart wheels.6 They began to lay the rough stone in general layers without much in the way of shaping or dressing the stone. Using a mortar made from lime (burnt and crushed limestone) and sand, the masons laid coursed rubble walls thick enough to allow for several pine holes approximately six inches deep to be placed on the east and west walls. Pine holes, as they are still called in the Shenandoah Valley, were constructed in stone cellar walls to provide a niche for a burning pine knot or other lighting device used to illuminate the windowless interior of the cellar.7

The wall on the north end of the cellar formed the foundation of the back of the massive chimney that would eventually stand in the kitchen. The west outside corner of the chimney wall stood about three feet from the back of the cellar, creating the passage in which the stone cellar steps to the Kuche were constructed. On the chimney wall, about four feet from the earthen cellar floor, the workmen began to construct a stone outcropping from the wall that leveled out flush the with the floor joists, indicating

Figure 2. The integrated placement of this stone corbel suggests that the builders of the Bowman House planned on installing a heavy stove in the Schtuppe. The stone wall on the left forms the foundation for the back of the central fireplace. Photo by author. 2007.

that George Bowman was planning to install a heavy stove in the above Schtuppe.

The Schtuppe floor joists formed the structure for the cellar ceiling. The timbers were hewn flat on two opposite sides. Notches were cut into the other sides to accommodate small sticks calledHolzpane, which spanned the gap between the joists and were placed as close together as possible. Handfuls of mud mixed with straw or dung, called Strohelm,8 were placed atop the sticks to form a layer of insulation between the Schtuppe floor and cellar.

Figure 3. The Holzpane are wedged between the notched joists above the cellar and then covered with a layer of plaster. A variation of this construction method is found on the museum's German Farm. Photo by author. 2007.

While the masons constructed the cellar, if enough labor was available, the logs used to frame the Bowman House were felled and perhaps hewn in the forest before being transported to the building site. The first logs felled and hewn were white oak. Unlike yellow pine, from which the rest of the house was constructed, white oak resists decay and was used as the moisture-resistant first layer of logs, called sills.

Log hewing is a labor-intensive task that requires skill and stamina. The builder selected a still-standing tree for its limb-free length, diameter, and straightness. Once the log was felled with either an ax or saw, the builder limbed it with the ax and cut the log to a manageable size. It was then rolled onto two other logs and fastened in place with dogs, staple-like devices that are driven into the log and makes it immovable during the hewing process. The builders of the Bowman House hewed their logs about 7" thick. Using a plumb bob, they marked a plumb line down the center of both ends of the log. They then squared over from this center line 3 _ inches on either side and plumbed these points. A string line or chalk line was stretched from one end of the log to the other where the plumb lines intersected the bark edge of the tree. Once this line was established, the builder stood on top of the log and began chopping a series of notches about a foot apart and deep enough into the log to reach the line. Still using the felling ax, the builder then chopped away the chunks remaining between the notches, leaving a roughly hewn face.

Since the builders of the Bowman House intended for the faces of the logs to be visible on both the inside and outside of the house, they used the broadax to hew the rough faces very smooth. It is quite possible that the logs of this Flurkuchenhaus were hewn with the Bardaxe, the Germanic equivalent of the broadax. A skillful wielder of the broadax could smooth the face of a log without leaving obvious ax marks. The builders of the Bowman House exhibited this degree of skill and workmanship.

Figure 4. These original logs on the back porch were hewn with the broadax. This raking view of the west wall reveals no obvious ax marks. Photo by author. 2007.

This same degree of skill and workmanship is also evident in the log house's corner notches. The Flurkuchenhaus portion of the house is notched with full dovetail notches, a time-consuming and difficult notch to execute with an ax. Each sloping face of the notch locks the log into place and allows for the drainage of water. The use of this superior joint, found on better built houses in areas of Pennsylvania settled by Germans, made its way southward into the northern Shenandoah Valley.9

Figure 5. The dismantling of the Bowman House revealed that the dovetail notches pictured above were executed with only an ax. The newer wood on the third notch from the bottom are repairs made to the logs after the building was dismantled. The notch cut from the second dovetail accommodated an early porch rail. Photo by author. 2007.

As the log frame was raised, the builders had to contend with the problems of lifting the heavy logs into place, scribing and cutting the bottom notch, and fitting them snugly into the top notch of the lower logs. This could be accomplished by any one of several methods. One method involved leaning a pair of heavy poles against the side of the house where the next log was to be placed. The hewn log was then slid up the poles using muscle power or horse power and positioned over the lower log. The large logs used in the Bowman House suggest that the builders possibly used a gin pole, a lifting device that used a block and tackle to lift the large logs into place. The gin pole was secured near the center of each wall with a rope attached to its top. With the block and tackle, the log was hoisted into position. This procedure continued until the all of the logs were in place.

Once the log frame was erected, the builders began work on the rafters. Although the Bowman House is rich in Germanic building practices, it does not boast the more complicated Germanic roof framing systems found in Pennsylvania and suggests that George Bowman or his builders were familiar with Anglo-American framing techniques.10 This less laborious and more materially efficient system of common rafters is found in Germanic houses throughout the Shenandoah Valley, although the other more Germanic rafter forms are found as well. Hewn on four sides down to roughly seven inches by seven inches, each set of rafters has a collar dovetailed into each leg to prevent them from spreading and to maintain downward pressure on the log walls. In spite of the skill of the builders of the Bowman House, the width and height of the house walls varied slightly. The builders custom matched each pair of rafters and assigned them a Roman numeral so as to identify where they were placed on the roof.

Before the roof battens and shingles could be applied, the stone fireplace and chimney were completed. The coursed rubble construction started in the cellar continued into the large central chimney. The best stonework in the Bowman House is evident in the construction of the fireplace, where dressed quoins (corner stones) provided the crisp corner exposed in the Kuche.

Figure 6. Photographed before dismantling, this view of the chimney corner in the Kuche illustrates some of the best stonemasonry in the interior of the house. The numbers painted on the stones aided the restoration stonemason in rebuilding the fireplace. Photo by author. 2002.

Shards of limestone found under the floor and around the base of the chimney suggest that the stones which were to remain exposed in the house were dressed at the chimney before being set into the wall.

The use of dressed stone continued up the east side of the fireplace for about five feet and formed the base for the large yellow pine lintel which spans the fireplace opening. It carried the full weight of the front of the fireplace and chimney in spite of being deeply cut out to allow smoke to go up the chimney. The fireplace also supported the summer beam as the chimney continued up past the second floor. At this point the quality of the stonemasonry changed. The chimney was built one stone thick from undressed rubble using an inferior clay and lime mortar. This rough masonry continued until the chimney protruded through the ridge of the roof, where the exposed stone work became much neater and better constructed. It is evident in the Bowman House that the stonework that was exposed to the public was of a far better quality than those areas that were covered or accessible only to the family.

Figure 7. The chimney protruding from the roof of the Bowman House. Photo by author. 2002.

Consistent with the Kuche of the Old World was the raised hearth that the builders located in the left corner of the fireplace. In Germany, use of the raised hearth served to use scarce wood fuels more efficiently by building small fires to cook individual foods. The Bowmans used their raised hearth in the same fashion more out of tradition than a lack of wood. Apparently the foodways practiced by German immigrants in America differed little from the culinary traditions of Germany.11

At this point both the materials and the techniques used in constructing the Bowman House became more sophisticated. The house needed dimensioned lumber for floorboards, roofing boards, paneling, floor joists, doors, weatherboarding and windows. Water-powered sawmills driving vertical sash saws provided dimensioned lumber and timbers for builders in the Shenandoah Valley beginning in the mid-1700s. Most of the dimensioned lumber found in the Bowman House was quarter sawn, that is lumber that was sawn perpendicular to the growth rings. Quarter sawn wood dries without shrinking or warping, and is ideal for flooring and weatherboarding. Interestingly, no sawmills are mentioned in early Augusta or Rockingham county documents prior to 1755, and only four were recorded in the lower Shenandoah Valley by the end of the colonial period. Presumably, much of the area's sawn lumber came from small saw mills attached to more established grist mills.12

Not only were the materials somewhat different, but the builders traded axe and adze for saw and plane. The Bowman House exemplifies the 17th and 18th century practice of building architectural ornamentation into the building's structural components. Both the floor joists and summer beam feature beaded edges which were finely executed with a beading plane. The underside of the second story floorboards were beaded as well. These same floor boards were also grooved on each edge and joined together with a slender spline which served to span any gaps or imperfections that might occur between them. The grooves were cut with a grooving plane, which required many passes along both edges of the board to reach the 3/8 inch depth needed to accommodate the spline.

Before the builders nailed the floorboards over the cellar joists, they packed the Stohelm over the Hozpane to form a layer of insulation between the Schtuppe floor and the cellar.

Figure 8. The grooved sides of the floor joists accommodated the Holzpane, or wooden slats installed to carry the clay packed to floor level. This insulated the cellar from the heated Schtuppe. Photo by author. 2002.

They then face nailed the floorboards down using forged nails that would have been available from a local blacksmith or nailery. The beaded floorboards which formed the ceiling of the Schtuppe and the Kuche were nailed to the beaded joists in the same fashion.

Figure 9. The beaded floor joists and ceiling boards in the Schtuppe. Photo by author. 2007.

While the lumber was acquired and sawn for the flooring, work began on the roof.13 The builders laid the floor of the porch, which seems to be original to the 1773 part of the house. The porch floor supported the porch posts that carried the porch rafters. These posts were constructed of walnut for its ability to withstand weather and moisture. The builders added the eighteenth-century touch of carving stop chamfers terminated in a lambs tongue on the corners of each post. When the porch rafters were set and the roof boards installed the roof was ready for shingles.

Shingle making is one of the most labor-intensive and repetitive tasks associated with early building technology. The builders of Bowman House naturally chose the Germanic long shingle, or side lap shingle as it is sometimes called, to cover the house. The long shingle was most often made of red oak and was usually made anywhere from 24" to 39" long.14 In the case of the Bowman House, the shingles were made of white oak and were about 29" long. The labor involved to manufacture long shingles required several steps.

First, a suitable log with long straight grain was selected and cut to the same length as the shingle. Using an ax and wedges the builder split out a number of wedge shaped billets from the log. He then split the billets into shingles using the mallet and froe, and he often relied on a brake, or a forked piece of wood, to hold the billet in place so he could control the direction of the split. Once they were split down to the desired thickness, usually anywhere from _" to 7/16", the builder shaved down one end and side with the drawknife and shaving horse. This process was repeated hundreds of times, depending on the size of the roof. The installation of the long shingle was slow and laborious, and required the builder to carefully place the shingles in a straight line so it could accommodate the proper side lap and overlap. The exposure of the long shingle was usually about 12 inches, with the thickest part of the shingle exposed to the weather. Another unusual characteristic of the long shingle is the exposed nail that is driven into the exposed corner.

Figure 10. The straight lapped shingle is found on Germanic buildings in both Pennsylvania and the Shenandoah Valley. Note the lack of horizontal overlap. Photo by author. 2007.

The roof was most likely in place before the walls of the house were entirely completed. Although the walls of the Bowman House were constructed of logs, the gable framing was constructed of hewn timber and covered with sawn weatherboarding. The weatherboarding was comprised of random width boards which were sawn about _" thick with the bottom edge beaded and about 5" exposed to the weather. Like the floors, the builders made no attempt to hide the forged nails under the lapped siding, and nailed the siding on to the framing about an inch above the bead.

Below the gable siding and roof, door and window openings were cut from the log walls and framed in with heavy 2" thick planks. Thick pegs driven through the planks and into the end of the logs held the heavy framing in place. These frames were strong enough to carry the heavy door and casement windows.

Casement windows were the predominant type of windows in Europe throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth century.15 The casements consisted of wooden or iron frames containing panes of glass set in lead.16 They normally pivoted on pins set into heavy frames. The Bowman House may have originally had five casement windows, but evidence survives for only three.

Figure 11. The renovations of the Bowman house in 1820 meant the replacement of casement windows original to the Flurkuchenhaus with six over six double hung sash windows. The surviving hinge pin is barely visible in the lower left hand corner of the casement opening. The lath to the left of the sash was exposed for almost 180 years. Photo by author. 2007.

A double set of pintel holes, or hinge pins, found in the original frame of the Bowman House's only original doorway suggests that the door was a board and batten, "Dutch Door," which resembles the doors found entering the central passage of the 1820 portion of the house. It likely had the same tapered dovetailed battens, and the corresponding pintel holes hint that the double doors swung on forged strap hinges.

Figure 12. Although this "Dutch Door" is located in the entrance to the 1820 central passage, evidence of a similar door was found in the original door frame of the Flurkuchenhaus. Photo by author. 2007.

The peculiar hole cut between two logs on the back porch is called the Seelenfenster. Neither a window nor door, much folklore and controversy surrounds the belief that this hole provided a way of escape for the soul of a dead body to leave the house. In the case of the Bowman House, the Seelenfenster was placed on the back wall of the Kammer, the same location preferred by builders in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Figure 13. The Seelenfenster of the Bowman House. When the Kammer was plastered the outside of the opening was probably never covered or plugged. Photo by author. 2007.

The less-skillful endeavor of chinking and daubing the spaces between the logs was probably completed at about the same time the windows and door were installed. Although the combination of the chinking and daubing is commonly referred to as just "chinking," they are two different materials requiring two different application methods. The chinking consists of pieces of wood wedged tightly between the logs. Their purpose is to provide reinforcement for the "daubing," or the mixture of clay, lime, sand and straw that is stuffed between the logs to provide an air-tight and water-tight seal. The daubing was usually applied in handfuls and troweled smooth. The daubing original to the Bowman House showed definite vertical cracks that suggested it had been applied a handful at a time.

Once the exterior of the Bowman House was completed, the builders turned their attention to completing both floors of the interior. Perhaps the installation of the stove in the Schtuppe was their first priority. The stove was more than likely a five plate cast iron stove attached to the stone wall on the fireplace. Manufactured at iron furnaces that were common in southeastern Pennsylvania and in the Shenandoah Valley, these stoves provided the only heat for the house outside the periodic heat produced in the Kuche while cooking. The stove helped define the Bowman's familial identity, and it transformed living space into the cultural nucleus that defined the Flurkuchenhaus. The same held true in Germany. "Ohne ofen keine Stube, ohne Stube, Kerne Hauslicheit." (No Stove, No Stube. No Stube, No Home).17 While masonry stoves were more predominant in southern Germany and the Palatinate, the Germans in Pennsylvania and the Shenandoah Valley adopted the cast iron five plate stove, which was widely used in northern Germany.18

The upper story of the house has one room that served as living space. Framed above the Schtuppe, the paneled room seems to be a bedroom. The board and batten door leading into the room swung on forged HL hinges, an early eighteenth-century design. The remainder of the upstairs served as a granary, as was the custom of Germanic housing both in Germany and the New World. Boards were nailed over the interstices (the gaps between the logs) to hold grain, and several vertical boards were nailed to the log walls to accommodate garner boards for the organized storage of grain.

Figure 14. These vertical boards held partitions in place to keep grain separated. To the let are horizontal boards nailed with forged nails over cracks between the logs to prevent grain from escaping. The tags were placed to document the location of the garners during the restoration of the Bowman House. Photo by author. 2002.

The design planned and built by George Bowman reflected his German family's Old World origins. His Flurkuchenhaus, although just one of several Germanic plans, found its greatest expression among German settlers in Pennsylvania and Virginia. This plan persisted in both regions until about 1800, when German communities could no longer resist the forces of Anglo-American acculturation.19 This abandonment of tradition is not to say that there was an abrupt transition from the traditional German house plan to the Anglo-American house plan. The process could take several generations. The present form of the Bowman House is the vernacular response of the first generation German-American in the Bowman family to the new social and economic forces that were emerging in the Shenandoah Valley and indeed the new nation.

When John Bowman, Jr., the grandson of George Bowman, inherited the family property in 1816, he witnessed first-hand the rising prosperity and resultant building boom which occurred in the Shenandoah Valley during the first several decades of the nineteenth century. The architectural response to this burgeoning wheat-based economic boom manifested itself as the I-house, a single pile Georgian plan that emphasized a balanced façade, a central passage flanked by a dining room and a parlor, and the division of public and private space. Transplanted from the elite planters of eastern Virginia, the plan first appeared in the Shenandoah Valley as early as 1800, about the same time that the Germanic population had abandoned the Flurkuchenhaus plan. As in eastern Virginia, the I-house became the symbol of a new social status in the Shenandoah Valley. In many cases, established and prosperous farmers such as John Bowman enlarged their existing homes to incorporate the Georgian ideal.

John Bowman began construction of new addition to his grandfather's house in 1820. Heavily influenced by other central passage plan homes that had sprung up in the Shenandoah Valley, his plan included a large central passage and large dining room or parlor adjoining the north end of the Flurkuchenhaus. This addition balanced the front façade of the Bowman House, giving it two side-by-side doors flanked by windows on either side. By necessity, the balance was broken by the window needed to light the interior of the central passage or hall.

The first phase of the addition was the construction of the log pen that would house the new formal room. His choice of v-notch reinforces the fact that the full dovetail notching used by his grandfather was almost entirely abandoned by 1820.20 John Bowman or his builders located the log frame 10' from the wall of the existing house. He raised the frame to the height of the attic floor of the Flurkuchenhaus, where he set two cantilevered logs to form the upper portion of the central passage. To support the end of the cantilevers, he fashioned an H-frame to the north wall of the Flurkuchenhaus which ran the length of the hall. The posts carried the ends of the cantilevered logs. The central beam carried the floor joists of the room which was formed above the hall.

Once the log pen was in place, the rafters were placed in preparation for the roof. Unlike the Flurkuchenhaus, these rafters were sawn instead of hewn, of smaller cross-section dimension, and placed on closer centers. John Bowman extended the existing porch across the front of the addition, and it is likely that he added the back porch to both structures at this time. After adding the porch rafters, the builders installed the long shingle roof similar to that of the old part of the structure.

Work began on the parlor fireplace and chimney at this time. The area needed for the face of the fireplace and mantle was sawn out and framed in with thick oak planks pegged into place. Interestingly, the masons did not place the fireplace in the exact center of the north wall.

John Bowman treated the rest of the construction of the new part of his house as a single phase of a larger remodeling project that incorporated more of the Georgian ethos into his house. Just as the Flurkuchenhaus stressed its structural components as mediums for decoration, the Georgian model de-emphasized its structural components by attaching ornamentation to smooth plastered surfaces by way of chair rail, wainscoting, baseboard, and other forms of molding.

When John Bowman added the extra rooms to his house he replaced the old casement windows in the Flurkuchenhaus with six over six double-hung sash windows. He plastered the entire downstairs, with the exception of the central passage, which he sheathed with vertical beaded paneling. He installed chair rail and beaded baseboard in each of the plastered rooms, with the most ornate feature in the house being the Federal style mantle found in the parlor.

Figure 15. The Federal style mantel in the parlor or dining room of the 1820 addition features the reeding and ornamentation found in popular pattern books of the early nineteenth century. Photo by author. 2007.

He nailed split lath to the log walls after the chair rail and baseboard was installed. The plaster was comprised of a mixture lime, sand, and animal hair, which was added as a binder. It was usually applied in three coats. The first layer covered the lath and flattened and plumbed the wall surface. The second coat built the wall out to its desired thickness, while the final coat provided the smooth finish. He painted the plaster and trim red, blue and orange, colors which represented the fledgling nationalism of the early nineteenth century.

Yet John Bowman did not completely abandon his German heritage, either in use of space or building technology. Although his grandfather built the two room plan of the Flurkuchenhaus, John added a partition in the Schtuppe to create a Kammer, or a small bedroom. The placement of the Kammer in the room meant the large stove attached to the chimney wall had to be removed and replaced with a smaller ten plate stove. The partition had a low door constructed in it to allow heat from the stove to enter the Kammer.

Figure 16. This low door allowed heat to enter the Kammer from the Schtuppe. It seems that John Bowman added this partition during the 1820 renovation.

The doors entering the Georgian inspired central passage show heavy Germanic influence as well. The so called "Dutch Doors" are board and batten and constructed with tapered dovetailed battens. It is interesting that he did not choose to use a more formal panel door, but it is possible that the single-board width of the central passage walls made the use of the heavier fame needed for a paneled door impractical.

Another Germanic feature of the Anglo-American part of the house is the use of the heavy summer beam in the parlor. John Bowman opted to use the Germanic system of floor framing and never plastered the ceiling. English-inspired construction would have downplayed the structural role of the summer beam and the floor joists it carries. True to Germanic form, the joists are notched into the top of the beam, instead of lying flush with its top, creating a gap between the summer beam and the ceiling boards.

Figure 17. This summer beam in the 1820 addition spanned the entire length of the room and carried the floor joists in pockets cut into the beam's upper corners. The joists are beaded, but the summer beam is not. The ceiling was never plastered. Photo by author. 2007.

At one point, the room above the parlor served as a granary, as had the upper rooms of the Flurkuchenhaus. Although obviously constructed as utilitarian space, the question remains as to why this space was used as such as late as 1820. It is possible that the room was pressed into service after the family barn was destroyed during the Civil War.21 Again, boards nailed over the interstices of the logs prevented grain from falling between the floor boards and walls. Vertical blocks nailed onto the log walls held garner boards. No evidence that suggests that the room was ever heated. The space on the upper floor of the Bowman house was unpartitioned between the Flurkuchenhaus and the 1820 addition.

George Bowman and his grandson, John Bowman, Jr. were products of their respective times. Both played their respective roles in subsequent chapters of American history, and the house that they built stands as a material example of the forces of acculturation at play in the Shenandoah Valley from 1773 to 1820. While George Bowman built his house to honor cultural and social traditions that had been in place for generations, his grandson's addition represented the new economic and nationalistic forces that were shaping a young nation. Around 1858, John Bowman abandoned altogether the house that sheltered four generations of his family and built a true I-house just yards away from his old home. Yet no better example of material culture exits that can tell as complete a story of the early history of the Shenandoah Valley as the Bowman House.

Footnotes

1 Kercheval, Samuel. A History of the Valley of Virginia (Strasbourg, Virginia: Shenandoah Publishing House, 1925), p. 151.

2 Bergengren, Charles, "Pennsylvania House Forms", Architecture and Landscapes of the Pennsylvania Germans, 1720-1920, (Twenty-fifth Annual Conference of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, May 12-16, 2004.) p.26.

3 Chappell, Edward A., "Acculturation in the Shenandoah Valley: Rhenish Houses at the Massanutten Settlement," Proceedings from the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 124, No. 1(February, 1985), p.55.

4 Weaver, William Woys. "The Pennsylvania German House: European Antecedents and New World Forms", Winterhur Portfolio, Volume 21, Number 4, (Winter, 1986), p. 245.

5 A dendrochonological analysis, or tree-ring dating, of the flurkuchenhaus logs revealed that they were harvested in 1773, one year after George Bowman purchased his land.

6 McKee, Harley J. Introduction to Early American Masonry, (National Trust for Historic Preservation, 1973), p. 18.

7 These niches in stone cellar walls are found in numerous cellars of the houses examined by Edward Chappell in the Massanutten settlement in Page County.

8 LeVan, Kenneth R., Building Construction and Materials of the Pennsylvania Germans, (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Vernacular Architecture Forum Annual Meeting, 2004), p. 7.

9 Kniffen, Fred B., and Henry Glassie, "Building with Wood in the Eastern United States: A Time-Place Perspective", Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Architecture, edited by Dell Upton and John Michael Vlach,( Athens and London, The University of Georgia Press, 1986), pp. 171-173.

10 Chappell, p. 59.

11 Friesen, Steve, "Home is Where the Hearth Is", Pennsylvania Folklife, (Spring, 1999, Vol. 40, No. 3), p. 99.

12 Mitchell, Robert D., Commercialism and Frontier: Perspectives on the Early Shenandoah Valley, (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 1977), p. 146.

13 Kercheval, p. 152.

14 Bucher, Robert C., "The Long Shingle", Pennsylvania Folklife, (Summer, 1969, Vol. XVIII, No. 4), p. 54.

15 Le Van, p. 32.

16 Lounsbury, Carl R., Ed., An Illustrated Glossary of Early Southern Architecture and Landscape, (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 63.

17 Weaver, p. 257.

18 Schlee, Ernst, German Folk Art, (Tokyo: Kodansha International, Ltd., 1980), p. 34.

19 Chappell, p. 62.

20 Kniffen and Glassie, p. 173.

21 Tree-ring dating of the extant Bowman barn indicates that it was built in 1865, a year after family tradition says that the old barn was burned by Sheridan's troops. Also, it is very unlikely that a Germanic family of the Bowmans' status did not have the large barn that was characteristic of prosperous German families.