| STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE
SUMMARY
The Manning-Kamna Farm is nominated under Criterion A for its association with the development and evolution of agriculture and family farm life in Washington County, Oregon, from the completion of the farm’s house in 1883, to the purchase of the farm’s last large piece of machinery in 1953. The property is also nominated under Criterion C, for the collective architectural significance of the ten component buildings on the site. The nearly 125 year old Manning-Kamna Farm not only exhibits the intact resources of a late nineteenth century farm, but also retains structures that are representative of how Oregon farms continued to evolve throughout the early and mid-twentieth century. Through alterations and additions to existing buildings, and the construction of new buildings, the Manning-Kamna Farm demonstrates how farming operations had to be adaptable enough, such as through the adoption of new farming practices and embracing agricultural mechanization, to remain economically viable and prosper.
EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
Many emigrants came to Oregon and the Willamette Valley for the agricultural opportunities it presented. The open land prized by early Euro-America settlers for farming was the result of the husbandry of people who had lived in the Tualatin Valley for generations. The Kalapuya used fire seasonally to create open areas to encourage growth of their major staple, the camas plant. Burning allowed for more effective seed gathering, easier hunting, and helped make areas more defensible. The practice of burning prevented the growth of dense forest on the valley floor, leaving instead a mixture of grassland and prairie. Thick forests on the surrounding hillsides opened up to grassy plains with rich agricultural potential, a condition that stretched for 100 miles. This land was above the flood plain of the Tualatin River, varied from 20 to 40 miles in width, and was surrounded by the Cascade and Coast ranges.
From very early on, farming in Washington County was focused on production and export, and not necessarily subsistence. By the 1840s, the region’s population grew wheat, harvested fruit and garden crops, and raised cattle. The California Gold Rush during the mid-nineteenth century increased the demand for agricultural products, and the price Oregon farmers received for farm goods rose accordingly. By the time emigrants of the 1850s arrived in Washington County, a market system was already in place to deal with crops such as wheat and oats.
Agriculture in Washington County was also about progress. By 1850, a farmer in the community of North Plains (north of Hillsboro) was already using a threshing machine. The following notice about the machine appeared in the Portland Democrat in 1858:
Hull, Knapp and Co. will illustrate at the farm of Mr. A. Zachry, on Tualatin Plains, one of Willard’s Patent Seed Sowing and Harrowing Machines and invites all farmers in the vicinity to come and see for themselves the practicability and utility of the Machine.
Census records indicate that by 1860, the average farm in Washington County included $170 worth of farm machinery. Also by 1860, the main focus of farming operations was on the production of wheat. Farmers, however, often had difficulties getting their product to market:
All the fragmentary evidence available suggests that the farmers of Washington County were, in terms of their market orientation, relentlessly modern, even if the infrastructure for successful commercial agriculture was poorly developed in the 1850s and even if this orientation went hand in hand with very traditional social and cultural values. The central problem of the farmers of Washington County was securing access to market, not avoiding it.
Geography separated the farming regions of the Tualatin Plains from connections to markets. On the south side, the Chehalem Mountains made travel to Yamhill and Clackamas County difficult. The Tualatin and Willamette Rivers were barriers to the markets of Oregon City, and the six-hundred foot climb over the Scappoose Hills to the large market in Multnomah County made traveling difficult. For early settlers, a wagon journey to Portland took three days, and even though by 1856 there was a plank road to Portland, it was frequently in poor condition during the winter months.
One of the main concerns of the county government was to provide better roads and transportation to increase accessibility to markets. Their role was to bring together private energies in the public interest, as the government took on services that ordinary citizens acting together could not achieve. By 1857, the county had established twenty-one road districts. Citizens petitioned the county government to establish roads, and were reimbursed for reviewing road conditions and reporting to the commissioners. Transportation, however, throughout the late nineteenth century was difficult, with roads being not much more than trails and mostly impassable in bad weather.
By 1860, Washington County was producing over 65,000 bushels of wheat and other important crops, including oats and potatoes. The cultivation of rye was rare, but as the decade progressed, buckwheat and barley were grown in greater quantities. Vetch was introduced in 1870 by William Chalmers, and was widely grown for forage and soil restoration. Corn, peas, beans, and potatoes were almost universally grown. Wheat, however, was the favorite staple crop for Washington County farmers. Early farmers worked the soil with wood plows, sowed the wheat by hand, and threshed the wheat by placing it on the ground, driving horses or livestock over it, and allowing the wind to separate the wheat from the chaff.
In the 1860 census, over two-thirds of respondents were identified as farmers or farm laborers. Individuals who listed other professions often included “farmer” as well. Many skilled workers, such as blacksmiths, millers, wheelwrights, and carpenters, were occupations connected to agriculture. In 1860, the town of Hillsboro had no bank, four stores, two wheelwrights, and a boardinghouse, with less than 15 percent of the total population of the county living in town. But as market connections increased, the town of Hillsboro developed and grew. In 1872, the Willamette Valley Railroad came to Hillsboro, and between 1870 and 1875, over $41,000 in improvements were expended in Hillsboro. As a result, the town doubled in size.
By 1876, the town of Hillsboro was incorporated, and over the next ten years an opera house, hotel, two blacksmiths, two general stores, one drug store, and four saloons were constructed. By 1885, nearly all of the lower Tualatin Valley had been settled by large productive farms surrounding agricultural communities. The south central Tualatin Valley was the last area of Washington County to be settled. Here, local settlers established small scale, diversified farms in what was an isolated agricultural area. The settlers in this corner of Washington County were a necessarily independent group of farmers who largely bartered and traded amongst themselves in labor, timber, and a large variety of crops and livestock.
The Manning-Kamna Farm generally followed the broad patterns of development of Washington County since its inception in 1851. From the mid-1880s and through the turn of the century, the Manning-Kamna Farm evolved to include a farmhouse, a large barn, and associated outbuildings typical of late nineteenth century agricultural properties in Washington County. Agricultural pursuits in the area were well established by this time, and such changes as a finished railroad, improved road systems, and the gradual incorporation of new technologies into farming practices, would not only help quicken the pace of agricultural operations, but also bring economic gains in the coming years.
BEGINNINGS OF THE MANNING-KAMNA FARM
The current site of the Manning-Kamna Farm traces its lineage back to the original 639.82 acre donation land claim of Carlos Dudley Wilcox and Sarah Ann Elizabeth Scoggin Wilcox. Both traveled to Oregon as children - Elizabeth in 1845 at age nine, and Carlos in 1847. Elizabeth Scoggin was fifteen years old when she married Carlos Wilcox on July 3, 1851. Carlos and Elizabeth settled on Claim 59, located about four miles to the southeast of Carlos’ parent’s property. The Donation Land Law of 1850 gave 320 acres to each single settler, and 640 acres to a married couple, with half of the land registered in the husband’s name, and half in the wife’s name. Carlos and Elizabeth settled into a house in the northeast corner of Section 19, which is shown on an 1851 copy of a General Land Office map. The house was adjacent to a section of cultivated field on the eastern side of Claim 59.
The census of 1852 lists Elizabeth individually as owing 320 acres of land. Elizabeth came from a farming background, and like many farmers on the Tualatin Plains, she was bound to her family and to her neighbors by the ties of kinship and by shared work. Accounts of the time, however, indicate that Carlos had interests other than farming, including holding the position of postmaster and participating in the California Gold Rush.
In 1857, Carlos sold 61.75 acres of land to William Jolly. Newspaper accounts confirm that he was often away from his family, and the Wilcox Family Outline indicates that by 1870 he was living with another woman named Levi Ireland. Petitions for divorce were not uncommon in Washington County, and in 1872, Carlos and Elizabeth Wilcox divorced. Upon her divorce, Elizabeth had title to half of Claim 59. Carlos sold the northern half of his 320 acres in1874.
On January 29, 1874, Elizabeth married Louis Manning in Multnomah County, Oregon. Born in New York in 1836, Louis Manning had been on his own since he was thirteen years old. Manning had traveled and worked in many places, including in Ohio and Kansas, raised horses on Pike’s Peak, prospected for gold in Idaho, built flatboats in Portland, and worked on a stock and dairy ranch on Sauvie Island. Before marrying Elizabeth, he raised trotting and stock horses in Eastern Oregon. The typical Washington County kinship connections probably accounted for their meeting, as Elizabeth’s family had a number of connections in Eastern Oregon.
THE FARM UNDER THE MANNINGS
The business of Washington County during the late nineteenth century was the business of farming, and Louis took to it with characteristic zeal, moving to Hillsboro on “320 acres north of the city which he put in a high state of cultivation.” Louis Manning had experience in raising livestock and raising horses, but in Washington County, livestock was always secondary to raising crops. Manning realized this, and he and Elizabeth continued to farm their claim and raise Elizabeth’s five children. Nearly a decade before, the Oregon City Argus espoused:
No man but a simpleton would think of retaining his five hundred acres of land for pasture. Most have abandoned the idea of stock-raising where range is principally confined to enclosures, and where the value of a given amount of range is fully proportioned to the worth of the same area for producing grain. The experience of the people in the Tualatin Plains has fully demonstrated that at no distant day the business of stock-raising in this valley will be entrusted to those who live upon the outskirts and where, in addition to their own rugged claims, too rough for successful farming …
Even though Louis had much past experience with raising livestock, it was a secondary concern for the family. Most farm families had a few milk cows, some beef, and perhaps a small herd of sheep, which were mainly for household use.
After the Manning’s marriage in 1874, the development of urban centers and easier transportation helped the farm to prosper, and gave Louis and Elizabeth the means to build their Late Victorian, cross-wing western farmhouse on the site between 1876 and 1883. According to author Philip Dole:
The new farmhouses built between 1875 and 1900 have been called, collectively, “Western farmhouses” because similar farms seemed to have appeared at about the same time across the rural American West. Whatever style they adopted, these houses were roughly alike in volumetric organization, plan layout and disposition of ornament.
Typical of the style, the Manning farmhouse is generally of a cruciform plan, with double gabled-ells on each side to provide space for additional porches that demonstrate the versatility of the utilitarian house. The Manning house was not only an expression of utility, and comfort, but also of individuality, as seen through modest ornamentations, such as pairs of decorative lace-like triangular wood brackets at the top each column at the intersection of the porch eave, a decorative form that is repeated as a wall bracket where the porch intersects the wall of the house, wide raking board trim, windows topped with crown moulding, and ornamented pilasters at the corners of the house. As Dole explains, “such a house . . . shows the prosperity, sophistication and/or aspirations of the farmer” during this period.
Through their home, the Mannings increased opportunities for social and cultural activities such as entertaining friends, family, and business associates. The layout and design of the wood fireplace surround and faux graining on the woodwork in the fireplace room indicate its function as a formal room for entertainment and business uses. The design of the Manning’s home exhibits their pride in the farm, but also demonstrates the practicality, and utility, of having four porches with views of the farmscape. The Mannings also planted the large Black Walnut tree and the Pignut Hickory that provide shade on the west side of their residence, and constructed the existing canning shed during the late nineteenth century.
TRANSITION OF THE FARM TO THE KAMNA FAMILY
The Kamna family came to Washington County with the idea of participating whole-heartedly in the life and business of farming. Born in 1870 in Bassen, Hanover, Germany, Hermann Kamna came to Washington County in 1886 with his father, Henry (Heinrich) Kamna, his brothers, John and Henry Jr., and two sisters, Bettie and Rebecca. Herman and his brothers were connected by business, as well as family, and they worked and celebrated together. Brothers Henry and John married sisters at the home of their father in Blooming, Oregon, on November 15, 1889. Herman married Anna Rehse a few years later on February 14, 1900.
As early as 1897, Herman and his brothers began leasing farm land. On May 5, 1897 Herman leased land from James E. Lewis and wife. That same year, he leased 120 acres east of McKay Creek, and in 1902, Herman leased 364 acres of the H. Lindsay Donation Land Claim along with his brother, John. On September 10, 1904, he signed an agreement to rent Dell and Emily Young’s farm in Hillsboro. On June 20, 1903, the deed transferring ownership of 175 acres of the original Wilcox claim to Herman Kamna was recorded.
When the Mannings sold their land to Herman Kamna in June 1903, Elizabeth and Louis reserved a small tract for themselves where Louis “spent his declining years,” as they wanted live on their land until the end of their lives. The Mannings retained ownership of this small parcel that contained their house, which they lived in at least until Louis’ death in 1910. Elizabeth Manning’s obituary indicates that she never left “the farm north of Hillsboro,” and that it had “been her home ever since” her marriage to Carlos Wilcox in 1851, until her death in 1916.
If Elizabeth and Louis Manning were of the “old school,” then the Kamna family brought with them something of a “new school.” The Kamna’s stewardship of the farm, as well as their work and activities, mirror the agricultural and family farm life of Washington County through the middle of the twentieth century. Like Louis and Elizabeth, Herman Kamna’s connection to home and farm was powerful. Like the Mannings, Herman died in the farmhouse that had been his home.
After their acquisition of the farm in 1903, the Kamna family completed several building projects, including two, one-story gabled roof additions to the original 1880s barn, a privy, a simple gabled roof chop house (woodshed) with a bridge-like addition that connected it with the second story of the house, a potato shed (built to store a crop that was easy to grow and sustained the family), and a smokehouse used to preserve meat that hung from the birch rafters (perhaps flavored with the burnt wood of the Pignut Hickory planted in the front yard). Like the building activities that occurred on the Manning-Kamna Farm, the decades between 1890 and 1910 brought more growth to the Washington County. In 1908, with the arrival of the Oregon Electric Railway, Hillsboro began to change from a farm and market town to a place more connected with the Portland metropolitan area. Between 1900 and 1910, Hillsboro doubled in population. Over the next decade, sewers, phones, a new water supply, and more streets and sidewalks were added to the city.
Even though the Kamna family purchased the farm in 1903, it was not until sometime between 1910 and 1916, after Louis and Elizabeth Manning passed away, that the Kamna family was able move into the farmhouse. The 1910 census shows that Herman had two hired hands, but in keeping with the tradition of Washington County, work on the Kamna farm was also done by family members, friends, and neighbors. A 1909 photograph documents a barn-raising at Henry Kamna Senior’s farm, with Henry Junior, John, Herman Kamna, and forty other “helpers.”
The raising of family and the business of farming went hand in hand. Herman and Anna Kamna had three children: Edgar, Lucille, and Arline. A fourth child, Francis, later died in an accident on the farm at age three. The participation of the Kamna children in farming was often imbued with a sense of joy and energy, however, rather than tragedy. The Kamna children and cousins played in the chop house, a place to cut and store wood that was so important for fuel, as well as to slaughter animals for food. In the chop house, the Kamna children wrote out their names, and the names of their teachers and the subjects they taught in chalk on the interior wood wall planks.
The overall success the Kamnas had with agriculture is reflected in other changes made later to the home and farm. The simple, but well-designed, farmhouse embraced the outdoors with windows and porches that engaged the landscape in all directions. From the farmhouse, one could observe all of the individual buildings that represented the wide range of tasks associated with family farming, each constructed to meet very specific needs. Even during the 1920s, when the Kamna’s updated the farmhouse to accommodate indoor plumbing, the adjacent privy remained next to the house. The canning shed operated as a summer kitchen for feeding farmhands at harvest time or those who came for a barn-raising, but also acted as a place to keep food for the family.
Other changes to the farm reflected the changing technological innovations of the period, including running water in the kitchen and a full bathroom that necessitated the remodeling of older homes. The north side of the west porch of the Manning-Kamna farmhouse was enclosed during the 1920s to provide for indoor plumbing. Likewise, the north side of the east porch was enclosed to provide for more kitchen storage. The pumphouse helped protect the family’s water source, and the chicken house, constructed during the 1920s, provided for raising domestic animals, such as chickens and pigs. The “newest” building addition to the farm, the garage (constructed during the 1920s), reflected the increasing success of the farm. The garage demonstrates that as time progressed, and the farm prospered, more capital was available to invest in buying and maintaining automobiles.
AGRICULTURAL MECHANIZATION ON THE MANNING-KAMNA FARM
Agricultural progress had been part of Washington County agriculture since the 1850s, and was very much a part of the Manning-Kamna Farm. Scientific experimentation and the search for knowledge became institutionalized when the Oregon Legislature designated Corvallis College as the state’s agricultural college in 1868. By 1870, a curriculum was in place, and in 1887, the federal government funded the Oregon Agriculture Experiment Station, a research organization administered by the College. In 1908, the college became a professional school of agriculture, growing to include ten departments by 1928. The Kamna family embraced the technological gains associated with this growth in agricultural knowledge and scientific investigation. The Hillsboro Argus reported on “new forms of agriculture” and ran articles about experimental farming and flax production, as well as documenting progress for the town of Hillsboro as a whole.
More specialized machinery became associated with the business of farming, and a seed sorter, still present in the upper level of the barn, dates from the 1920s. Papers and pamphlets found in the barn include bulletins from the Oregon Agricultural College Experiment Station. Edgar Kamna, Herman’s son, graduated from the agricultural program at the Oregon State College. Under the direction of the next generation of Kamna farmers, the business of agriculture continued to grow in the decades beyond the 1920s, and Edgar Kamna was very active in the business.
Farmers in the Hillsboro area dealt with the Imperial Seed and Grain Company, which, according to company letterhead, manufactured “Imperial Poultry and Dairy Feeds”, and were “Dealers in Seeds, Feeds, Grain and Hay.” The rambling white Manning-Kamna barn was where crops were sorted, weighed, certified, bagged, and readied for transport or assay. Entries in sales books and seed account books show the kinds of crops that were grown at the time, including “Imperial Oats,” ”Chewing’s Fescue,” “Red Creeping Fescue,” “Tall Fescue,” ryegrass, vetch, and sub-clover. The lists show the names of individuals who brought crops to the barn and where the crops were grown; for example “Edgar Kamna, East Field”, “Edgar Kamna, Young Place,” or “John Hare, Lot 103E.”
Documentation found in the barn also shows the wide range of activities and services that were provided, including a “Shipping Scale Weights” form that recorded the weight and number of sacks of a particular crop, a “Cleaning Report” that noted the inbound weight of the sacks and the “out turn” weight of peas, vetch, peas and vetch, mixed vetch, oats, barley, heavy screenings, light screenings, and straw. Carbon copies of paperwork, sent to seed laboratories for analysis, indicate Imperial Seed and Grain Company sent fescue to Oregon State College for purity testing and seed sent to E.F. Burlingham and Sons Seed Laboratory in Forest Grove for purity analysis and germination testing. Copies of “Seed Certification Sampling Certificates” from the Oregon State College Extension Service show the results of tests for purity, purity with germination, or germination only. The grower, variety, generation, lot number, number of sacks, weight of fescue, and where the test was performed were also noted. Heavy paper tags from Imperial Feed and Grain Company were attached to individual sacks of seed that had been tested and certified. These tags show the variety, purity and germination percentage, percent of weed, crop, and inert matter, and the date tested. Detailed instructions for taking soil samples, along with small boxes used to send the soil samples to the Oregon State College Soil Testing Laboratory, were filed in the barn. A “Soil Sampling Information Sheet” listed the type of soil, irrigation, crops from the past three years, use of lime and/or manure, and other information about the land from which the sample was taken. This paperwork reflects a high level of organization, a diversity of tasks, and a detailed and scientific process of record-keeping used at the Manning-Kamna Farm.
Research and investigation continued to be important to the Kamnas during the 1940s and 1950s, as evidenced by Oregon State College Extension Bulletins that were consulted for their recommendations. These publications gave advice on many topics from “The Control of Quackgrass” by cultivation and chemical means, to “Selective Weed Control in Grain and Grass Crops.” Knowledge of chemical products was also part of the Manning-Kamna Farm, as evident through informational material on soil fumigants from the Shell Chemical Corporation found in the barn.
The Kamna family farmers also continued to invest in machinery in support of their farming services. They bought ““Fairbanks Scales” manufactured in Vermont for weighing sacks. They purchased grain cleaners, such as a “Carter Disc Separator” manufactured by Hall-Carter Company in Minneapolis. The Kamna barn had literature for “Prater Gradual Reduction Grinder” made in Chicago, which would break down material to a desired state of fineness, and brochures for “Clipper Dustless Cleaners,” “Clipper Single Fan Cleaners,” and more sophisticated machines called “Clipper Super Cleaners.” In 1953, Edgar Kamna purchased the last large piece of equipment for the farm, the “Super Cleaner 47A” manufactured by A.T. Ferrell and Company, an impressive machine that still stands in the barn today. Receipts indicate that machinery was maintained and replacement parts purchased as needed, including wire screens, rollers, and sheet metal parts, purchased from Reid-Strutt Company, Inc. in Portland. Reid-Strutt also provided equipment lists and brochures to the Kamnas.
ARCHITECTURE OF THE MANNING-KAMNA FARM
The Manning-Kamna Farm is architecturally significant for its ten component buildings that are not only representative of late nineteenth and twentieth farming practices, but also of the continuing domestic and agricultural improvement and financial success of the farm and family. While the original farm complex under the ownership of the Manning family seems to have only included the cross-wing western farmhouse, the two-story barn of timber, post and beam construction, and the simple hipped-roof canning shed, the farm under the ownership of the Kamna’s received several more associated outbuildings and building additions typical of family farming operations during the first half of the twentieth century.
The entire group of buildings making up the current inventory of the Manning-Kamna Farm represents a typical, multi-unit farm complex. A “multi-unit farm” differs from a “basic farm” in that the property includes a house and at least two outbuildings. Common among grain production farms in the area, the Manning-Kamna Farm consists of several outbuildings that aided in the day-to-day operation of the farm. Among these include the farmhouse, barn, smokehouse, garage, pump house, chop house (woodshed), privy, canning shed (summer kitchen), chicken house, and potato shed. The original Manning cross-wing western farmhouse, constructed between 1876 and 1883, is representative of Willamette Valley farmhouses constructed between 1875 and 1900 called “Western farmhouses,” so named due their similar physical and temporal appearance in the American West. Although in some ways the Western farmhouse derives its architectural elements from the Rural Gothic Cottage Style of the 1860s, as Dole explains, “the term ‘Western farmhouse’ designates that extensive group of rather plain rural homes . . . which do not comfortably fit within any national stylistic architectural vogue.” Although rather plain, the Manning-Kamna farmhouse exhibits some unique detailing characteristic of Western farmhouse types, including crown moulding window casings, a corbelled chimney, turned porch columns, decorative porch and wall brackets, and a fireplace with wood mantel and wood paneled sides.
Characteristically, the two-story, side-opening, gabled roof barn is located in a “back of the house” position on the farm, approximately 171 feet west of the farmhouse. Two, one-story additions made to the building in around 1910 and 1920 were necessary as the Manning-Kamna farming operation continued to grow and introduced agricultural mechanization processes that dictated an increased use in more specialized farm machinery. The first addition was constructed to house specific agricultural machinery, while the later, second addition, was built as an area to load and unload crops. With the exception of the canning shed, the other associated buildings, including the chop house, privy, potato shed, smoke house, pump house, and garage, were constructed by the Kamna family. These secondary outbuildings do not necessary follow a linear or rectangular spatial arrangement, but are instead massed close to the farmhouse around either the goat enclosure or back yard. All of the buildings, including the farmhouse and barn, are organized along cardinal compass points, as was common practice on many farmsteads in the West.
While many of the outbuildings on the Manning-Kamna Farm are more closely associated with the domestic functions of the farmhouse, rather than the agricultural functions of the barn, most, if not all, of these buildings remained necessary features to ensure the success of the farming family. The farm’s potato shed is a gabled roof, wood frame building that rests directly on the soil located approximately 106 feet northeast of the farmhouse. The farm’s wall-frame, hipped roof pumphouse, set on a brick foundation and clad in shiplap siding, is positioned approximately 53 feet from the northwest corner of the farmhouse, and helped protect the family’s water source. The canning shed and smokehouse, in contrast, represent buildings that primarily served to process, rather than just store, food for the farming family. The canning shed, located less than 10 feet from the farmhouse at the northeast corner, is a simple hipped-roof building, built close to the farmhouse, and doubled as a summer kitchen. The smokehouse, a gable roof, rectangular building with two, diamond shaped ventilation openings near the tops of the each gable end, is reminiscent of the upland south smokehouse design. The wood frame, gabled roof chicken house, located approximately 103 feet north of the farmhouse, also served to process food for the family. Like many outbuildings associated with multi-unit farms that often served different functions than originally constructed for, the chicken house now houses goats. The privy, however, has always served in just one function. The privy on the Manning-Kamna Farm is typical of most privies constructed in North America. Distanced from the house to avoid odor, yet close enough to remain convenient, the gabled roof, six-by-eight foot privy is the smallest outbuilding on the farm. Positioned approximately 50 feet from the northeast corner of the farmhouse, the privy also has ventilation holes drilled in a diamond pattern.
The garage may be the latest building constructed on the Manning-Kamna Farm, dating from the 1920s, but it also is one of the more revealing buildings about how the farm had changed both domestically and agriculturally during the twentieth century. The twenty-four-by-sixteen foot, gabled roof building with exposed rafter tails, and clad with narrow weatherboard siding, provided shelter for expensive automobiles that had quickly replaced reliance on the horse and carriage by this period. Built after the initial construction of the farmhouse, but clearly occupying an important location on the farm, the garage is sited approximate |
