I heard back from Jan Lewandowski about connecting girt barns and with his permission here is his email response: "Dear All, Bent style barns are very common in the entire state of Vermont. I usually date them from about 1830 -1870, they are usually gable entry, on a banked basement, and the tie beams sit on tenons atop the posts. The plate is segmental , tenoning into the sides of the tie beam and sometimes it is merely a flying, or eaves plate or eaves purlin. There are certainly hundreds of them. Sometimes there is a girt that tenons into the posts a little below where a plate would be, and the rafters bear only on the segmental flying plate, or tenon as principals onto the tie beam end, or have an intermediate principal (so called) that bears on the flying plate and is sometimes blocked off the segmental girt. While this sort of frame gets along with the square rule tendency to mass produce short frame elements, and the gable entry tendency towards modular bays of equal spacing rather than spacing based upon function (though the aisle widths may reflect this), it definitely predates square ruling. In our truss book look at the 1799 Rindge Church (queenpost) and you will see a scribed frame with tie beams tenoned onto post tops and giant segmental plates (12x 24) tenoned into the sides of the ties. Jan"
I am thinking they must extend into New York, too. Interesting to have evidence of scribed cg frames.
Jim
The closer you look the more you see. "Heavy timber framing is not a lost art" Fred Hodgson, 1909
