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WIOTA, Wis. - The Wisconsin Historical Society announces the listing of the Daniel and Catherine Welty Barn in the Town of Wiota (Lafayette County) on the State Register of Historic Places. The Welty Barn is located northwest of the unincorporated community of Wiota and was built in 1850.

The Welty Barn is a fine and intact example of a stone threshing barn and is a building form unusual for Wisconsin: a Grundscheier or “ground barn.” The Welty family migrated from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in 1848 and brought with them this construction method used by German immigrants in southeastern Pennsylvania during the mid-nineteenth century. The Welty Barn is the only known example of a Grundscheier in Wisconsin.

The Welty Barn is also a representative of the agricultural era that spanned from the mid-1800s to the 1880s when grain production was dominant in Wisconsin. With the decline of grain farming and the increase in dairy production, most other threshing barns were converted to new uses, significantly altered or demolished due to age. Despite the changes throughout the eras, the Welty Barn remains largely unaltered from its original state.

The State Register is Wisconsin's official list of state properties determined to be significant to Wisconsin's heritage. The State Historic Preservation Office at the Wisconsin Historical Society administers both the State Register and the National Register in Wisconsin.

Additional information for the Daniel and Catherine Welty Barn is available at:

https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Property/HI86129

To learn more about the State and National Register programs in Wisconsin, visit: www.wisconsinhistory.org.

About the Wisconsin Historical Society
The Wisconsin Historical Society, founded in 1846, ranks as one of the largest, most active and most diversified state historical societies in the nation. As both a state agency and a private membership organization, its mission is to help people connect to the past by collecting, preserving and sharing stories. The Wisconsin Historical Society serves millions of people every year through a wide range of sites, programs and services. For more information, visit wisconsinhistory.org.