The McPherson Farm Part 3: The Barn

The final piece for the McPherson farm is the famous bank barn.

The research for this was much simpler than that for the farm house. Since it still stands today there are plenty of images available on the internet and I have found plans of it.

That said, there are differences between the modern day barn and that of 1863. The first is that the lean-to sections on the uphill face were 22 feet deep in 1863, whereas they are 12 feet today - I have modelled it about midway between the two points to provide a better optical impression. There is also evidence of an additional lean-to, or pent roof, extending out from the forebay that I have decided not to make, in part because there is not enough information on it's appearance, but more importantly I spent too damned long making those stable doors to cover them up! It is an interesting model with that mix of field stone and whitewashed wood, but like the Trostle barn I have had to scale it down. It should stand somewhere between 170mm and 190mm tall, but the visual balance would have been wrong so I scaled it back by around 20%.

However, I must admit that I struggled with this model. It is one of the biggest I have made in a long time and in its raw shell looked too big even when scaled back even though when I stood a 28mm figure beside it the scaling was correct. The thought of those two large stone areas was daunting - stone wall construction is quite an intense task and needs to be completed within two hour before the stuff sets and if you do it in stages, it shows. But far more daunting was that HUGE roof area. So I worked this model bit by bit, uncertain how it was going to look at the end. Not until it was grassed did the model look right.

A bank barn is, of course dug into a bank, in this case it was dug into the eastern slope of McPherson's ridge, just past the crest. For a standalone piece like this the bank has to be artificial.

So here it is.

The western face as Archer's, then later Brockenborough's, Confederates would gave seen it as they advanced up the Chambersburg Pike.

The northern face.

The eastern face

The southern face

Finally here is the whole McPherson farm buildings set that will appear on the Buildings for Sale page (LINK) in a day of so.

 

The McPherson Farm Part 2: The Wagon Shed/Corn Crib and Pig Pen

The next component in the McPherson farm set is the wagon shed/corn crib along with the pig pen. Corn was an important element of the farm,  accounting for nearly 40 percent of the planted area and half the income. This building was a relatively simple wooden structure and I have used two historic photos as references for its construction. The top image below was taken in 1863 and the lower in the 1880s.

Simple the building may be, but because it is open there was a need to do a bit of internal work, some of which just painted, but some is modelled.

On the eastern face of the wagon shed stood the pig pen. I have modelled this from a couple of images from the 1850s-1860s from other farms and surrounded the area with post and board fences described in the documentation I found.

Work on the barn is underway with about one third of the cladding done, but it is a bit of a monster so it may take another couple of weeks to complete.

I have also completed this piece of scatter terrain - a ruin of a small stone dwelling (probably better suited for Europe rather than North America). It has obviously been derelict for some time as a tree has grown out of the wall.

This piece, along with some other similar pieces, have been sitting around in the edge of the work table for some months while I add bits to them from time to time - a great way to use up any surplus epoxy putty.

The McPherson Farm Part 1: The Farmhouse

Completing the Trostle farm recently got me interested in making another farm set of an equally (possibly more) famous Gettysburg farm - the McPherson farm from the first day's battle. Arguably one building on this farm, the bank barn, is one of the most recognised structures on the battlefield.

The McPherson farm stood just short of a mile northeast of the Gettysburg town limits on a ridge (that didn't earn the name McPherson's Ridge until after the battle) and is famous because it was the first point of serious Union resistance in the battle, where Buford's cavalry was relieved by the infantry of Reynolds' First Corps. The Chambersburg Turnpike bisected the farm on its long axis and the unfinished railroad cut through the property a hundred yards or more north of the Pike.

In 1863 the farm was owned by Edward McPherson, but he was an absentee landlord, having been elected to Congress in 1858. At the time of the battle the farm was occupied by a tenant farmer John Slentz with his wife Eliza and their three children. With a total area of 95 acres most of the farm was planted in crops - wheat, corn, oats, and grass - while the remainder, about thirty acres, was in woodland, a young orchard for home use and pasture for the animals (Slentz maintained a small stock of dairy cows, pigs, chickens and four farm horses).

Finding sufficient information to be able to make a model that represented the farm as it was in 1863 presented an interesting exercise in research. What makes it difficult to form a picture of how the farm looked in 1863 is that the farmhouse and the wagon house/corn crib burned down in 1895 and there is only one contemporary photograph (below), taken by Matthew Brady within days of the battle. All that remains of the farm today is the barn. 

The photograph presents a view that the Confederates of Archer's Brigade would have had of the farm as they crossed Willoughby Run on the farm's southwestern border. The  barn and wagon house/corn crib are clearly seen on the left and centre (and there are several other later images to give an even clearer view of those buildings), but this is the only contemporary shot of the farm house and details are indistinct and shielded from view by trees. Other views of the farmhouse were taken 20-30 years after the battle when the building had been significantly altered.

Thankfully there is a fabulous study of the farm; "Edward McPherson Farm: Historical Study" by Kathleen H. George, a research historian at the Gettysburg National Military Park, published in 1977. This  rather dry 207 page typed manuscript digs deep into a wealth of obscure information and paints a word picture of the place that is good enough for me to make this model with confidence.

The original farm was established by William Breadon in 1797-98 who built a log barn 50 feet by 17 feet and a log house measuring 20 feet x 17 feet on the site - apparently 17 feet is the maximum width for a single-span log structure before complex internal framing or central supports are required. Breadon couldn't make a go of it and sold up in the early 1800s. Under the new owner the barn was rebuilt as a stone structure that can be seen as the centre of the structure today, to which several wooden lean-tos were added over the years. Around the same time the log house was reconfigured to a kitchen and dining room downstairs, and two bedrooms upstairs while a fieldstone extension measuring  24 feet by 16 feet and "two steps higher" than the log structure, that featured  a living room and three more bedrooms, was added to the northern end aof the house. A large exterior fireplace and chimney was at the rear of the log section and a smaller internal one in the stone section. The county records describe the stone section as having "three windows, five lights",  that typically meant it had three windows across upper floor, with two more and a door below, aligned vertically to the upper windows. Because property taxes were based on the  number of windows, other than the 'five lights' there was unlikely to be more and allows me to conclude that all the windows of the stone section would have been on the one face although I have assumed that there was a door on the opposite side because it created the shortest distance to the privy. 

My sketch of the western face of the farmhouse from Kathleen George's description 

The whole structure, log and stone, was whitewashed. This made it a very difficult model to paint and make it look interesting. 

 

Above and below the bland basic build...

...and below interest is provided by the inclusion of the garden, a couple of small trees and privy.

 

The research for this model turned up two interesting points about the terrain near the farm, both of which I remember had been mentioned in a YouTube video that I watched a year or so ago by one of the Gettysburg Military Park guides. The first was about the woods, specifically the Herbst's Wood (often erroneously called McPherson's Wood and now commonly called Reynolds' Wood), and the McPherson woodlot - a narrow strip that stood north of the railroad cut. Both these woods were purposefully maintained as a wood supply for the respective farms - for firewood and for fencing. The lower branches were trimmed for firewood and any trees that fell naturally were used for fencing. In addition, it was a common farming practice that the farm animals would be grazed in the woods, stripping out the undergrowth. As such these woods, and likely a number of other small farm woods nearby, were not like they are today, with heavy undergrowth, but were more open and grove-like, able to be seen right through. 

A view through the Herbst's Wood from where General Reynolds was killed to the McPherson barn. The worm fence that was the boundary between the Herbst's and McPherson's farms can also be seen.

An almost opposite view to above, looking across the McPherson cornfield, with the Herbst's Wood running left to centre on its boundary. This Matthew Brady image was taken twelve days after the battle.

This 1896 image shows how open the woods were around the time that the land was
acquired by the National Military Park

The second point is that a county ordinance required farmers to fence their boundaries, so fences are important at Gettysburg. I imagine that this was common in many other counties and states. On the McPherson farm there were four types of fence used: post and 5-rail fences ran along the southern edge of the Chambersburg Pike and around the cornfield; Virginia Worm (zigzag) fences ran along the northern side of the Pike, around the fields north of the Pike and on the southern border along Herbst's Wood; post and board fences (5, 6-inch horizontal planks) lined the farm lane, the barn yard and the lane to the quarry; lastly a picket fence surrounded the farm garden.

Work has commenced on the barn and wagon shed/corn crib (with its attached pig pen), but progress will be slow while I work on some more figures. 

More Buildings

I have added the buildings previewed last week on my BUILDINGS FOR  SALE page.

Please note that NZ Post have suspended all parcel services to the USA until issues around the collection of newly imposed tariffs are resolved.  

This is a more diverse selection than the last batch with a mix of 28mm and 15mm scales. They have taken much longer to complete than I thought thanks to some garden cleaning up (not ours), our short trip to the south and a back issue that made sitting in one position for a length difficult.

When I begin work on a building project I usually start from a photograph of drawing of some structure that has caught my attention. Once I start to put together the underlying form I can see the model as though it is a finished product. Sometimes I make changes midway through the sculpting process, but almost always, when about half way through the build, I develop a thought that the design is not working. However, I persist and it always comes out as I expected at the start. The 15mm Mediterranean style villa included here is a prime example of the process.

The inspiration came from a contemporary photograph of houses near the Italian town of Magenta after the battle fought there in 1859. The model was then made incorporating features from some other drawings and some photos I had taken in Italy in the mid 1980s. I made it in 1999 for inclusion in the Military Miniatures range that I had sculpted over the previous 13 years and was to be the 139th model in the 15mm range. But I left Military Miniatures (or Battlefront as it had just been renamed) in October of that year and the master was never delivered. It has sat in a shelf in my study ever since. On numerous occasions I have thought "I really should paint it up..." and now I have, and it looks exactly as it appeared in my mind's eye when I started the sculpt 26 years ago.

For those interested the Yarkshire Gamer podcast that featured my gaming experience has been released here:

 https://kenrtai.podbean.com/e/episode-78-mark-strachan-new-zealand-1866/