Storm demolishes historic barn west of Holton

The Thursday, Oct. 24 storm that brought high winds to Jackson County, tearing limbs from trees and knocking out power to parts of northeastern Kansas, knocked down a barn west of Holton that had belonged to a Jackson County family for six generations.

A two-and-a-half-story red barn on property west of Holton owned by the Gary and Becky Zibell family was blown down by winds accompanying that storm, according to Becky Zibell, who estimated that the barn was about 135 years old.

“I’m just thankful that our family and our house were unharmed,” said Becky, who noted that the family house is located across Kansas Highway 16 from the barn. “I don’t know if it was straight-line winds that came through it, because the storm didn’t touch our house — not so much as a shingle off our house or anything.”

Zibell said the barn had originally been built in the early 1890s, shortly after Gary Zibell’s great-grandfather, William Ludwig Zibell, and his wife, Matilda, arrived in Jackson County.

“They came over from Germany in 1882 on a boat, and while they didn’t settle here first, they ended up moving across the road from where the barn is in 1889,” Becky said. “We’re figuring the barn was built in the early 1890s, because that’s when they bought that 160 acres of land.”

According to family history, all of the wood used to build the barn was native to that 160-acre plot.

“You can tell when you take a close look at the wood,” Becky said. “Nowadays, the boards we build with would be really smooth, but you could see the circles and the lines in the wood, and how they milled the wood.”

William and Matilda Zibell passed the land and the barn onto their son and his wife, Theodore and Nona Zibell, who passed it onto their son and his wife, William and Phyllis Zibell, who passed it on to their son and his wife, Gary and Becky, who passed it on to son Kurt and his wife, Shelby. Becky said that Kurt and Shelby’s children mark the sixth generation of the family to have some ownership of the barn.

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