Raising the Barn: A Frontier Memory
A look back at the communal labor and rough-and-tumble celebrations that defined building a new life in early Washington Territory.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
One of the entertainments of the boys of my time was what was called the 'raising,' meaning the erection of the timber frames of houses or barns to which the boards were to be afterward nailed. Here the minister made a point of having present all the able-bodied men of the neighborhood, and the young men, too, were summoned, and took part in the work with great alacrity. It was as fine a feat as that of a performer on the tight rope to see the young men walk steadily on the narrow footing of the beams at a great height from the ground. They vied with each other in the dexterity and daring with which they went through the work, and when the skeleton of the building was put together, some one of them generally capped the climax of fearless activity by standing on the ridge-pole with his head downward and his heels in the air. At that time even the presence of the minister was no restraint upon the flow of the milk punch and grog, which in some cases was taken to excess. The practice of calling the neighbors to these is now discontinued in the rural neighborhoods, the carpenters provide their own workmen for the business of adjusting the timbers of the new building to each other, and there is no consumption of grog.
“It was as fine a feat as that of a performer on the tight rope to see the young men walk steadily on the narrow footing of the beams at a great height from the ground.”
This 1877 account captures the transition of Seattle from a frontier town built on communal 'raisings' to a professionalized, industrialized economy. The nostalgia for a time before 'carpenters provided their own workmen' and the regulation of social drinking reflects the growing pains of a city shedding its wild, collaborative past for the rigid structures of an urban center.
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