Duo discusses difficulties of preserving region's tobacco barns

They were a fixture across Southern Maryland for hundreds of years and now there is a project underway to try and help save what few remain from a bygone era.

Presenters Chris Bryan and Dennis Pogue gave a talk titled “Tobacco Barns of Southern Maryland” during a lecture May 30 in Leonardtown.

The Southern Maryland Tobacco Barn Survey, which is being done in conjunction with the University of Maryland’s School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation, should wrap up its two-year study this fall.

“It’s been an exciting project; very, very interesting,” Pogue said. “We’re finding some, not huge discoveries, but some variations of what some folks had talked about before. But now that we have a larger sample of barns, I think we’ll be able to show some chronological changes that are very interesting.”

The project was undertaken about two years ago to inventory and document the character, and assess the condition and integrity, of tobacco barns constructed before about 1870 in the geographic area defined by the Tobacco Barns of Southern Maryland National Register.

According to provided data, there are a total of 165 tobacco barns in the survey zone, which includes St. Mary’s, Calvert, Charles, Prince George’s and Anne Arundel counties. Of those, 90 (or 55%) are considered lost forever.

In St. Mary’s County, there are 30 barns listed in the Maryland Historic Trust, but 16 have been demolished. Two are listed in excellent condition and nine are in good condition.

There are four tobacco barns that have been preserved and are accessible to the public: Plumer-Cranford in Calvert County, Smallwood in Charles County, the Mackall Barn (which Pogue referred to as the Brome-Howard barn) in St. Mary’s City and National Colonial Run in Piscatawy Park.

The Mackall Barn in Historic St. Mary’s City is the oldest tobacco barn in the state and dates to 1785, while the De La Brooke Barn in northern St. Mary’s is the second-oldest after having been built in 1797. Both were dated using tree ring dating from the wood that was used.

“They used green lumber because no one wants to work with cured, hard oak with hand tools because life is too short,” Pogue said. The De La Brooke Barn “is better preserved because it has more of the elements of the original hanging system and technology than any other barn in Maryland.”

Besides tree ring dating — also known as dendrochronological testing — Pogue and Bryan will date barns due to various factors, including the siding, the finish, the joints and the type of nails used, or even by the saw marks in the wood.

“We kind of know what we think we know about these things,” Bryan said. “But the more of this that you do, the more accurate you can verify your assumptions.”

“It’s difficult, frankly, to date these barns because the technology continued throughout the century,” Pogue said. “It’s really hard to know the difference between an 1850 barn and an 1870 barn. Most don’t have documentation so it’s a little bit fuzzy.”

There were different variations of tobacco barns, but all had to be strongly framed to carry loads of hanging tobacco, braced for lateral stability. And doors were important in order to regulate ventilation. Later on, vertical slats on the sides were used to ventilate the tobacco.

Many early barns had sills — or wooden rails along the floor — that connected posts and enhanced stability, but at times also hindered mobility for tractors.

“We already knew there was evolution in barn design and in looking at so many of these some barns, some would have open transverse aisles,” Bryan said, “which some people would cut out for more access.”

Bryan added that these sill changes have helped form a timeframe for when barns were constructed.

Other barns were constructed in the “earthfast” method, which was to anchor posts and other timber into the ground.

“You don’t see too many earthfast barns around and part of that is that they don’t last very well because of sitting up on the sill, the posts are down into the ground,” Bryan said. “In the 17th century when people first came here that’s how they constructed things in order to do it kind of quickly to get tobacco in barns as quickly as possible. The houses were the first to have that sill-based design because it takes a little more effort to do that.”