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The oldest private home in Bethlehem, Little Cot, was built on their 500-acre farm by James and Mary Burnside in 1848. Adjacent to the house, on the remaining 6-1/2 acres, is the Butterfly-shaped garden that provided fruits and vegetables for the farm.
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Dressed in a colonial period costume, Abigail Bruno sniffs the flowers in the Butterfly Garden at the Burnside Plantation. Miss Bruno lives in New Hampshire and is visiting her grandparents in Bethlehem.
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What might be the only operating horse-powered wheel in the U. S. is located below the barn at the Burnside Plantation. The wheel powered a belt that ran a threshing machine. The barn and the original 1841 wheel were destroyed in a fire in 1924. The site relocated another 1841 barn from the Johnson Farm to the site. The Johnson’s barn also had a horse-powered wheel. It was dismantled and installed at the Burnside Plantation.
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Laura Fitzpatrick of Quakertown displays varieties of ketchup: mushroom, lemon, mustard seed, gooseberry, and tomato. Ketchup is a sauce made with vinegar possibly receiving its name from the Chinese word Ke-tsiap - a spicy pickled-fish condiment. “Mr. Heinz did not coin the term,” said Fitzpatrick.
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Teresa Kirk prepares a chicken cooked over an open fire at the 1825 Summer Kitchen at the Burnside Plantation.
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Andrew Hollenbach demonstrates the making of ice cream using a recipe for vanilla ice cream brought back from France by Thomas Jefferson.
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Thousands tour the oldest private house in Bethlehem at the 20th annual Blueberry Festival
A visit to the oldest private home in Bethlehem, a house on a 6-1/2-acre farm which is the last farm within the city limits of the three largest cities in the Lehigh Valley – Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton, is a reason in itself for visiting the Burnside Plantation. But when they are having their twentieth annual Blueberry Festival, how can you not go?
“We’re expecting 5,000 people over the two day weekend of July 23 and 24,” said Louise Sylvester - Director of Development at Historic Bethlehem Partnership. With the weather in the mid-80s, it was a great place to be.
The festival featured blueberries. “Why blueberries?” I asked.
“Because when we started the festival twenty years ago,” explained Sylvester, “there was a peach and strawberry festival but no blueberry festival. We have blueberry baked goods, blueberry ice cream, and blueberry bushes for sale.”
While blueberries are just a theme—albeit one that helped to sell hundreds of blueberry pies, the festival was basically a family-friendly marriage of history, entertainment and an excuse to be outdoors.
The Burnside Plantation began in 1748 as the farm of James and Mary Burnside. At the time, the village of Bethlehem was a Moravian commune—all property was owned by the church. The Moravian community focused on trades and crafts with few of their brethren interested in farming. The Burnsides purchased a 500-acre tract and on the land they developed a farm and built several buildings.
James Burnside was born in Ireland in 1708. Eventually, he would become a rarity—an Irish Moravian preacher among a village of Moravian Germans.
Burnside came to America in 1734 and settled in Savannah, Georgia. The land was unsuitable and he failed in farming. In 1736, he married Margaret Bovey. The Burnsides worked with the Moravian settlers in Savannah and admired their beliefs.
The year 1742 saw their house burn to the ground. This was followed by both James and Margaret contracting a debilitating disease. Margaret died in September 1742. James and his daughter, Rebecca, left for Pennsylvania. Rebecca was placed in a Moravian Girl’s school outside Philadelphia and continued north to join the Moravian Church commune in Bethlehem.
Initially denied membership in the commune, Burnside was permitted to become a missionary. In 1745, he was admitted into the Moravian Church and married Mary Peters Wendover, a wealthy widow that he met while preaching in New York. In 1746, Rebecca contracted smallpox and died at the age of six.
In 1748, Burnside retired from preaching and with his wife’s inheritance, they purchased a 500-acre farm along the Monocacy Creek just six tenths of a mile north of the Moravian settlement.
They built, “Little Cot,” a saltbox style home—the first home in Bethlehem outside the commune. In 1750, Burnside sold 200-acres to the Moravians and became the area’s first representative to the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly.
After James died from a stroke in 1755 at the age of 47, Mary Burnside leased the farm for three years and, in 1758 sold the remaining 300-acres to the Moravian Church. The Moravians leased the land to tenant farmers and by the 1790s, were referring to the property as “Plantation No. 4.” In 1848, the Moravians sold the land.
The land remained in private hands and by 1986; the last remaining 6.5acres were slated for development. “A group led by Gertrude Fox, saved the farm by going to Lehigh County and petitioning them to purchase the farm as part of the Lehigh County park system. It was purchased in 1986 and managed since by Burnside Plantation Inc.,” explained Charlene Donchez Mowers - Executive Director of Historic Bethlehem Partnership. “In 1993, it joined with several other museums to form the Historic Bethlehem Partnership. We have 19 buildings and 20 acres.”
The Burnside Plantation has the original home, a summer kitchen – built in 1825, two 1850 barns that were relocated to the farm to replace previous barns that had had been destroyed, and a corncrib and wagon shed from the early 1800s. The Burnside Plantation interprets farm life from 1748 to 1848.
The Burnside Plantation is at 1461 Schoenersville Road near the Eighth Ave. exit of Rt. 378 in Bethlehem and is located behind the Martin Towers skyscraper. During the summer, it is open to the public for self-guided walking tours Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and for tours on Saturdays. For information: call 610-691-0603 or see: www.historicbethlehem.org/agriculture.jsp.
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