1203 Oneonta Barn

Here we are outside of Coopers Town New York and Town of Oneonta. We're about to go into a 26' by 36' barn and take a look inside. This size of barn was very popular around the time of the American Revolution. I don't think this one dates that far back, but it was a typical family barn at that time. They grew then to 30' by 40' and on to 40' by 60's. We'll take a look inside and see what kind it is. We've got some nice hand hewn beams in here. It is a very nice barn. Here's H.H.P's initials, whoever he may have been. It's a largely hand hewn barn with sawn rafters and braces. It appears to be in very good condition. On the far end it has an addition, so it's a four bent, three bay barn. It's very heavy timbered with one piece plates which are thirty six feet long and there are four of them in the barn. The rafters are heavy sawn. The barn probably dates back to about 1830 or 40. It's got its center post and it's very original other than the addition on one end which did not effect this original part of the barn.

The addition is a two bay addition on the far side of the sawn addition, probably from the 1890ds and did not alter this frame in the least.  It's got an original ladder which is just pegs going up and with that you could climb up into the hay mow. There seems to be a lot of eastern white pine in here. There are 10" by 11" posts with very nice hewing in the entire barn and straight braces going down. It's a canted queen post barn. You can see that the queen posts are not straight up but they're over at an angle and that was an innovation in the 1800ds when they invented the hay track. 

Sure enough, overhead there is a hay track with a carriage on it. They could bring a hay wagon right into this part of the barn where I'm standing and run the track overhead. There is a link for it right there where it can stop, drop the hooks, raise the hay up, slide it over onto the side bays and release it instead of pitching the hay up there. And that is why these queen posts are canted over making a beautiful feature. The queen posts are even hand hewn along with the purlin plates. It is a bank barn, meaning that it is on a hill side so there is some space underneath it. They probably milked down there and stored hay up here. The tie beams running across here are all beautiful hand hewn tie beams. They are very nice and look like about 10"by 10"s at least and are very tightly jointed, not sagging at all. It's a very well kept barn.