The term "barn raising" dates to the construction of barns in the 18th and 19th centuries in rural America (U.S. and Canada). In this era, barns were the first, largest, and most costly structure built by a family who settled in a new area. Barns were considered essential structures for storage of hay and keeping of horses and cattle, which in those days were an inseperable part of farming. The tradition of "barn raising" continues, more or less unchanged, in some Amish and Mennonite communities, particularly in Ohio and some rural parts of Canada.
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2 Social framework 3 Contrast with church construction 4 End of an era 5 Barn raising in fiction 6 Barn raising as a metaphor for online communities |
In this sense, a barn raising was and is a one or two day event during which a community comes together to assemble a barn for one of its members. A certain amount of preparation is done beforehand. Lumber and hardware are laid in, plans are made, ground is cleared, tradesmen are hired.
Materials are purchased or traded for by the family who will own the barn once it is complete.
Generally, participation is mandatory for community members. These participants are not paid. All able-bodied members of the community are expected to attend. Failure to attend a barn raising without the best of reasons leads to censure within the community. Some specialists brought in from other communities for direction or jointery may be paid, however.
A power structure is present. There is one person in charge of the whole thing, who is often paid. Older people who have participated in many barn raisings are crew chiefs. On the whole, the affair is well organized. At most barn raisings, the community has raised barns before and is able to approach the task with experience both in the individual tasks and the necessary organization. Young people participating meaningfully for the first time have watched many barn raisings and know what is expected of them.
Only certain specialists are permitted to work on the more critical jobs, such as the jointery and dowling of the beams. There is competition for these jobs, and they are sought after. There are gender roles. Women provide water and food. Men do the work. Children watch; boys fetch parts and tools.
Communities raised barns because many hands were required. In areas that were sparsely settled or on the edge of the frontier, it was not possible to hire carpenters or other tradesmen to build a barn. The harsher winters gave more urgency to the matter of barn construction than was present in the relatively milder climate in Europe.
Barn raisings occured in a social framework with a good deal of interdependence. Members of rural communities often shared family bonds going back generations. They traded with each other, buying and selling land, labor, seed, cattle, and the like. They worshiped together. They partied together, because cities were too far away to visit with any frequency on horseback. Despite traditions of independence, self-sufficiency, and refusal to incur a debt to another, barn raisings with the free labor in return for a nebulous future commitment were necessary.
Chuches were considered as important to communities of the 18th and 19th century as were barns. In like fashion, they were often constructed using unpaid community labor. There were important differences. Churches were not constructed with the same degree of urgency, and were most often built of native stone -- a more durable material than the wood of which barns were made, and more time consuming to lay. Barns, once completed, belonged to an individual family, while churches belonged to the community.
Barn raising as a method of providing construction labor had become rare by the close of the 19th century. By that time, most frontier communities already had barns and those that did not were constructing them using hired labor. Mennonite and Amish communities carried on the tradition, however, and continue to do so to this day.
Group construction by volunteers enjoyed something of a resurgence during the 1970s, wehn houses, sheds, and barn-shaped structures were constructed for all manner of purposes except, of course, the keeping of livestock for a profit.
For a great scene of BarnRaising see the 1985 movie IMDB:Witness or "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers". Also, read BookShelved:RobertHeinlein's BookShelved:TheMoonIsaHarshMistress. Both these accounts are heavily romanticized.
See MeatBall:BarnRaisingThe event
Social framework
Contrast with church construction
End of an era
Barn raising in fiction
Barn raising as a metaphor for online communities
