November 2020
I remember visiting this house (along with the nearby Gates House and Plough Tavern) in elementary school. That experience was a perfect example for me of taking young kids places and overloading them with "useless facts" rather than trying to make something historical more accessible to their age group. To this day it remains a building I drive by when in downtown York and think, "I saw that when I was a kid" and remember nothing else.
What I didn't know was that it had just been moved (1968) from its location up Pershing Avenue to create a mini "historical zone" in downtown York a few years before my field trip.
Of the house:
the house was moved several blocks, from its original location on South Pershing Avenue to its present site. The reason for its relocation was the planned enlargement of a nearby high school. Its present location is in close proximity to two other important historic buildings in the city's geographic and historical core. Therefore, the Barnett Bobb Log House's present position, though not, original is appropriate. The Barnett Bobb Log House (Old Log House) is furnished in the style of the average German home in this area, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth, centuries.
The Barnett Bobb Log House (Old Log House) was built in 1811-1812. This date is documented by the fact that Barnett Bobb, its builder, bought the land on which it stands in 1811 and paid taxes on a dwelling with the dimensions of this house in 1812.
The Bobb family arrived in Philadelphia in 1754 from Germany and some years later appeared in York County. Ludwick Bobb was a member of two militia companies of the revolutionary era. His son Johann Bernhard, who later anglicized his name to Barnett, was the builder of this house. The Barnett Bobb Log House (Old Log House) stayed in the Bobb family for a period after Barnett's death. During the last century several different families have lived in the dwelling. Heads of household have included a farmer, a tip-staff, a tanner, a coachman, and a teamster.
Having walked down the memory lane of the house my takeaway was a strong reminder of how very German South Central Pennsylvania used to be and how that influence has waned even in my lifetime.
Ahhhh.... the field trip. A worldwide institution where children are brought to a historical or cultural place "for their own good".
Mine were as follows: the Gates House and Plough Tavern, York, PA; Gettysburg, PA; Washington, DC; and MERR Institute (marine animal rehab center), Lewes, DE. The most impactful were the trips to Washington, DC and the MERR Institute (such an excellent opportunity for any high school kid leaning toward the sciences - not me). Of course, I was older for both of those trips, but I think in both cases I did "learn" something and they weren't just a day off school for an outing with classmates.
I often struggled in my travels with having a place be "ruined" by busloads of kids coming for a field trip. I tried to console myself with "this kind of thing is important", but could never escape thinking few, if any, of them would remember anything except the trip in general and enjoying time with friends. If that were the case, why not take younger students to a place they could actually have fun (like an amusement park) rather than give the experience a veneer of learning?
I walked around Devil's Den Gettysburg, I remember it. Why was it important? If they told us, it didn't stick. That is all I remember - walking around big rocks with a memorable name. I would have remembered a trip to Hersheypark a lot more fondly. Ha!
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