It Happened Here --New World Dutch Barns

Today, it is hard to imagine New York as the "wheat belt", the "breadbasket" of America, but  a century and a quarter or more before the settlement of the Great Plains and the introduction of hearty red winter wheat,  New York could in fact claim those titles.  Decades before the farms of the Hudson Valley,  the Mohawk Valley, the Schoharie and Cherry Valleys turned to dairy farming,  orchards, and  vegetable crops,  the rich bottom-lands of New York's valleys were predominantly sown with a single crop -- wheat. And like the wheatfields of the Great Plains a single type of iconic structure came to symbolize that region. On the Great Plains in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that structure was the square, multi-storied grain elevator; in the pre-industrial agricultural regions of New York/New Jersey in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries that iconic structure was the square, wide, high-gable-roofed New World Dutch Barn.

Onesquethaw Creek Rd., Feura Bush

New World Dutch Barns took their inspiration from the barns of northern Europe. Pairs of massive, squared wooden columns were joined by wide anchor-beams forming a series of three to five or more "H" structures supporting the roof and creating three aisles. A characteristic feature of the "H"s was that they were mortised and tenoned, with the anchor-beam tenon ends projecting through the columns and terminating in round ends, wedged and pegged fast. The widest aisle, under the "H"'s was floored with wide planks, creating a threshing floor, where the wheat was threshed, and winnowed (knocked from the wheat stalks and separated from the chaff or wheat husks). The outside aisles were used for housing animals or for storage. The area above the "H" crossbeams were connected/floored with poles that provided a dry storage area for sheaves of grain or hay. One or both barn ends had large double doors through which wagons could enter to deliver their loads. At the gable end corners there were often smaller doors for animals to enter. These doors were sometimes split in "dutch door" fashion, to allow the upper half to be opened for ventilation, and the lower half closed. The barns, sided with horizontal planks,  were windowless but often holes were cut near the gable peaks to allow swallows to enter. 

After a farmer and his family, or perhaps a hired hand had cut and squared the timbers to frame his barn, and before neighbors were invited for a barn raising, a carpenter/joiner was often hired to cut the rather precise joints necessary to fit the members together and to oversee the construction. Usually each joint was custom cut and fitted together and often the pieces were numbered with roman numerals chiseled near the ends to avoid mix-ups. These marking can often be seen today on the timbers of old dutch barns.

In the town of Florida, Montgomery county (then Tryon County) Jan Wemp built two barns in the first quarter of the 18th century.  (There were several Jan Wemps living in Albany and towns and lands to the west from the 1630's onward, but this Jan Wemp was probably the Jan Wemp who helped construct the Queen Anne Chapel and the fort built to protect it.) 

Queen Anne Rd.,  Fort Hunter

During the Revolution most of these barns in the Mohawk, Schoharie and Cherry Valleys and the grain they contained were burned in the Tory and Indian raids of 1778 and 1780.  Washington's army relied heavily on grain produced in New York's valleys, so barns were a major strategic target of these raids. The Wemp barn was probably spared because, at the time, it was owned by his son, Andries, a Tory.  After the war Andries tried unsuccessfully to reclaim his barn.

In 1985 a non-profit organization, the Dutch Barn Preservation Society was formed to study and protect "one of the last physical reminders of the pre-industrial agricultural heritage of eastern New York and New Jersey".  When it appeared the property on which the larger Wemp barn stood was likely to be sold for development the Society found a landowner willing to buy the barn and move it to where it would complement an historic stone house on his property. The Society oversaw its dismantlement and reconstruction on the farm along the Onesquethaw Creek in Feura Bush, Albany County,  in 1990.


Marker of the Week -- What do you do if you live in an old stone colonial farm house (originally owned by William Harper, delegate to the 1788 Constitution ratification commission) and you are a fashionable modern Victorian?  Maybe a new roof is just what you need to fix up the old place --with shaped, colored slates, arranged in geometric designs and a false railing or two. It's not like you are doing the whole mansard roof thing!

Queen Anne Rd., Ft. Hunter