mft revisits his Scandanavian roots...

This is the latest photo of a barn my great Swedish grandparents had built about 1919, located southwest of Devils Lake, North Dakota (the northeastern part of the state). A stonemason from Chicago built it, and currently I've been chatting and getting more context from oral histories taken from my grandmother. The stones used in the construction were taken from the soil of the surrounding northern Dakota landscape. Great Grandpa Larson (whom I never knew; he passed in the 1950s) only had enough money to fund the construction of the walls. Instead of putting a gable roof on it, they opted for a flat, shed-style one.

The color of the barn from the variety of fieldstones is what I noticed right off.