Board of Directors
The first official Board of Directors of the HBFF of PA was elected by a unanimous vote during the Pennsylvania Barns Annual Meeting and Tour held June 7, 2009 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
President:
Sheila Miller, Womelsdorf, Berks County, is the founding president of the Historic Barn and Farm Foundation of Pennsylvania. Her dream to create a non-profit organization whose purpose would be the documentation and preservation of historic barns began to take shape in December 2006 when she and Robert Ensminger discussed work she had spearheaded in the Commonwealth as chairman of the Center for Rural Pennsylvania to survey the state’s historic barns. The two barn enthusiasts met for the first time in March 2007, along with Greg Huber and Jeff Marshall, and the rest is history. Miller is a former member of the PA General Assembly.
She and her husband Mike and daughter Emilie raise beef cattle on their two farms. Miller owns an 1880s circa stone-sided standard Pennsylvania barn, along with a barn she and her family moved to their other property to save it from demolition, timber by timber. Her love of historic barns is only surpassed by her love of Border collies and Hereford cattle.
Vice President:
Gregory D. Huber is a house and barn historian, an independent scholar, consultant and principal owner of Past Perspectives, a historic and cultural resources company based in Macungie, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. His special focus is in House Histories of historic homesteads in southeast Pennsylvania and beyond. A student of early vernacular architecture since 1971, Huber has specialized in pre-1830 barn and house architecture of Holland Dutch and Pennsylvania Swiss-German. He has documented nearly 6,500 vernacular buildings including more than 2000 Pennsylvania barns in the east since the mid 1970’s. He is author of more than 105 articles on barn and house architecture and is co-author of two books – the second edition of The New World Dutch Barn (2001) and Stone Houses – Traditional Homes of Pennsylvania’s Bucks County and Brandywine Valley (2005). He won the Alice Kenney award in 1997 and the Allen Noble Book Award in 2003 issued by the Pioneer America Society.
Secretary:
Ken Sandri lives in the Poconos and works at Grey Towers National Historic Site in Milford, PA. He received a BA in Anthropology in1980 and has 30 years experience in cultural resource management. His professional career includes archeologist, author of a book on historic architecture, and a twenty year historic preservation career with two federal agencies, the National Park Service and the US Forest Service, where he preserves significant architecture on federal historic sites.
Ken’s interests lie in preserving our cultural history through our physical culture. His interest lies is categorizing structures by architectural style, dating them, documenting
construction methodology and building traditions associated with various ethnic groups. He performs evaluations, condition assessments and recommends repair and preservation treatments for property owners outside the government.
Ken is also a barn enthusiast and appreciates the importance of our agriculture heritage in the development of Pennsylvania and America. Barn designs express both the builder’s needs and their ethnic building traditions. Ken enjoys examining and documenting barns according to their date of build, tradition, type and subtype. He has assisted hundreds of property owners in the Pennsylvania and surrounding states.
Treasurer:
Jan Graver lives on a farm near Bath, Northampton County. “Twenty-two years as an Information Technology Professional in Healthcare is only surpassed by my thirty-two years as a farmer. Dad moved us from the city to the farm when I was eight. I then married a full-time farmer. We live on a Preserved Pennsylvania Bicentennial Farm, where we spend our time producing grass-fed beef, pork and poultry. Our farm has always been our retreat. We always took for granted our farm and the farms around us. Every year we see more and more of those farms disappear from the landscape. My interest and energy has been focused on preventing any more loss of our agricultural heritage. Join me in helping people find ways to preserve the past and those barns standing out in the fields.
Directors:
Darwin Braund, Ph.D., is volunteer curator emeritus of the Penn State University Pasto Agricultural Museum. He served the museum for ten years after retiring from North Carolina State University in 1998 as Professor Emeritus of Animal Science. Prior to that, he spent twenty-two years in research and development with Agway Inc. in Syracuse, New York before retiring in 1992.
Raised on a dairy farm in Bradford County, PA, he graduated from Penn State and started his professional career as a Penn State Extension Dairy Specialist in 1956. Since then, he has served as an agricultural extension worker in four states (PA, KY, NY and NC) and spent twenty-five years in agribusiness. In 1995, he spent six months in Poland as an agricultural advisor and published a book about his experiences in post-communist Poland.
Priscilla DeLeon was appointed to serve as interim Historic Barn and Farm Foundation director on its initial board. She is an elected official in Lower Saucon Township, Northampton County, serving since 1988 as a councilwoman and past president. She is the president and founding member of the Saucon Valley Conservancy, an all volunteer non-profit organization whose primary goal is the preservation of the Heller Homestead and Barn owned by Lower Saucon Township.
She feels very strongly about preserving our heritage through historic preservation and environmental protection. Future generations depend on us for protection and preservation of these precious resources before they are lost forever. She and has never forgotten Article 1, Section 27 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, the “Environmental Rights Amendment.
She was one of the leading proponents for the Township accepting ownership of the Lutz-Franklin Schoolhouse in 2002 and the preservation efforts of the Old Mill Bridge acquired by the Township in 1988. She is a past board member of the Lower Saucon Township Historical Society and currently serves on the Advisory Board.
Robert (Bob) Ensminger wrote the book, The Pennsylvania Barn, after many years of fieldwork and research into its origins, evolution, and migration across North America. He is a professor of geography emeritus at Kutztown University. Ensminger was raised in East Greenville, PA and served in Japan in the U.S. Army after WWII. He graduated with honors from West Chester State College in 1950, and earned a master’s degree in Education from Lehigh University and a master’s degree in geography from Rutgers University. He taught geography, history, and general science in Upper Perkiomen and Southern Lehigh secondary schools. He joined the faculty at Kutztown University’s Geography Department in 1968 where he taught for seventeen years while continuing graduate studies at Penn State, Indiana University, and Brigham Young University.
Bob’s extensive travel in North America and Europe spurred his interest in vernacular architecture which produced two major articles on the Pennsylvania barn in Pennsylvania Folklife magazine in 1980 and 1983. More years of travel and research produced his classic book, The Pennsylvania Barn, Its Origins, Evolution and Distribution in North America, released in 1992. His continued research has been published in a revised edition in 2002.
Melissa Evans specializes in antique timber frame restoration and design – the re-use of antique timber frames in order to preserve them and allow them to continue their usefulness in a new era, continuing as barns, or newly converted into homes, offices, galleries, apartments and studios. Melissa earned a BA cum laude in Art from Albright College in 1983, after living and studying abroad in Europe, and studying at Penn State and Bryn Mawr. Her family has restored three historic properties, two of which are on the Historic Register.
She has been working in architecture since 1991, documenting and designing barns and period additions for Recycle the Barn People (PA), and then Antique Woods & Colonial Restorations (PA & NY), of which she was co-owner. In 1998 she founded Restoration Design, continuing the process of preserving antique structures and materials, providing design services that are knowledgeable of the traditional form, while remaining sympathetic to modern lifestyles. She endeavors to re-use vintage materials and architectural details when possible, while also incorporating new, green construction techniques. Melissa also designs traditional style additions for period homes, and has extensive experience in stable design.
John Hackman lives in Historic Womelsdorf, PA in western Berks County and works at the Berks County Conservancy as a GIS and Trail Project Coordinator. He received a BA in Geography, from Kutztown University in 1996 and has been involved in land preservation, historic resource records management and geographically documenting physical and cultural resources. He has experience as a Staff Assistant for the County Agricultural Land Preservation Board, as well as experience as a computer technician. During John’s time at the Conservancy, he has digitized Historic Resource Survey forms and geolocated the documented structures in a GIS format.
John’s current interests lie in making documented historic records more accessible to the public and to educate people on the importance of preserving the existing physical infrastructure. He believes the ideal way to educate the public is to make information related to historic protection and records of documented properties more readily available to the public in a web-based format.
While John is not specifically a barn enthusiast, he is very much interested in seeing traditional farmsteads and the surrounding farmland protected for future generations of farmers. John also is interested in old homes having rebuilt his 100 year old home and assisted a friend in restoring several Victorian Era homes. In his spare time John enjoys gardening, hiking and biking. John is the webmaster of the site and can be contacted at john AT pahistoricbarns.org
James C. Hoy and his wife have a small farm in Lower Alsace Township which they have owned for the past thirty years. They have enjoyed researching the history of their farm and the house and barn improvements on it. Now retired, Jim’s interest lies largely in preserving their stone “Switzer” barn and encouraging others to realize the treasures they have. “I am continuing my research and architectural studies of these early barns and enjoy discussions on this subject.”
James Lewars is a native of Berks County who received both his B.A (Journalism and History) and M.A (American Studies) from Penn State University. Jim has worked at Pennsylvania state historic sites since 1975 and has been employed by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission since 1977. He has directed the Conrad Weiser Homestead, served as acting administrator of the Ephrata Cloister, and has been the administrator of the Daniel Boone Homestead since 1984.
He has served on the boards of the Berks County Visitors Bureau, the Historical Society of Berks County, the Berks County Museum Council, the Rural History Confederation, and the Historic Preservation Trust of Berks County. He is also the Chair of the St. Lawrence Borough (Berks County) Planning Commission. He has researched and spoken about the architecture of the Pennsylvania Germans, the Oley Valley and numerous other topics of 18th and 19th century Pennsylvania history.
Jeffery Marshall, Vice President of Resource Protection at Heritage Conservancy in Doylestown, PA has been involved in historic preservation for 30 years having been involved with the documenting, photographing and researching of over 10,000 old buildings. He is a recognized expert in southeastern Pennsylvania historic architecture. He has taught courses on local history and preservation at the Bucks County Community College. Mr. Marshall has been a presenter at the National Trust for Historic Preservation annual conference as well as numerous other state and regional conference. Marshall serves on the Board of Directors of the National Barn Alliance and Historic Barn and Farm Foundation of Pennsylvania. He is the co-author of the recently published Barns of Bucks County as well as other books on various aspects of Bucks County history and architecture.
In 2003 he was the recipient of inaugural “Bucks County Preservation Legacy Award” created in his honor for more than 20 years of leadership and dedication for the preservation of historic places and open spaces by the Bucks County Commissioners. He is also the recipient of Governor, Senate and Pennsylvania of Representatives commendations for career achievements in conservation and preservation.
C. Eugene Wingert is a proprietor farm operator in St. Thomas, Franklin County. He has been farming since 1953 through the present. Gene served as Director for ASCS-USDA (Northeast Area ) from 1989 to 1991. The Northeast Area consists of the ten New England states, including Pennsylvania and West Virginia. He was
Regional Director of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture from 1979 through 1987. He served as a member of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau State Board for five years. Additionally he has served on numerous other agriculturally-related committees in varied capacities.