Moving a Piece of History in North Waldoboro

Elizabeth Sproul believes her great-great-great-grandfather, John Peter Walter, built this barn around 1800. (D. Lobkowicz photo)

An over 200-year-old barn in North Waldoboro is getting some necessary repairs and a slightly new home at the hands of a local housewright.

One of the two barns opposite the home of Elizabeth Sproul on Washington Road has been in its current location for nearly 125 years and, with some new sills installed by Waldoboro housewright Jim Derby, the barn is being moved about 45 feet diagonally away from the road.

Sproul believes the barn was built around 1800 by her great-great-great-grandfather, John Peter Walter, a Hessian soldier who came to Waldoboro after serving under the British in the Revolutionary War.

According to Jasper Stahl’s “History of Old Broad Bay and Waldoboro,” Johannes Petrus Walder [John Peter Walter] was originally from Braunschweig, Germany, and was sent as a prisoner to Boston after the Revolution ended.

After Walter was paroled, he came to Waldoboro and married Maria Woltzgruber, a half-sister of Conrad Heyer, the first German son born in Waldoboro, according to Stahl.

The Walters were allowed 300 acres in North Waldoboro when John Peter came to town in 1778, and there they built a cabin and eventually a proper house, Sproul said.

Walter’s house was built in the field north of Sproul’s house, as was the barn.

Though the family property was at one point divided up, Sproul’s grandfather, W.R. Walter, bought it all up and he is believed to have moved the barn to its current location in 1890.

This 1910 photograph shows W.R. Walter (front, right of center) and Ruby Miller (left), the grandfather and mother of Elizabeth Sproul, with horses and hired hands at the family’s home in North Waldoboro. Walter had his great-grandfather’s barn moved across Washington Road back in 1890, according to Sproul. (Photo courtesy Elizabeth Sproul)

There, W.R. Walter made major repairs and alterations to the structure, Sproul said.

Sproul said her mother, Ruby Miller, always said the barn was moved across the road using five oxen, but Derby has a theory that the barn may have been dismantled and reassembled in its current location.

Derby pointed to a number of open mortises in the barn’s timbers as evidence.

Two of Sproul’s sons, David and William, took out the barn’s stalls and gutted most of the inside in preparation for the move, and found several layers of wooden flooring had to come out.

Sproul explained that W.R. Walter owned a sawmill on Old Augusta Road – in the same location where Sproul’s late brother, Conrad Miller, had his mill – and instead of ripping out the old floor when it needed repairs, Walter would just bring down another load of lumber to put a new floor in.

Overall, Derby said the old barn is in pretty good shape. He did replace all the sills: “Either outside from the rain or inside from the animals, they were all rotten,” Derby said.

Local housewright Jim Derby is repairing and moving an over 200- year-old barn in North Waldoboro. (D. Lobkowicz photo)

It was quite a struggle for Derby to find solid timber to use in order to jack up the barn for the repairs.

“Because it was rotten and had been repaired several times before, there were very few places I could jack off of,” Derby said.

Besides the sills, however, the barn only needed about three or four post repairs, he said.

Having put the barn up on rollers and beams, Derby will use a two-ton come-along to move the barn into its new location.

The plan is for David Sproul, who is returning to Waldoboro, to bring his horses to stay in the barn and share a pasture with the oxen, raised by his brother Michael, that occupy the neighboring barn.

W.R. Walter also kept horses in the barn being moved, as did Sproul’s father, who kept draft horses for use in the lumber business.

“It will be interesting to see how Michael’s oxen get along with David’s horses,” Elizabeth Sproul said.