John Ritchie Garrison Director, Winterthur Program in American Material Culture 2017 TTRAG University of Delaware Conference Newark, DE

New England Barns, Outbuildings, and Agricultural Change in an Atlantic World Perspective, 1780-1850

This presentation will compare New England barns and outbuildings with other outbuilding tradi- tions via an Atlantic World perspective. It will include brief comments on English traditions and New England agricultural practices before comparing case studies of barns in the Middle Atlantic region and the Upper South. The evidence suggests that New England outbuildings were designed to sustain mixed household production and support a range of commercial enterprises, many of them centered on animal husbandry. The talk will set up the field visits to barn sites in the upper part of the Connecticut River Valley scheduled for April 1st, using documentary and field evidence.

About the Speaker

John Ritchie Garrison teaches graduate courses for the Winterthur Program and the University of Delaware’s Department of History, including Material Life in America, Readings in American Material Culture, American Vernacular Landscapes, and Craftsmanship in Early America. He began his career as Di- rector of Education at Historic Deerfield, Inc., in Deerfield, Massachusetts. He joined the University of Delaware in 1985 as the Assistant Director of the Mu- seum Studies Program. In 2006, he became Director of the Winterthur Pro- gram in American Material Culture.

His fields of interests are vernacular buildings and landscapes; pre-industrial craft; material culture historiography and theory; the history of agriculture; and the Civil War. He is the author of Two Carpenters: Architecture and Building in Early New England, 1799-1859, winner of the Vernacular Architecture Forum’s 2007 Abbott Lowell Cummings Prize for the best book in North American Vernacular Architecture, and the 2007 Historic New England, Inc. Book Prize. Dr. Garrison’s first book, Landscape and Material Life in Franklin County, Massachusetts, 1770-1860, was re-printed in 2003. He also co-edited American Material Culture: The Shape of the Field (Ann Smart Martin) and After Ratification: Ma- terial Life in Delaware, 1798-1820 (with Bernard Herman and Barbara McLean Ward).

Dr. Garrison holds a BA in History from Bates College, an MA in American Civilization from the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania, an MA in History Museum Studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Pro- gram at the State University of New York—Oneonta, and a PhD in American Civilization from the University of Pennsylvania.