Cantalever Barns
The Cantilever Barn (top photo) was moved to the Museum in May 1977 from Seymour, Tenn. An old farm was being subdivided into lots for homes, and the barn was removed shortly before the bulldozers came to demolish it.
The barn is a two-pen style with overhangs on all four sides. On August 7, visitors can step inside the pens for a close look at construction techniques.
Museum Founder John Rice Irwin notes that, in the Southeast, cantilevered barns are found almost exclusively in a few counties of East Tennessee. Most were built during a 50-year period beginning in the 1870s.
Marian Moffet, a University of Tennessee researcher, found six such barns in Virginia and three in North Carolina. In contrast, 289 were found in Sevier and Blount counties, and another 27 in other East Tennessee counties.
The historical basis for such structures lies in southern Germany and Switzerland, Irwin says. Families of this stock settled in Pennsylvania; they later poured down the Shenandoah Valley into Southern Appalachia.
Click here to see more photos of our barns
(note the Stoffle barn, with the metal roof, can be viewed from the entrance drive but is not on the tour)
