The Old Barn and the Sky

I was looking for a lone tree to set against this morning's dramatic sky, but came upon this barn while I was wandering around the local backroads.

I've photographed the barn before, and have told what I know of its story once or twice. But you haven't all been reading my commentaries for years, so today I'll tell another version.

John McCargar was an early Eaton County resident, and Roxand Township's first white settler, arriving from New York in 1837. A few years later he married Lucy Maxson, who lived a farm or two over from his. (Daniel Strange's 1923 pioneer history makes a joke of this, as by somebody's "county history" rules a man wasn't "officially settled" without a helpmate. This definition is nonsense, of course, and Dan Strange knew that.)

Anyway, the farm stayed in the McCargar family's hands for several decades, and somewhere along the way they built this barn next to the now gone family home, which was beyond the shed on the edge this photo.

When I first discovered the barn, probably 37 years ago, it was evident that the foundation wasn't holding and that the barn would collapse when that stone wall fell. The then-current owners fixed that with the buttresses shown here. But the barn's old, and seems to be in danger of a more general failure these days.