NYT: For the Pennsylvania Dutch, a Long Tradition Fades.
200 of 800 Pennsylvania Dutch barn ‘hex signs’ remain.
Odd, I recall seeing these a great deal in the early seventies as our family drove around the lower northeast. Seems like there must have been more than 800 at one time.
There was a bit of a hex sign fad in the sixties. We had one on our house in New Jersey. Purchased at a gift shop in PA. Also had a milk can on the front porch and an American eagle thing over the door. Maybe all of those hex signs you saw were part of the hex sign fad, not real deal hex signs. I always wondered what our hex sign was protecting us from. I was a little kid at the time.