For more than two centuries, the Hoff barn withstood thunderstorms, blizzards and even a fad in the late 1800s to demolish structures like it because they were considered old-fashioned.
Now, the barn on a New Windsor dairy farm has survived long enough to become one of the oldest log barns in Maryland and earn a spot at the Carroll County Farm Museum, an architectural historian said.
“It?s a large part of what the county was and who the people were who came here. It?s like looking back in time,” said Ken Short, a former historian with the county who is writing a report for the museum on the barn.
The Hoff barn is remarkable for its age, since it was constructed in 1794 to house hay and livestock, and for its craftsmanship because it was built with hand-hewn wood that fits snugly together, without a single nail, he said.
Barn owner Marlin Hoff was once offered $40,000 from a company that wanted to make furniture out of its logs.
“He put that proposal in a desk drawer and thought about it,” Marlin?s wife, Kathy Hoff, said. “But then he thought about how it was one of the last of its kind.”
So Marlin Hoff donated the barn to the county, but won?t see its relocation next month to the Carroll County Farm Museum. Marlin Hoff has since died of cancer, his widow said.
The barn?s logs, some 50 feet long, will have to be taken apart, numbered and reassembled like Lincoln Logs, said Bob Jones, chairman of the relocation committee. Trucks will transport the blue-gray foundation stones to the museum, where a mason will put them back into place.
The project will cost $300,000 in private donations, almost half of which has been raised, Jones said.
Carroll County commissioners finalized plans Wednesday for the barn?s relocation to the museum, where a groundbreaking is scheduled for Oct. 8.
