Culture groups migrating from New England, the Middle Atlantic states and the South settled in different regions of Ohio, leaving behind distinctive farms and barns that can still be seen across the state today. These barns represent an architectural legacy throughout rural Ohio and offer important clues about the heritage of each region.
The geographic distribution of barn types reflects the migration routes settlers followed into the state, as well as geographical influences and cultural traditions. By studying these buildings, one can identify areas settled by people of Pennsylvania German descent, migrants from the upland South or settlers who arrived from New England. The barns and farmsteads that remain along Ohio’s back roads stand as enduring artifacts of timber-frame construction built from the state’s once vast primeval forests.
Tom O’Grady once sailed the Great Lakes as a deck worker aboard the ore carrier SS Middletown, a sister ship to the ill-fated SS Edmund Fitzgerald. He later served two years in the armed forces, including a tour in South Korea, and worked as a surveyor for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
In 1984, O’Grady launched the first comprehensive curbside recycling program in the state of Ohio in Athens County. For more than 40 years he has advocated for waste reduction and a sustainable economy and has also been a strong voice for preserving the historic Athens Lunatic Asylum.
O’Grady has taught Observational Astronomy evening courses at Ohio University for four decades. Over the past 25 years he has also studied Ohio history extensively, researching the state’s natural and cultural geography, the mound builders, barn builders and settlement patterns, as well as Ohio canals, iron furnaces and notable figures from the state’s past. He is a founding board member of Friends of Ohio Barns and serves on the board of Ohio’s Hill Country Heritage Area. O’Grady has also worked with the Athens County Historical Society, now the Southeast Ohio History Center, for more than 25 years.
