(upbeat music) - [Advertiser] Illinois Stories is brought to you by, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you, thank you.

(upbeat music continues) - Hello, welcome to Illinois Stories.

I'm Mark MacDonald at the Adams County fairgrounds at the Lewis Round Barn, which just happens to be 100 years old this year.

It has a remarkable history including the mammoth job of moving this barn here.

Let's take a look inside.

(upbeat music) George Lewis as we stand in this remarkable round barn, which is a hundred years old this year.

It gives you a chance to think back on your family, the Lewis family, and your grandpa who built this barn.

- That's Charles Edward Lewis.

- Edward Lewis.

He had a farm not too far from here.

- About 20 miles between Camp Point and Clayton in Adams County.

- Yeah, yeah, and the round barn even back in 1914, it was a curiosity, wasn't it?

- Very much a curiosity.

It was really one of, of a time in the whole United States.

It was in a sense copied after the round barns at the University of Illinois in Champaign, there are much smaller dairy farms, but grandfather hired Lambert Hubert to be the carpenter.

And he turned out to be an architect who developed the plans for the self-supporting roof over the entire barn, and it's free standing silo on the center.

He said he lost many many nights of sleep by trying to dream up how to do that, and he did it very successful.

- Wow, and in fact, it took note around the country, didn't it?

Because this picture shows this was from a better farming magazine.

- Oh, this is from the Chicago Daily News, at the time.

- The Chicago Daily News.

- Way back in 1944.

And that article said that the round barn here was the largest round barn in Illinois.

And today it's one of, one of the largest one of the few largest in the whole United States.

- Yeah, as we go through this program, we're going to also talk about the task of moving the barn from the family farm to where it is, here on the Adams County Fairgrounds.

But that's not anything that you need to address right now.

I want to show grandpa here.

Here's the man, now your grandpa here.

- That was grandfather in his younger years.

- Right here.

- And he's the one that, that envisioned needing a big barn in order to feed about 200 head of cattle that he would buy each year from the West, Kansas and Nebraska.

And he would bring them in on the train, and he wanted a barn that he could feed both silage and hay at the same time.

- He was a very ambitious young man, wasn't he?

- He had to be.

- Yeah, and he had lots of...

Your family was big, he had lots of brothers and sisters - There were 12 in his family.

He was the youngest of 12.

(Mark chuckles) And then his, my grandmother who married him, was also one of 12, and so there were 24 altogether in that family.

- Yeah, and here's a good picture of him and his wife in later years because that they, they moved to, didn't they?

- When he retired from, from the actually farming the ground where the round barn was, then he moved to Camp Point.

And this was his, his house in Camp Point.

And the buggy that he and his wife were riding in.

Grandfather had never owned a car.

I learned in just a few months ago that he drove from Camp Point to the Round Barn Farm in the buggy or sleigh in the winter time and on horseback.

And he would go every day to the Round Barn Farm.

- And this is evidence that this was eventually placed on the National Registry of Historic Places, right?

- Yes, in 1984 it then was successfully placed on the national register.

But when it was moved, they then be classified it on the national register.

And after it was moved, we then applied again to have it replaced on the national register, so that it would still remain a national historic site.

- Yeah, and, and you and your brothers and sisters all had to come to an agreement at some point.

That you were... - Yes, there was.

- That you were going to give this this wonderful landmark to the Adams County fairgrounds.

- My father was given, he actually bought it out of the estate, the Round Barn Farm.

And then he and my mother gave it after when they were deceased, they gave it to the 18 of us, nine children and our spouses.

So, all 18 had an ownership in the in the Round Barn Farm and the barn.

And then we decided since our farm operation was no longer raising cattle or hogs that we wanted it to be preserved for future generations.

And we then decided to give it to the the Olde Tyme, in the Adams County, Olde Tyme Association.

We needed to have a vote of the family as to whether to do this.

So we had a vote when we all got together.

There were 18 of us and the vote was 17 to one to give it.

(Mark laughing) My, my brother... - There is always the one.

- My brother-in-law was an air force, Colonel and doctor, he voted against it until he got his one 18 chair of the state grant that paid for moving the barn.

He was joking, of course, but we all were very happy that the Olde Tyme Association, they accepted the barn.

And now you can see that it's being well-preserved.

- Yeah.

- The activities are just fantastic.

- Yeah.

- And they are preserving the history of agriculture in Adams County.

- Yeah, well, thank you for telling us the story.

It is terrific, thank you.

- Willie, you and a very ambitious crew decided back in 1999, now that this was a gift to the Olde Tyme Association, you had to decide how to get it here.

It wasn't that easy, was it?

- No, it wasn't.

- George said it was the biggest round barn in Illinois, and I believe that.

And so first you have to, okay, now we have to figure out how to take it apart and move it.

And I don't know how you all decided to do that.

- Many engineers looked at it, many of different contractors looked at it.

- Yeah.

- And many of them walked away.

(both laughing) But we found finally two or three engineers that work with us.

And we found a group of how much people that would help and go ahead and start on.

It took about three to four months to get this all lined up.

- No kidding, is that all?

- Well, that's about the winter, the winter of '98 and '99, when we was working on this.

- Yeah, yeah, you know, you can't show all the entire process but you can show so sort of how, here you can see that you've taken a lot of the siding ff already and you had to start removing these pieces in like pie shapes, did you?

- That's correct.

The roof come off in pie shape and of course before that we went ahead and had a strip of shingles and had to take the (indistinct) hat was of there wasn't too good a condition.

And from there on, we got this crane and he kept taking them off in pie shapes and went all the way around.

- Wow.

- And course, as you can imagine, as old as this was some of those didn't want to come off all in one piece.

- Oh, yeah but you got to save as much wood as you can, right?

- That's correct.

- Because you want to put the original wood back on, you don't want to have to put new - That's correct.

- Wow.

- Most of this was all of, one of the species of oak, for the, as far as the roof and then the trusses and that is concerned.

- Yeah, and then when you got, I find this very interesting when you got the dome off, of course you, you you've, you found, you know, you isolated the silo which we're looking at now, and that silo is 40 feet high, right?

- That's correct, that silo was 40 foot, and that's what helps support the middle roof of this barn.

And of course, after we got all the pie shape of the trusses off, then we had to go ahead and deal with this.

This took two cranes to go ahead after we supported it.

So it wouldn't collapse to go ahead and lay it down.

And we laid this down on a four actual downhill, pulled by a tractor.

And this is how it got moved as 20 some miles.

And of course there was a lot of things in between.

There was small culverts and then muddy fields.

- Oh my goodness.

- Things like this that we encountered, that we had to move across, but we made it.

This silo here, I might also mention, it's 40 foot.

- Yeah.

And there isn't any nuts in any of this (mumbles).

This lumber was come from the South.

And like I say, it's all one length, 40 feet.

- Each one of these planks is 40 feet long.

Can you imagine the growth of trees that these monumental growth of trees that must've come from?

- Just mind boggling.

- Yeah, 40 feet in one piece, wow.

Well, that's one reason why you're able to move it successfully, I guess, right?

- Yes, 'cause there isn't any nuts in any of the boards.

So, that helped a lot.

- And then here's now you're, now you're putting it back together.

And of course the silo would have to go first 'cause that's the center pin, so to speak.

- That's correct.

- So you poured some concrete and in it goes.

- Right.

- When it was supported before it probably wasn't supported by concrete.

- It was on blocks.

- On blocks?

- Yes.

- Okay.

And I hear you're, here the building starts to go up around you it.

- Correct.

- Wow.

- I will just keep it going and.... - Starting the roof and here's your pie shaped piece again going back in just the way you took it out.

- I had to put a new ring on the top there to go ahead and lay all these pie shaped pieces on.

- Oh my goodness.

- And this is what supports it.

- And how many of you were working on this project, Willie?

- Well, there was about eight people that was really up on the roof all times, and there was probably about that many on the ground.

Trying to make sure the right pieces went the right places again.

- You mentioned the cupula and here it is so you're dropping it into place.

That's still up there not today, right?

- Yes, that's, that's a new one that we went ahead and had built.

'Cause the other one was wasn't quite fit to put back up.

And that, that took approximately a day and a half to set.

That was a very interesting to get that up there that high and go ahead and secure it.

- Okay, then here you've got the shingles.

- Yes.

- So you've re-shingled at the roof.

- Put, put all new sheeting on over top of the old oak.

And in between time we had to add quite a bit of oak here and there that needed some support and it worked out really good.

It just fell in place, but it took time.

- Yeah, yeah, when you, when you walk into this barn now do you have these flashbacks all the time?

(both laughing) - I'll look at a certain section and say, oh, I know what we had did this, this way, or I know why we change this and did it this way.

I can remember most of them.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And when you come in here on a day and there there's it's full of school kids running around in here it makes you feel good though.

- Oh, yes, yes, I can't imagine, you know, how this was back when it was built.

- Yeah.

- And of course I might've had one when it was built when this silo was in here, the way it is when they used to fill it full of corn silage, they had a bunk all the way around the middle edge of it.

You had a far cut out of the silo and feed the cattle right around it.

So, you can imagine all this here how much traffic it would get from cattle and how much cleaning out that they had to do.

- Yeah.

- Every day or every week or two.

- Yeah, yeah, well, that's part of a successful farm though, right?

- Yes.

- Food in, food out and keep it going.

- Yeah, that's correct.

Yes, it's and it was a lot of manpower here that had, and then the loss above us here, that was all loose hay they put.

- Yeah, yeah, and we're, you know, we're now it's demonstration area and we're going to take a tour of it.

But, but when, when it was being used as a barn, of course that was all that was hay, that was hay storage, wasn't it?

- That was all (indistinct).

It wasn't no bales.

It was just pure, loose hay.

- Yeah, yeah.

- They put up there all the time with the teams.

And of course, some of the pictures that you'll see around here, it'll show the cattle around the barn and it'll show different guys, feeding them here and there.

And that, that brings back old memories.

But it's been a long time ago.

- Willie, thank you.

- Okay, thank you.

- Well, Willie now the round barn is used as an educational place... - That's correct.

- Rather than a workplace for, of animals and farmers.

And what you have down here is some very interesting old implements, that when the kids and other interested people come through here, they get a look at the way life was on the farm from Oh early 19 hundreds through the middle 19 hundreds, I guess.

I really fascinated by this tool right here because your very father used to use this one to get ice off the Mississippi river.

- That's correct.

They used to go down in winter time and he used to use this to hook either a mule or a horse to it and it cut blocks ice out.

So they could have ice as long as they could have it, maybe in their ice house, up to the August of the following year.

- No kidding.

They could hold it that long?

- If they got enough of it in there.

- Yeah and they just, how would they insulate it?

How would they keep it?

- Sometimes they put straw on top of it.

Sometimes it put solace on top of it.

And that went ahead and gave us some insulation.

They always try to cut the blocks out of there about a foot to foot and a half wide, not no deeper than a foot deep.

And then whatever, jagged it out and then finished using a hand sole one here to go ahead and cut it out to maybe two foot square or something like this.

'Cause that was a pretty good chunk to go ahead and have two or three people put up on a farm wagon and hall all the way home - You say that your dad, sometimes that the ice on the Mississippi might've been as much as two feet thick.

- That's correct, that's what I was always told.

(Mark chuckles) That's what they said.

And there'd be a crew go down there.

They might go down there maybe once or twice a week.

And they spent a month down there getting the ice for several different homesteads there.

And that was, it was very interesting.

- Walk with me this way because we got some other things to see here.

We can't see everything 'cause this is a living museum here.

But when we were standing in front of the silo earlier, this barn, we were mentioned in the fact that the silage sometimes would be, would be blown up through pipes into the top and that would drop down.

- Correct.

- And gravity would feed it down so the animals could get to it.

And this is a good example of how that was done.

- Yes, this is one here.

They went ahead and had hand-fed their cattle and stocks to it and it would chop it and blow it and go up to the top of the silo and fall down.

And that's how they filled silo.

- You kind of got to envision, if you can, that that pipe there would, would extend all the way up to the top of the silo.

- That's correct.

- It would blow up through that pipe and then fall down into the gravity feed down.

Neat.

- Yes.

That was really, really nice in the early and middle 1900's there, when they used that.

Of course the new ones now are a lot different.

- Yeah, and then of course you were everybody who had animals were trying to keep enough hay for them, right?

- Yes.

- And this level right above us was where the hay was stored in this round barn.

But this, these variety of instruments here are, were all for raising hay, cutting hay, mowing hay, turning hay.

And the one in the back there, the green one, that was, that was when your hay, when you needed to cut your hay you'd hook your team up to that.

And it would, it mow it, I guess.

- Yes, that was, that was what you called a mower.

And then the one right in front of it here was a tedder, to go ahead and get some air after a couple of days.

- That's this one right here.

What does that just turn it?

- It just goes ahead and fluffs it up, raises it up off of the ground.

Especially in high humidity days it would go ahead and give it some air and would dry a lot quicker.

And that's where they could go ahead and load it and put it in a barn quicker before it would rain again.

- So if you could get it turned then it would dry out and then eventually what you'd want to do is put it in, hay rows.

- Yes.

- I guess that's what the rake was for.

- Yes.

- And again, this would be pulled by a mule or a horse.

- Correct, correct.

Yes, this here was about the first one that I can ever remember hearing about, and this is all made of wood and I used it for there, (murmurs) and there are other grasses and that, and it had worked real well.

- Fascinating.

Well, Leon Obert, you may not have been fortunate enough to been in, on the moving of this barn.

I don't know if you were or not.

What a monumental task that must've been.

- I was definitely around.

I wasn't a member of the association at the time but definitely was around to see it go.

- You are familiar with the activities that was going on.

- Oh, absolutely.

- Obviously there was a lot of buzz about moving this ban.

- There was, and you know, it got comical.

I think the wind storms came through a couple of times and knocked part of it down.

They had to go back and do some restructuring.

So yeah, it took a while, but yeah, it was quite neat to see it go up.

And of course today, what it is is awesome.

- When, when you get into the barn now it's used as an educational facility now for the Olde Tyme Association uses it for field trips and keeps it open to the public.

And what it's become is sort of a monument to 1930s life on the farm.

- That is correct.

It's a museum and it's opened every second Sunday from may through October.

- Yeah.

- Definitely we bring school children through here.

It's open for any, any organization they'd like to come in and view it by appointment.

So it's, it's really awesome.

And they've done a great job on it.

And a couple of people have been very instrumental in getting it all organized and get into the point it is today.

- Yeah, one of the first exhibits you see is a lot of the farms in the 1930s still might not have had phone service some may have, but this is this is what they would have been dealing with back then.

You know, they didn't have the smartphone on their hip or right in their side pocket.

- Yeah, you know, it's comical today everyone has a phone on their pocket rather they're seven years old or 80 years old.

But yeah, the, you had party lines even back in the day or you'd have several people sharing the same line.

And if you're quiet enough you usually could get on there and listen to them.

I mean, as young as I am we had a party line when I was a kid and we used to enjoy listening to the old women on the other line.

And of course, they'd hear us make us snicker or something and then kind of want to want us to get off but.

- They kinda recognized your voice too.

- That's right.

- And then they'll talk to your mother about this.

(Mark laughs) - The phones have definitely changed.

Of course, there's still some land lines out there but almost everybody's gone to a cordless phone.

- And then you would have used one of these to ring up the switchboard operator.

- That is correct.

- Who would have had these earphones on and been sitting here ready to switch your call to where it needed to do go.

- And she probably knew the gossip better than the actual papers, as far as what was going on in the community.

- Oh my goodness.

- By just listening in on everyone whether she was supposed to be doing that or not, you know it was happening.

But yeah, it's, it's quite, you get a weird look at a lot of the school kids when they come through here and you explain this phone system, how it was and where it is today.

It's just very hard for them to realize you had to operate like this.

- Upstairs you have recreated the 1930s rural Illinois.

- That's correct, it's a 1930s farmhouse.

- Yeah, okay, after you, Sir.

(footsteps tapping) I love walking up these old steps, Leon, you know, when you think about the a hundred years old there's been a lot of foot a lot of feet of tried those steps.

- That's correct.

- We mentioned 1930s, rural Illinois.

There's the first thing you see is like the back yard.

- Yes, this is just basically the way it would have been.

The loft is pretty much created as a 1930s farmstead home.

This is basically what you consider wash day.

Of course you would have to heat the water and put it in tubs and use the scrub boards.

It's none of the modern day conveniences as we have in today.

And usually your clothes dryer consisted of a couple of aligned strung between two large trees.

All the clothes would definitely have to be pinned on them.

- Is it, there's a chance that since, since none of this of course was electrically operated, you would it was all manual.

So, you on a nice day you might just haul all this stuff out in the backyard.

- Sure.

- Do your work outside, hang it up outside.

And that way you wouldn't have to.

- You have to heat the water on a portable heat stove.

And definitely just do it by hand, and just, there was no way around it.

Usually they would start out with the cleanest of the dirtiest clothes and start out with that and end up with probably the overalls and stuff that we're actually the dirtiest.

- And they never really get clean.

Cause they'd have the old board - You have to change the water.

(Mark laughs) And you know... - I love the portrait after you got finished.

Of course you might be lucky enough to go in and get a sandwich or something.

You'd go through the porch.

You got the cats (indistinct).

- Yeah, that's pretty much how you'd see the porch at a farmhouse.

You know you'd have cats probably strung all over the place.

They had multiple cats of course on the farms to help keep mice down.

- Controlled your mice, yeah.

- And you know plenty of milk usually because there were dairy farmers out there and they usually had the milk.

- And this is what the kitchen would have looked like.

- You are walked in, out off the porch usually right into the kitchen.

So the kitchen, of course as you see it, today is much different.

Back then the, the cookstove was called a cookstove, what call a stove.

Now runs on electric or gas, usually, but that one.

- That would've been heated by wood.

- Wood or coal, yes.

- I love the ice box here on our left.

- The icebox, yes, so Willie talked earlier about cutting ice down on the river.

Well, that's exactly what they were cutting it for.

They put a big chunk of ice in this bottom door and that would help generate the coolness to keep the rest of the ice box cool to keep the vegetables and stuff.

- And of course we mentioned the old phones too.

This is, this would have been an early, an early model, and once you got used to having that.

You couldn't do without it.

- You're right, yeah, I don't think we ever would want to go back without one as well.

- No, I don't think so.

- You know, you don't see a lot of kitchen cabinetry or anything in this kitchen.

I mean, that's basically was your kitchen covered.

They called it where you kept all your baking goods and of course you had your pullout where you re roll your dough and stuff.

If you're getting ready to bake a pie or whatever the case may be.

But a country kitchens usually had fresh eggs from the farm and fresh milk from the cows.

And of course, a lot of them did their own butchering back then as well.

- Sure, sure.

- It was definitely, probably one of the best places in a farmhouse was the kitchen.

- Yeah, yeah.

- A lot of decisions were made around the table.

- Its still the most popular a room in the house, even though we don't have to work near as hard in the kitchen.

- Well, usually people carry in a lot of the food nowadays to the kitchen.

- Yeah, they sure do.

If you were fortunate enough to have a living room, this would have been, would have been the living room, the oval braided rug, of course, and a fireplace.

- Yeah.

- There was probably a fireplace in every room where they could afford to have one because that's that coal or wood would have been would have been the heat source.

- And, you know, the old radio was about the only source of entertainment.

There wasn't really much TV around.

Everybody gathered around the radio listened.

- Look at the size of that radio, look at the size of that thing.

And you always fell into bed tired because you had to make everything on the farm.

- Yup.

- You went to bed early, you got up early and you probably slept really well.

(mark laughs) - Yup, and you know, they usually had outdoor party so it wasn't uncommon to see a combo.

- We see that in the corner.

- That's correct.

- That's interesting because that's built right into the chair.

- Yep.

- So that's you just go ahead and somebody they probably took turns in the morning as to who emptied it.

- Whoever got up first had to go out and get rid of the mess from the night before.

(both laughing) - And I love this.

Okay, you know, every town, no matter how small probably had a beauty shop.

In this particular one is almost scary when you look at the appliances that women would put their heads in there.

- It definitely is scary.

It reminds me of the Walton show where momma walked in and got her hair fixed.

And I remember that being one of the episodes where she got wired up the machine, much like that.

And of course they didn't turn them off soon enough.

You know, you had a chance of actually frying the ends of your hair.

- Well, it says, please do not touch.

I, I'm not going anywhere near that.

I can tell you that.

- I can't imagine sitting in there with dump pair and then being hooked up to electric.

I mean, it's just, it's quite interesting.

- You have to trust, you'd have to trust your beautician, wouldn't you?

I'll tell you what they, there wasn't any television, there wasn't much radio, much on radio anyway.

So the women got together and they would probably, they probably knew more about each other's families... - You're right.

- Than anybody else.

- Mark they'd have names for most of these quilts.

This one I'm told is called the bow tie quilt.

Of course, they'd use a lot of scraps maybe old feed sacks and stuff too.

They'd cut a part to make clothes or quilts but always tease the ladies that are working on this quilt that they should call one the gossip quilt because I'm sure that's basically what they are by the time they're finished.

- Well, you know, it takes a long time to build a quilt and it takes a lot of hands.

- Yup.

- So there's gotta be a lot of chatting going on.

- These are some toys and stuff Mark that, you know, kids probably played with back in the 1930s.

A lot of the toys of course were are handmade toys.

And this one is a, basically a small farm set up, as you see in the back there, and there's a little goat wagon you know, actually a live goat would pull something like that.

It's for entertainment for kids.

- Yeah, that's interesting.

They call it, they actually called that a goat wagon because it's probably pulled by a goat.

- Yup, yup.

- But actually a kid would ride in and he'd keep his toys or whatever in the back.

- Sure, sure.

- It's fascinating.

And of course, winters were more severe back then as we know, and there were always ice skates and... - They always had snow ties fence posts when they walk back and forth to school, you know.

- Yeah, it is true.

- Uphill both ways.

- Yup.

- And you know, I think they had a lot of entertainment with the snow like we do yet today.

- Yeah, yeah.

You know, every kid likes to still go sledding or ice skating.

- Leon, thanks for this little tour.

- Oh, absolutely.

And hopefully your organization can come back or anyone else has an organization like to come out and check us out.

They've got a great group of people here.

They've done a lot of great work to get this all put together.

- Yeah.

- We appreciate you showing it to the public.

- Thank you.

- Yep, thank you.

- They hold a lot of special events here at the Lewis Round Barn, but if you just want to drop by and take a look and walk through, it's open the second Sunday of every month, may through October.

With another Illinois Story in Adams County.

I'm Mark McDonald's, thanks for watching.

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