Before he was a noted author and 1949 Academy Award nominee for co-writing the movie "The Snake Pit" with Frank Partos, Millen Brand spent many years living on Crow Hill, just above Bally in Berks County.

            Raised in New Jersey and living in New York, Brand noted his pleasures

Living near Bally in Berks County for 30 years, Millen Brand wrote many poems and published a compilation of them in 1975 in a book titled "Local Lives"

included hearing the stories shared with him by the local people of this region of Pennsylvania.

            He began by listening to the locals, then began to carry a notebook so he could pen his notes. Over a period of 30 years he accumulated such a large collection that he put many of them together in a book titled "Local Lives – Poems about the Pennsylvania Dutch" in 1975.

            The life of Millen Brand is fascinating, and I've written about him several times in the past but I often wondered about the people he wrote about.  So, I decided to delve into one them.  A gentleman named Josephus Gerhard. 

            One of the Brand's first poems in "Local Lives" is titled "The Life of Josephus Gerhard".  It was gathered from Gerhard when he was 95-years-of-age. In a passage from the poem Brand wrote: Old my eyes see less each year, and hear less and get weaker. Yes, the going is down, though slow. His skin is the lace shedding of a locust, but with no new locust under the web.  I was born on a Friday, yes.  I have an almanac of that year, eighteen fifty-three.  Down below Millside, on that farm where the barn is, or was.

            Yes, Gerhard had quite a life.

            For many years he imported horses from Europe and trained them for the New

Josephus Gerhard, an active citizen of Hereford Township, was the subject of two of Millen Brand's poems about people, places and events in what he referred to as the Pennsylvania Dutch Country.

York market.  His way with horses is documented in another Brand Poem titled "Josephus Gerhard Drives the Safe" which comes from an interview with Rev. Elmer Johnson, pastor of the Hereford Mennonite Church from 1921 – 1947. He tells the story of the time when a young Gerhard used his father's horses to take a new safe from the recently built Pennsburg Railroad Station on Fourth Street, to the new Farmer's National Bank on the main floor of the Odd Fellow's Hall on Main Street. 

            In part, the poem reads: Uncle hitched the two teams to the wagon, and when the safe was on it, went around for a few minutes, adjusting the collars, lifting and leaving down, talking to the horses, so they felt him.  Then he gave the word go.  None thought they would go, nearly two-tons to the horse, for the wagon weighed too, but the horsed pulled and went.

            Gerhard was paid $10 for hauling the safe up to the bank.  Before the task was started, his father, Daniel Gerhard, got wind of the transaction.  Of the moment when Gerhard asked to borrow his father's horses, Johnson's words were shared by Brand who wrote: Uncle asked his father, could he borrow two teams.  His father outguessed him and said, the ten-dollars comes to me!  But, I am glad you are confident you can drive the safe up.

            The poem ends with: Uncle delivered the safe and duly the ten-dollars was paid to him, and by him to his father.

            Gerhard was well-known in educational circles even though he confessed to

Millen Brand was nominated, along with Frank Partos, for an Academy Award in 1949 for writing the screen play for the motion picture "The Snake Pit"

Brand that he wasn't much on schooling when he was young. Another section of the "Life of Josephus Gerhard" reads:  I didn't like school, I didn't like to study.  Some like to work with the head.  He touches his naked head. Not me.  I left school in spring then worked on my father's farm for a time.

            Gerhard held several offices in Hereford Township over the years.  He served on the Hereford Township Public Road Board and also was the supervisor of roads.  While supervisor, he secured the first paved road in Hereford Township connecting Route 29 and Route 100 between Clayton in Berks County and Palm in Montgomery County.

            For years he served as vice-president and director of the National Bank of Boyertown and the Boyertown Burial Casket Company.  When Perkiomen Seminary School needed to build a new building around the turn of the 20th century, Gerhard was one of the men who raised the necessary funds to pay for it.  He was one of three men who served on the building committee for the new Palm Schwenkfelder Church in 1909.  Over the years, he held many other positions within the church.

            A look at the appendix of the book "The History of The Building of Palm Schwenkfelder Church" lists Josephus Gerhard and his horses hauling many loads of stone for the project.

            For 21 years he was the manager of the Clayton Butter and Cheese Company.

            A busy man indeed.

            Josephus passed away on Saturday, April 30, 1949.  But, he lives on in the poems of Millen Brand.