Editor’s note: This is part 3 of a series highlighting the history of Ohio’s barns, alongside the people who love and preserve them. Read part 1 of the series, which highlights a team preserving historic barns, here. Read part 2 of the series, which highlights an artist depicting historic barns, here.
Dan Troth, co-founder of Friends of Ohio Barns, brings the microphone up to his face. His smile is broad and toothy, and it stretches across his face like he simply can’t help himself. His eyes are wide and shining as he turns to face the crowd.
“Can you tell I’m excited?”
It’s around 8:30 a.m. in the lobby of the Hampton Inn & Suites in Alliance, Ohio. Everyone packed into the small space is nursing a coffee from a Styrofoam cup and a donut off a paper plate. They loiter with their hands full and name tags attached to lanyards around their necks, waiting eagerly for the buses to arrive.
Half an hour later, at 9 a.m. sharp, two charter buses haul the large party of barn enthusiasts out of downtown Alliance and into the countryside.
Approximately 100 people have gathered on this rainy Friday in late April to celebrate Ohio barns at the 2025 Friends of Ohio Barns Conference. The three-day conference has been held annually for the past 24 years, each focusing on a different county in Ohio. This year, the three-day event highlighted Stark County.
A statewide nonprofit founded in the early 2000s, Friends of Ohio Barns is helping to cultivate awareness of barns as historical symbols of the state. The volunteer-run organization has been promoting appreciation of Ohio’s historic barns and is a member of the National Barn Alliance, aiming to connect barn owners and enthusiasts alike. The organization holds a series of events each year, including workshops, virtual lectures, and an annual conference.
This year’s conference focused on an area in northeastern Ohio with a rich agricultural history. Established in 1808, Stark County contributed greatly to Ohio’s agricultural development, and many of its historic barns still stand today. There are over 14,000 barns in the county, thousands of which were built before 1925.
There are six barns on today’s guided historic barn tour, led by “barn detectives” Troth and Rudy Christian, also founding members of Friends of Ohio Barns.
“Barns have these wonderful secrets,” Christian said. “We want to uncover them.”
The first stop is at Huston Barn, an L-shaped barn built in 1883. The crowd piles out of the buses, spills out onto the wet green lawn, and trudges up to the inclined entrance in work boots and sneakers.
The main barn is 38 by 60 feet, with a straw shed addition that is 36 by 38. It’s a lot of wood. The side panelling runs vertically, and is braced from the inside with plates and purlins that stretch 60 feet long without scarf joints.
Inside, everyone gathers around Christian, owner of Christian & Son, Inc., a timber structure consultation and restoration service. It’s the first time that he and Troth, owner of GreenTech Construction, are seeing the structure.
This is the case for all the barns on the tour today. The goal isn’t to summarize the history of the structures or even note their significance. What Christian and Troth do is speak the language of timber framing and put it in conversation with these barns.
“What’s wonderful about barns is that they’re a bit like people; every one is different,” Christian said. “The fun is figuring out what it is that makes each of them unique.”
The next half hour is spent picking these details apart.
Although the barn was built around 1883, the circular marks on the main posts are curved, meaning that they were cut with a sawmill, which wasn’t built until after the Civil War.
Up in the rafters, there are routed beams. This is something Christian hasn’t seen before. These are trees that have been cut down and flattened off on the ends where they sit so that they’re movable.
He then directs attention up to the bark that remains on some of the bars. These beams are made from beech trees, as is most of the barn. One stretches the width of the barn, uninterrupted, for 40 feet. This type of timber doesn’t exist anymore.
“When this barn was built, the forests were different from what they are today,” explained Christian. “Today, if you go into the woods and cut down a beech tree, guess what? Hollow.”
He notes the vertical purlin posts and the lack of a mortise, which signals that there was never a beam connecting the top of the posts together. The lack of a tie beam on the other side proves that the barn was built to take advantage of modern hay-moving technology. When hay was able to stack higher, barns grew taller with it.
Looking at barns this way is experiencing history firsthand. It’s interacting with and talking to it.
“This is my interpretation of why I think these barns are the way they are,” Christian said. “Some of the things I describe are what I’ve learned from reading; everything else is just what I call ‘Rudy-isms.’”
As the group piles back onto the buses and heads off to the next stop, there is a sense of giddy excitement that everyone seems to share.
“Gosh, I need to brush up on my barns,” someone confesses.
“That’s why we’re here,” someone else responds.
This collective passion for barns is somewhat hard to explain. Some people here today have careers that focus on building, repairing, or repurposing them. Others have barns of their own. But ultimately, everyone is here because they care about these structures and are eager to learn more about them.
A big part of Friends of Ohio Barn’s mission is to facilitate a level of understanding. Troth explains this to the group once everyone is situated in the last barn of the day.
“We want to convince others that barns are worth saving, and that they can be saved,” Troth said. “Old timbers are like elephant trunks, and we need to be saving these historical elephants.”
To learn more about Friends of Ohio Barns, visit https://www.friendsofohiobarns.org/
Selah Griffin wrote for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.