Straw Basket & the “Dutch”

Under the shadow of the Bevo Mill, a reproduction windmill housing a famous brewery on Gravois in Saint Louis, my grandmother Ruth Siegfried had a small house, and I grew up there in the area called Dutchtown. We were not Dutch; we came from Bavaria on my grandfather’s side. German immigrants were often referred to as Dutch, (because some spoke a dialect called Deutch) and we have owned this basket (a Strohkorb – a straw basket) for many years, not knowing its origin as 19th-century Pennsylvania Dutch, made of rye straw from the areas around Bethlehem and Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Rye was a cereal crop beloved by Germans in Europe. It created many things: rye whiskey, it was prized for filling mattresses, insulation under carpets and walls, it stuffed horse collars, was used as drinking straws, and, of course, basket making.

Men, women, and children, no matter how “moral,” all drank rye whiskey in the 18th century. In fact, from a bushel of rye, a community could enjoy 11 quarts of whiskey, and when the rye crop was harvested in July, half the workers fell down drunk in the fields, and the other half, not drinking, would have to haul those light-eyed, fair-skinned blondes from out of the sun into the shade. What a hangover.

The German immigrants from Rhineland-Palatinate used rye straw for thatched roofs when a structure did not require a chimney. And each week, many loaves of rye bread were pulled from the Pennsylvania Dutch beehive ovens. The thatched roofs were practical: no shingles, no blacksmith to make nails.

This basket tells a story of Germans in Lehigh County. The first group of German immigrants to Pennsylvania arrived in 1683 aboard the ship Concord to establish a new life rooted in religious freedom, shaping the early history of the Pennsylvanian Dutch, founding Germantown.

This basket is likely from the 19th century. This style of coiled basketry binds and wraps the long straw rye fiber, which is a form of cellulose that is resistant to decay (mice dislike it, too), and, once the straw is threshed to release the grain (for the whiskey and bread), basket makers reap and bundle the rye, coiling a long rope of rye straw all the way from the bottom of the basket to the top. It is a tradition still taught by the Goschenhoppen Historians.

These rye straw baskets were breadbaskets, sewing baskets for wrapped balls of old fabric for quilting, for beans, dried schnitz, things that did not require handles to carry – these were light work baskets. The Goschenhoppen Historians of the Henry Antes (1830s) plantation of Perkiomenville, Pennsylvania, are a superb resource, documenting the Dutch frugally working the farm communities of the 18th century. A lecture is forthcoming called “Ordinary Days in Revolutionary Times: The Lives of the Pennsylvania Dutch 250 years ago.”

Once the community entered the mid-19th century, the area was known for Pennsylvania Dutch zinc and copper miners. But the farming tradition continued: whether Lutheran, Reformed, or Mennonite, the community all broke from their work to celebrate the harvesting of the rye, “Harvest Home,” based on ancient Celtic and Saxon traditions. Before George Washington issued a proclamation in 1789 creating the first Thanksgiving Day designated by the national government of the United States of America, the Pennsylvania Dutch were celebrating the Harvest Festival, the gathering of rye amongst other crops.

The basket itself is entirely functional, as it is deep, with a 1:1 height-to-width ratio, a perfect volume to hold small crops as a gathering basket. The half-bushel basket is formed in a plaited checkerboard weave, and the rim top has been repaired; it was formerly reinforced with wrapped fibers.

This basket may have been created in the 19th century by a member of a Native American Eastern Woodland tribe (Cherokee, or Iroquois), used for berry gathering; cereal rye (as grown by the Pennsylvania Dutch) was used for bread and whiskey, as well as roofs and baskets, yet cereal rye originated in Asia, travelled to Europe and was imported here. Wild rye grass (not a cereal) is indigenous to the Americas. Rye grass was bundled and coiled for baskets similar to mine.

Used for my brother’s garbage can, this is a rural folk-art gathering basket, likely Pennsylvania Dutch, and I will be writing to the Goschenhoppen Historians to make sure.

The value, if so, is $500, even in this condition, and if it were to be found to be Eastern Woodland Native American, it would be worth far more.