I think I previously posted this several years ago. The quoted material is from an autobiography of John Thomas Archerd of the Franklin neighborhood in Monroe Township. Does anybody know anything about Henry Lewis? Bill Archerd ++++++ "While I was still young, my father employed Henry Lewis, a carpenter, to build a stable, corn crib, and wagon shed, combined. I was greatly interested in his preparations for the building, the scoring and hewing of timbers for the buildings, framing and putting them together and raising to an upright position. Scoring and hewing in the preparation of timbers for building purposes in this age are practically obsolete expressions. But at that time every country boy who could talk knew just what they meant. Scoring was squaring the log by cutting notches on each of the four sides of a log at distances of one and a half or two feet apart and splitting off the block between the kerfs, leaving a square log. Then with a broad?axe, hewing the sides smooth. One day there was a scoring bee when all the men in the neighborhood were invited to come and help and the women came to help prepare the dinner, and the day often ended with a dance. For then, as now, men and women, boys and girls, aimed to get all the enjoyment, fun and frolic out of life that came their way. When the timbers for the framework were all prepared, they were assembled at the place where it was to be erected, the carpenter chiseled the mortices, shaped the tenons, laid the foundation, unless it had been prepared by a mason, and put the timbers together, fastening them with wooden pins. When all was ready, there was another gathering of men and women and the frame of the structure was raised to an upright position, the rafters put in place and all was ready for siding and partitioning. Timbers standing upright were called posts, those placed horizontally were called beams. Two posts or more, with the beams connecting them, was a bent. Raising was lifting the bents to an upright position done with long poles having an iron spike on one end to jab into the timbers to prevent slipping. Before the raising, the carpenter had joined the posts and beams, placed the braces and fastened all with wooden pins. There was a bent for each end of the building and often one, two or more between. The siding was nailed to the beams forming the sides of the building. Of course much of the knowledge of carpentry I now have came to me at a later date, for at this time I was very young, probably not more than three years old, but I remember the building, the scoring bee, and raising of the frame very distinctly." ++++++++ Written by John Thomas Archerd, in 1930. John was born in 1842 to Rufus Hays Archerd and Nancy Rebecca Simmons. He was their first child. John died in 1933 in Clarion, Iowa. Rufus and Nancy and John lived, with widow Elizabeth Hays Archerd, on the Archerd farm on the western rim of Boat Run in Monroe Township, Clermont County, Ohio.