Although the purpose of our trip to Gettysburg was focused on the battle itself and Lewis Armistead’s participation in it, it was easy for me to get distracted by other interests. The first distraction came before we even reached the village. As we came in toward town on the Chambersburg Road we passed an impressive stone barn to the south of the highway. Elizabeth promptly reported, “McPherson’s Barn”.
I was aware of McPherson’s Barn and its significance in the first day’s battle. Our beloved Company D and the rest of the 149th Pennsylvania Regiment were heavily involved in action adjacent to it. In John Nesbit’s fine “General History of Company D” he reports that Company D’s position was “formed in front of the McPherson farm buildings on the Chambersburg pike”. What I hadn’t realized was that the McPherson Barn was a classic stone Pennsylvania bank barn.
Also known as a “Sweitzer” barn from its origin in Switzerland, the Pennsylvania bank barn is a unique design. Ideally it is built on a side hill with access to the first floor for horses and cattle and on the second floor, in the rear, for wagon loads of hay. According to Eric Sloane in “Age of Barns” the first floor was divided into thirds – stalls for horses on one side, stalls for cattle and oxen against the other wall, and a general-purpose space in the middle.
The second floor was also subdivided into thirds. The middle bay was the threshing bay, the place where the farmer could flail bundles of wheat, separating the grain from the stalks (straw). The outer two bays were used for storing hay unloaded from wagons. Frequently a partial third floor, the loft, would be installed to provide additional storage space for hay. Bank barns were large; the McPherson barn has a footprint of forty feet by sixty feet, and is about sixty feet high from the first floor to the ridge.
Another characteristic of the bank barn was the forebay, an extension of the second floor about eight feet long, over the entrance to the first floor. This provided weather protection over the area where the animals entered and left the barn. Typically the forebay was of timber construction unlike the rest of the walls of a stone barn.
My interest in stone barns begins with the fact that, according to Oyler family legend, my great-great grandfather Andrew Oyler and his three brothers were stone masons in the Cumberland Valley in the early 1800s, specializing in building stone barns. That’s as much as we know about them, but is enough to explain my fascination with designing and building structures.
Family lore also reports that the four brothers were exceedingly stubborn and could never decide which one of them was “boss”. This they resolved by each starting a different corner of the barn and building his own one fourth of it. Probably far-fetched, but still a good story.
Intrigued with the idea that McPherson’s Barn might be an Oyler barn, when we went to the Gettysburg National Military Park Visitor Center I took the opportunity to ask the Ranger at the Information Desk if he knew when McPherson’s Barn was constructed. His curt reply was, “In the 1840s, I would guess”. My equally curt reply was, “I wasn’t looking for a guess”. “Well, the property was developed in the 1840s”. “Thank you, that’s more like what I expected from an historian”.
Further investigation has determined that the barn is currently leased to a farmer and is still in use. I have also learned that it and the Rose Barn, a similar stone barn on the Emmitsburg Road, were both built around 1811. The Rose Barn was destroyed by a fire in 1910 and demolished a few years later; nonetheless there are photographs and drawings documenting it.
The principal difference between stone barns and conventional timber beam-and-post barns is the construction sequence. We are familiar with the “barn-raising” concept where timber bents are preassembled beforehand and, on the given day, all the neighbors show up to hoist them in place and then to add floor beams and girders to tie them together. A big show that is impressive but leaves a large amount of non-glamorous work to be done adding studs and girts and siding to enclose the barn.
In contrast, building a stone barn reverses the sequence – the outer walls are constructed first, and interior posts and floors added later. In both cases the roof comes last; its design and erection is identical for both types. Both designs require a row of 6 by 6 timber posts ten feet apart directly under the ridge of the roof, and transverse 12 by 12 timbers to support the second floor on top of them. The transverse timbers tie into the stone walls either in pockets in the walls or on corbels extending from the walls.
The source of the stones is an interesting question. Franklin County farmers had no difficulty finding stones in the early 1800s; their fields were lined with piles of stone removing during plowing, serving as fences. These “fences” are prevalent throughout the Gettysburg battlefield. In addition to fieldstone, there were limestone and sandstone quarries in the area in those days. From the variety of color in the McPherson and Rose barns I suspect that both were sandstone.
The large smoothly dressed blocks at the corners probably came from a quarry; most of the rest may well have been fieldstone. The ideal stone for this use would have two roughly parallel faces about twelve inches apart, be about four inches thick, and from six to twelve inches long. A skillful stonecutter could easily produce such a block with a mallet and chisel. Examination of the stonework in both barns shows a wide variety of size and shape.
Based on current data for productivity of stonemasons and the typical size of these barns, it appears that four masons could produce the necessary work in about two months. Perhaps the Oyler brothers could do four or five barns a year. Consequently they probably built between fifty and one hundred barns in the first two decades of the nineteenth century. We are told they built barns in Pennsylvania and Maryland. Since Gettysburg is closer to Andrew Oyler’s home base near Chambersburg than Maryland, it is reasonable to consider the McPherson and Rose barns as candidates to be their products.
Whoever they are, the masons who actually built the McPherson barn should feel good about the fact that their craftsmanship has survived two centuries and is still the basis for a functioning barn today. That is an impressive legacy. In this area we are fortunate that Woodville Plantation, the Walker-Ewing Log House, and the Oliver Miller Homestead have survived. How much of what we build today will still be in use in 2219?