MOUNT VERNON — A barn isn’t just a barn, at least not to Chuck Whitney. On the verge of his 90th birthday, the Knox Countian is still so excited by the layers of life to be found in barns that he joked he could talk all night about them. But that’s no surprise for a fellow who can walk into a barn and tell you much of its history at a glance. Those details tell the story of the Ohio frontier.
“Those early people had a simple philosophy,” Whitney said. “A barn would build a house, but a house would not build a barn.”
Early Ohioans discovered the most important starting point in a farming operation was the barn. Temporary shelter could be set up for sleeping, but a barn had to be raised to get the farming operation up and running. Once the farm was producing, it would pay for the house to be built.
Joining Whitney over the last five years has been his daughter, Pamela Gray, who has quickly learned to “read” barns under her father’s tutelage.
“She’s good,” Whitney said, an opinion echoed by Pat Surbella of the Knox County Renaissance Foundation, who marveled at Gray’s skills.
“She can walk into a barn for the first time, look up and start telling you detailed things about its history, just like that,” Surbella said.
Whitney and Gray have served as consultants for the Barns-R-Noble bicentennial barn tour sponsored by the Knox County Renaissance Foundation. The driving tour will take place Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and will feature docents, art works from the Knox County Art League, special activities and more.
One of the quick indicators of a barn’s age, according to Whitney, is saw marks. In most cases, the saw marks seen in barns with solid beams will fall into one of three patterns: Diagonal, vertical or curved. Saw marks which run diagonal to the grain of the wood are the oldest, dating back to the early 1800s, because they are the mark typically left by pit sawing operations, in which a long saw is operated by two men.
To cut tree sections at ground level, one of the men would stand in a pit, thus the name. The diagonal cuts also tend to be irregular, due to variations of pressure and speed from the operators.
Straight up-and-down cuts, however, show great regularity, as these are the cuts that would typically be made in an early mechanical, water-powered sawmill operation of the mid-1800s. Curved cuts in the boards are a hallmark of the new technology which came in around the time of the Civil War, when circular saws became common equipment in Ohio sawmills.
Whitney also said that barns with beams made of laminated or layered 2-by-6s became popular after 1915, in time eventually yielding to the standardized metal designs seen today.
Many of the barns on the tour reflect the older attributes, as they range from the Cassell barn, going back to the 1830s, to the Day barn, built over 100 years later, although the saw marks on some of the beams inside reveal that it has recycled parts from earlier barns. Another barn, the Aberegg, dating from the early 20th century, might even be a Sears & Roebuck kit barn, featuring wide, sweeping eaves to keep rain away from the foundation walls.
Whitney notes the issue of controlling moisture is key in barn preservation.
“All you have to do to make a barn last a thousand years is keep it dry,” Whitney said, citing some of the ancient structures in Europe that are still standing due to maintenance that has protected them over the years and kept water from pooling anywhere and rotting out the wood. Careful balancing of moisture is part of the building process in early barns, too, he explained.
Large beams are held together in older barns with wooden pegs in mortise- and- tenon joints. Whitney said the pegs would be cut and shaped in advance, throughout the winter before an anticipated barn raising, so they could be stored behind the kitchen stove, which would thoroughly dry them out. When the barn was built, green timber would be used for the long beams, with holes just big enough for the pegs.
After the dry pegs were driven into the green wood, they would absorb moisture from the green beams, making the pegs swell up and become so tight that virtually nothing can break them out of the hole. Thus, without glue or nails, a massive structure could be built.
Whitney said barns in Knox County are typically made out of white oak, or, a little less common, red oak. These are strong but workable woods which would have been plentiful in most locations. He said the dominant wood tends to be whatever was most plentiful, yet workable, in a one- to two-mile radius of the barn location.
Between them, Whitney and Gray estimate they have consulted on over 700 barns, ranging as far afield as Virginia, Michigan, Colorado and Louisiana. They have even fielded calls from as far away as the state of Washington.
The father-daughter team is well-connected with timber-frame artisans throughout the state, who know the proper techniques for repairing and restoring vintage barns. Whitney and Gray also know roofers who can duplicate old-fashioned styles such as slate and standing metal seams, and stone masons who can rebuild foundations. After identifying the wood in structures and making recommendations on all the various priorities of preservation and restoration, the barn consultants turn the information over to the owners and advise them on how to proceed.
“We do the fun part,” Gray said.
When talking about barns, the inevitable question must be addressed: Why are most barns traditionally red? Gray said that’s an easy one: It was the cheapest paint farmers could buy.
Whitney added that one might note that in Mennonite-settled areas of northwest Ohio, barns are typically white, according to the social traditions of the settlers. But then, he said, barns always tell a lot about the people who built them.
“You can’t think of any other group or society that been more expressive in their buildings and structures than the American farmer,” Whitney said.
