The people who came to the Hans Herr House were the first European settlers of Lancaster County, mostly of Swiss German origin. One reason that they came to America was because they were fleeing religious persecution for their beliefs. In this case, the European settlers fled from Switzerland as William Penn promised freedom in America. Another reason the settlers came to America was for economic improvement. Life was believed to be "better" in America than in Europe, especially because American farmland was known as a good fertile farmland.

The tour of the Hans Herr house gave us a good impression of a colonial house. From the outside, one

The next room we entered was the bedroom where Christian and Anna stayed. There was a cradle in there for the youngest daughter. The matress of the main bed was linen sack filled with straw and on top was another layer that was made of feather. The bed was a bit short since these colonial people tended to lay in a 45 degree angle, possibly because they believed laying straight was considered the "death position." The room also had a large trunk to store clothes, which meant that the Herrs were of high status position because many individuals of the colonial period usually had only one or 2 sets of clothes. The ceiling of the room was plaster exposed with hickory wood wrapped with straw, providing insulation for the house.

can notice the steep pitched roof, which was built that way because of the snow and ice that could build up and possibly damage the house. Also, the fireplace was built in the center of the house so that the heat can be circulated throughout the household, a common resemblance of the English colonial house. In this German house, we entered through the kitchen and we could see that there were no hallways, which were believed to waste space. Unlike the English house, there was a lack of symmetry in this German house because one could see that some of the windows did not line up with the rest of the house. This lack of symmetry proved the fact that to the Germans, function was taken over form. We entered through the front door that had a carving that read: 17 CHHR 19. This carving was from Christian Herr, the actual builder of the house, who bought it from William Penn. Hans Herr was the leader of the family that lived in this colonial house and was considered one of the higher elder statesmen of all nine families that lived here. He

The Hans Herr House truly gave a good example of how these colonial "homes" were and how women and men lived and worked during this period in American history. Men and women shared different roles, but worked together to provide a living standard to survive and prosper. The move to colonial America gave these families a better chance to live a better life.

The first room one walks into is the kitchen. The first thing that is noticeable is the high cielings, possibly because the smoke created by the fireplace of common houses of the colonial period usually leads to developed hunches on the house members in effort to keep the smoke out of their face. The kitchen is where women spent most of their time as it was mostly a place for them to prepare the food for the men after their hard day of work out in the fields and so on. The table in the center of the kitchen was for food preperation. In contrast with many colonial homes that had just one fire, the Hans Herr House featured 2-3 fires that burned at once. The fire emerged in the back of the fireplace, which was not on the floor, but on a sort of step. The Hans Herr fireplace provided many advantages of safety. Women that wores long skirts and coats were kept safe from getting their

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Approximate Word count = 2045
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)