Continuity and Change in Early Maryland Tobacco Barns

Name: Continuity and Change in Early Maryland Tobacco Barns
Start: 2026-03-24T19:00:00-04:00
End: 2026-03-24T20:00:00-04:00
Location: Cedar Grove United Methodist Church

Schedule

Tue Mar 24 2026 at 07:00 pm to 08:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Cedar Grove United Methodist Church | Deale, MD

After the tobacco buyouts three decades ago, the quintessential agricultural building on our County landscape lost their purpose. No longer needed, purpose-built with ephemeral framing, and too expensive to repurpose for other uses, few survive today and their history and legacy may soon to be forgotten.
Feeling nostalgic about barns? Want to learn more about the few historic barns that do remain?
DAHS is proud to host Dr. Dennis Pogue who will share his recently completed study on early tobacco barns in the southern Maryland region. Dr. Pogue has almost 50 years’ experience working in higher education, historic preservation, historical archaeology, and historic sites. He specializes in studying and interpreting the material culture of the American Colonial and Federal eras, with a particular focus on the plantation culture.
The Maryland Tobacco Buyout (initiated 1999-2000) was a voluntary, $78 million, 10-year program funded by the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement to pay farmers to stop growing tobacco. It targeted Southern Maryland, encouraging a transition to other agricultural uses (e.g., livestock, produce, vineyards) to preserve farming while ending a 12-generation tobacco culture due to declining profits, labor shortages, and health concerns.
Most prominent among the barns that have been lost in recent years include one of only a few early log barns in the state of Maryland (the Hammonds barn,) along with the earliest dendro-dated (1805) tobacco barn of any type in the county (Tracy’s Landing #2) which was listed in the National Register of Historic Places, yet still demolished.