Ross Historical Society Presents “The Barn Builders”

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(Chillicothe) – The public is invited to a Fall Lecture series event hosted by the Ross County Historical Society. Tom O’Grady, Director of Outreach at the Southeastern Ohio History Center and Adjunct Professor at Ohio University, will present The Barn Builders: An Architectural Legacy in Ohio’s Rural Landscape. The event will take place Thursday, November 30th at 6:30pm on the grounds of the Ross County Heritage Center located at 45 West Fifth Street in Chillicothe.

Culture groups migrating from New England, Middle Atlantic states and from the South settled in various regions of Ohio, and their distinct farms and barns can be observed when travelling throughout the state. The barn builders have left an architectural legacy throughout rural Ohio that can help one understand much about the heritage of the region. The geographic distribution of the various barn types is due to routes followed into the state, geographical influences, early subdivisions of the Ohio land, or cultural affinities with other early settlers. In any case, one can identify regions settled by people of Pennsylvania German descent, those settled by migrants from the upland south, or those migrating to Ohio from New England by the type of barns and other buildings on farmsteads remaining on Ohio byways.

These artifacts of timber frame construction house the remnants of Ohio’s primeval forests. Tom O’Grady sailed as a deck worker on an ore carrier on the Great Lakes aboard a sister-ship of the fated Edmund Fitzgerald, surveyed for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, launched the first comprehensive curbside recycling program in the state of Ohio and has been promoting waste reduction and sustainable economy for thirty years. Tom has also been an instructor of Observational Astronomy in the evenings at Ohio University for thirty years. He has spent a good deal of the past twenty-five years as a student of Ohio history researching its geography and settlement, the moundbuilders, Ohio canals, and several of its interesting characters and their stories.

This lecture opens the 2023 Falhttp://www.tomlinsonins.coml Lecture Series at the Ross County Heritage Center and is free and open to the public. For more information, please call the Ross County