Well, I can believe that the barns are part of the recovering economy of the south, but I still wonder what was built in the forty years after the Civil War. As I mentioned, I can find no evidence of reused materials in these "new" barns. Even if the farms had thrown something up to tide them over, I would expect to see some of that material in these barns.

Most of them are on farms dating from theBorden Land Grant(toward the end of the 17 hundreds) and in almost all cases, the houses are older than the barns. When I began my survey, I started with VDH surveys of the oldest properties in the county. As I noted either "frame barn" or "bank barn" on the survey, I set that property aside. Most of the surveys were done in the late 80's to early 90's and a good number of the barns were gone. Another goodly amount were stick built outbuildings and not really barns at all. I quickly larned that whoever was doing the surveys cared litle to nothing about the barns.

As to the joists on the "new" barns, they are mainly sawn 3 by 8 to 10 relatively closely spaced; and not tapered. On some, as I mentioned they are apparently recycled log structure parts. Sometimes the barns are on older foundations, sometimes on slip-formed concrete. When on older,stone foundations,there is usuallly a cementitious parging applied and sometimes a newer concrete foundation in front of the stone(on the bank side).

Judgingfrom other contemporary construction, I don't think size was an issue. I can say that while most of these barns are oak, we have done a lot of restoration on barns north of here that are almost entirely pine.

Finding no answers, just more questions.