[Barn picture--use same one we used with Churches and Barns]
Barns are among the most distinctive cultural and ethnic products of the settlement process. Although much borrowing occurred and barn types exhibit a pattern of diffusion and local modification away from hearth areas, distinctive shapes and functions can be traced sometimes for hundreds of miles across the continent. The areas of the Delaware Valley and the Chesapeake Bay were particularly significant in the development of types of barns as well as houses which became distributed across the midwest and southeast. The Tennessee area is particularly interesting because it received architectural influences from both of these hearth areas. There was the direct lateral influence of designs represented in North Carolina and Virgina, but also the oblique influence from Pennsylvania of settlers moving down the Great Valley to the Clinch, Holston, and Tennessee River corridors. Southern middle Tennessee and north Alabama are particularly rich areas for study because of the survival of many old barns representing a wide diversity in a relatively small region. Some of the best examples of early nineteenth century barns west of Cades Cove can be found in this region. In fact, some of the Tennessee and Alabama coves continue to be more isolated than Cades Cove and preserve good to excellent examples of both barns and houses. Barn survivals in the area from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are excellent.