Barnyard Trail: Barns

Today the barns continue to store farm equipment.

NPS/Sucena

“The barns had no red paint on them when I came down here. What they called the horse barn stood just south of Robinson’s barn. That went down just before I came here... We used the barn part to shear the sheep in and keep hay in [the] winter. Had to cart a load or two in every week or so it was so small.”

- Charles H. Ross, 1913 

With livestock, farming tools, and machinery, the barns were an essential feature of life at the Floyd Estate. The Merrifield sheep barn and the Robinson Barn, for cows, were massive two-story barns that towered over the barnyard.  

The “New Barn” on the right was built from the salvaged wood of an earlier larger barn. In 1898 John Gelston Floyd Jr. had a windmill erected on the roof of that barn with a water tank in the loft to provide running water to the house.  

Throughout the generations, the barns were also a favorite space in which to play hide-and-seek. Recalling her childhood in the 1840s, Sarah Floyd Turner wrote: 

“Nick with his eyes blind-folded counted out one-hundred, while the others, scampered like rabbits through the manger. Some had the courage to cross long beams that bridged the lofts together, stealing like cats over a span of twenty feet, with a deathly depth below, others burrowed in the hay or hid in the horse stalls, while some hung onto rafters and beams among the swallows nests, awaiting the signal from Nick….Peals of laughter resounded from floor to rafters as each was made to hide and seek in turn, till the cows came home and the setting sun warned them to flee from the barn before the dreaded bull took possession with the cows.”