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Barns of Perry County – Virtual Lecture
September 23, 2020 @ 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Architectural historian, Jerry Clouse will give a virtual presentation on the barns of Perry County. It is based on the year-long research he conducted for the June 2019 tour which he led for the Historic Barn & Farm Foundation (HBFF) of Pennsylvania. HBFF meets and tours a different county in the state each year. The talk traces the county’s agricultural development and barn building trends from early settlement into the 20th century. Most of the county’s barns are either the Schweitzer type or the Standard Pennsylvania type, and the talk will point out their differences.
The selected tour barns provided a variety of ridge and valley locations across the county displaying stylistic, floor plan and building material variations while retaining a high degree of integrity. The barns were constructed between 1815 and 1865, and this period saw the transition from all hewn timber framing to sawn timbers. In addition, a few other barns were surveyed to provide supplemental contextual information for the study. Survey and research of those barns showed that both Scotch-Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch owner-builders constructed sturdy barns that would serve multiple generations of farm families. The county’s agricultural censuses showed that all the tour barns serviced farms with above average animal and crop production.