Berks Places is a recurring feature that will focus on small villages and census designated places throughout the county. History, nostalgia and local voices will shed some light on the quaint nooks and crannies of our area. Additional historical photographs accompany the online version of the articles.
Leinbachs is an unincorporated village in the southern part of Bern Township that is very close to Reading Regional Airport. Its main intersection is at Old Bernville and West Leesport roads.
It takes its name from the prominent Leinbach family that settled there. The family first came to Berks County in 1723 from Germany and settled in the Oley area.
Incidentally, the translation of the two parts of the Leinbach surname from German to English is “linen stream.” Among the family’s vast historic industries in Berks are clothing manufacture and sales and milling.
Berks County Commissioner Christian Y. Leinbach is a descendant of Christian R. Leinbach, who built the hotel and tavern in 1848. The building at 1079 Old Bernville Road remained in the family until Dec. 12, 1931. Ammon R. Leinbach, as executor of the Peter M. Leinbach estate, and his mother, Mary E. Leinbach, sold the place to Andrew and Margaret Poetzl, according to Berks County deed records.
It has been a private residence since it last changed ownership on Nov. 30, 1987.
“Do you know whose daddy ran that hotel near the end?” Berks historian George M. Meiser IX asked during an interview last week. “Did you ever hear of ‘A League of Their Own,’ the baseball film? Well, the blondie in that film was Ruth Hartman, my friend that died at Limekiln. Well, her daddy ran the hotel. She grew up at that hotel.”
Ruth “Rocky” Kramer played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in 1946-1947. The league was the basis for a 1992 film that starred Geena Davis, Tom Hanks, Lori Petty, Madonna and others. The character of Betty “Spaghetti” Horn, played by Tracy Reiner, was supposed to have been based on Kramer.
Kramer, who would later marry William D.L. Hartman, played for the Fort Wayne (Ind.) Daisies, the Racine (Wis.) Belles and the Grand Rapids (Mich.) Chicks. She would go on to become a physical education and health teacher in the Reading School District and coached the softball team for 18 seasons. Hartman also was a well-known breeder of corriedale sheep at her Limekiln, Exeter Township farm. She died Nov. 9, 2015, at age 89 from injuries she suffered in a roadside accident Nov. 7 when she got out of her SUV to check on a deer she had hit.
Across from the former hotel was the general store and post office, Meiser said.
The Leinbachs post office was established Feb. 16, 1852, at what is now 1085 Old Bernville Road and was discontinued Jan. 31, 1907, according to Morton L. Montgomery’s “Historical and Biographical Annals of Berks County, Pennsylvania,” published in 1909.
“Elias A. Leinbach became the postmaster at Leinbach’s post office and discharged the duties of that office for a period of nearly fifty years,” Montgomery wrote.
Meiser said Leinbach received an award from the postal service for being the longest-serving postmaster in Berks at the time.
A stretch of Leinbachs along West Leesport Road leading up to Epler’s United Church of Christ once was known as Mechanicsville, Meiser said.
“The old maps show it as Mechanicsville because everybody along that stretch did something — there was a blacksmith in there, there was a wagonmaker in there, there was a Zacharias who was a photographer who lived in there,” he explained. “It was a stretch of people who did crafts.”
Today Leinbachs is probably more known for the businesses and community organizations located there rather than as a village. Among them are Miller-Keystone Blood Center, 2745A Leisczs Bridge Road, Classic Harley-Davidson, 983 James Drive, and the Bern Township municipal building, 1069 Old Bernville Road (which was built around a schoolhouse, Meiser said).
All of those places, and many more, now have Leesport addresses, though they are several miles from that borough.
“Once you lose your post office, 25, 30, 50 years, younger people have no idea (it ever existed),” Meiser said.
