| Additional Information: | 2024 - This four-acre parcel includes a stone stable, small shed, and a residence that is included separately as AHI 85915. Historic aerial images and maps indicate that the farm once included the residence, stable, a large barn, and an additional seven outbuildings. The large barn was demolished in the 2000s, and the remaining outbuildings were gone by 2017. Several of these non-extant buildings formed a courtyard with the stable building. Historic photos from the 1950s and 1970s indicate that the stable has not been significantly altered since that time. The 1861 stone horse stable is a one-and one-half story L-shaped building with a gabled roof covered with asphalt shingles. The walls are constructed of dry stacked stone with stone quoins at the corners. The courtyard side of the building, facing the south and east, has five wide, vertical board stable doors, spaced equally along the first story with small louvered wood window openings spaced between them. Above each door is a narrow window opening in the half story loft above them. Most of the fenestration openings still have wood double doors and window frames in place. The east gable end is only stone, while the south gable end has a single window opening and a loft ventilation louver. The rear west and north elevations have single wood doors and small alternating four-over-four, double-hung wood windows with the same loft level windows above. The foundation is also stone.
Andrew Barlass was born in Levin, Couty Fife, in Scotland in 1822. He immigrated to America, first Illinois, and then Rock County, Wisconsin, in 1844. He arrived with his mother, sister, and two brothers and was able to purchase his own 80-acre farm after two years working on other farms around the Town of Harmony. He married Margaret Clink in 1846 and the couple had four children. Margaret died in 1861 and he remarried Margaret Beveridge the same year and the couple had five children. The Barlass farm specialized in raising Clydesdale draft horses and large Durham cattle. Both breeds are native to Scotland and recently introduced to the United States at this time. Stock farms were rare in Wisconsin during the mid-nineteenth century but were apparently the specialization of Barlass and several of his Scottish immigrant farming neighbors. By the 1870s, the Barlass farm was successful and had grown to 200-acres, including woodlots, and was recognized as one of the largest stock farms in the county. Typical of several of the other Scottish immigrant farms in the area, Andrew Barlass was active in the local Presbyterian Church and county politics, serving as a member of the State General Assembly for two terms in 1874 and 1876. Andrew Barlass died in 1895 after being kicked in the head by one of his horses. The Barlass family continued to breed and raise cattle and horses, focusing increasingly on dairy cows by the turn of the twentieth century as Wisconsin, and Rock County, became one of the national centers of dairy production. The Barlass’ switched to Shorthorn cattle in the 1890s and again to the Jersey breed in the 1920s. The Barlass family presently raises cows and is still active on several farm plots on the east side of the Rock River in Rock County in the twenty-first century.
Dry stacked stone is a vernacular building method that uses the form of the stones to interlock them with each other rather than relying on a binding agent such as mortar. This method is historically common around the world, but is notably used Britain and Ireland during the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. These methods were commonly used in areas of the Eastern United States and central Bluegrass region of Kentucky. Dry stone construction is extremely rare in Wisconsin as the state was primarily settled during the mid-to-late nineteenth century. The limestone for the stable was quarried from Carver’s Rock, located a couple of miles to south.
The Barlass Horse Stable is one of few remaining mid-nineteenth century agricultural buildings, associated with early Scottish settlement in Rock County. Scottish immigrants in Rock County were known for raising livestock, particularly horses, since their arrival during the mid-nineteenth century, before the majority of the state converted to dairying after the wheat crash of the 1870s. The Barlass horse livestock operation was one of the largest and most successful in Rock County during this period. Additionally, the Barlass Horse Stable is a notable example of a horse stable in Rock County and Wisconsin. Furthermore, the dry stacked stone method of construction is rare construction method used in Wisconsin as the majority of agricultural buildings are of frame construction. This building type is associated with the local history of Scottish immigration, who used stone construction, a familiar construction method traditionally used in and brought from Scotland. While the stable was converted primarily to the raising of cattle livestock in the twentieth century, this reflects the overall historic trend of dairying in Rock County and Wisconsin as a whole and the Barlass Horse Stable retains a high degree of significance and integrity. While the property is associated with the Andrew Barlass Farmstead (AHI 85915), the only building historically associated with the farmstead other than the stable that remains is the residence.
|
|---|
