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Northern Indiana county loses another round barn

By ANN ALLEN
Indiana Correspondent

AKRON, Ind. — Another of the barns that made Fulton County the “Round Barn Capital of the World” is moving out. This one, the first built in the Akron area, is going to Martha’s Vineyard, where it will be reassembled and restored, possibly as a museum or farmers’ market.

Richard Anderson of West Tisbury, Mass., acquired the barn from Tom Bauters after reading about the 98-year-old structure on the Internet. Together with his lifelong friend Jonathan Mayhew, he is dismantling the structure, labeling the pieces and loading them into a semi trailer for the move.

It was a move Bauters didn’t want to see, but after receiving an estimate of $60,000 to restore the barn, he knew he couldn’t afford to make necessary repairs.

“A contractor told me that the barn would last less than 10 years unless it underwent major renovation,” he said.

“I know everything has a life, but this one was coming to an end. It was now or never.

“I didn’t want to see it go out of the county. I worked with Fulton County historian Shirley Willard for three or four years trying to find a home for the barn, following up every lead and even asking for state and federal assistance.”

In the end he decided it was better to see it moved than to have it collapse. He had several replies to his Internet notice, but Anderson, a veteran builder who has restored more than 20 barns (none of them round), was the eventual recipient.

Undaunted by the amount of work needed to make the move, he and Mayhew, a retired commercial fisherman, drove to Indiana, purchased a semi trailer and set to work with the assistance of a hired crew.

They ran into some unexpected rot at the back of the building but found the rest, in Mayhew’s words, “Unbelievably sound.” They attribute part of that to the protection it received from an addition built at the back as well as the proximity of a woodlot that afforded a windbreak.

The 60-foot diameter structure is the fourth of the county’s original 17 round barns to be relocated. Two remain in the county – one welcomes guests at the Fulton County Historical Society and the other serves as the pro shop at a Rochester golf course. The first to leave the state went to Baroda, Mich., where it was rebuilt as a winery/micro brewery.

The barn being moved was erected in 1910 by Kindig Builders, for Elmer and Lola Kindig Wideman. Their children recalled sitting on stumps to watch the barn being built with lumber cut by a sawmill moved to the site. It originally had a silo in the center, which helped strengthen the barn; however, the silo was removed in the 1930s for reasons unknown. Another was erected nearby.

The cupola was twice damaged in windstorms and replaced. Otherwise, the barn, which passed from the Wideman family to Paul Cox’s family and then to Bauters, remains virtually unchanged except that the carbide lighting system in both the house and barn were replaced by electricity. The house was removed a few years ago.

The barn’s removal reduces Fulton County’s round barn count to seven.

11/19/2008