Photos by: Phil Grout
In a manner of speaking, Carroll County was born in a barn. The fact is, there are barns in Carroll County you will not find anywhere else in the world.
There still are a couple of barns urging passing motorists to “Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco,” and there are plenty of red bank barns — two-story barns built ino the slope of a hill — that you’ll find just about anywhere in rural America. There are also little white barns with red roofs and big red barns with white roofs.
But German builders of the late 18th century brought the brick-end style with them when they settled southern Pennsylvania and northern Maryland. The brick end, with patterns of openly spaced brick, gave extra ventilation for cooling the structure and supposedly eliminatied the need for lightning rods, which the farmers believed to be a “heathen” practice. There are several hundred of these brick-end barns in Carroll, Adams, York and Lancaster Counties.
The late Marlin Hoff, a noted New Windsor dairy farmer, knew the significance of his unusual log barn, built around 1785 from massive chestnut and poplar logs, some of which are 50 feet long. Hoff’s widow, Kathy, and a contingency of friends are honoring Marlin’s wishes and raising the funds to disassemble, move and reassemble the historic barn at the Carroll County Farm Museum. Few log barns still stand, and none of this height: 19 logs high to “the square” or junction of roof and walls.
But Matthew and Joanne Pinkas of near Silver Run own what is believed to be the only all-brick barn around. It was built in 1825 by Abraham Hull from bricks used as ship’s ballast on a return voyage from England. It also has six arches on the lower level which for years greeted Pinkas’ dairy cows for the for the morning and evening milking.
“Back in the day” just about everyone, if not “born in a barn,” had contact with one on a daily basis. Massive barn timbers held together with mortise and tenon joints speak of a time when most folks were farmers and all were held together with bonds as strong as their barns.
