GOING TO FROHNA: HISTORIC CAPE BARN TO COME DOWN TODAY

Three years after developer Stephen E. Strom started looking for a new home for a historic barn, he found the perfect spot.

Today, weather permitting, the 100-year-old oak logs that make up the barn will be taken apart and moved to the Saxon Lutheran Memorial at Frohna.

The barn stands in the way of Strom's development of the final phase of Northfield Subdivision in Cape Girardeau. As part of the development project, Strom has purchased the Emil Meyer farm, including a log house and barn situated along Lexington between Steven and Concord Place.

"We've been developing Northfield since 1971," Strom said. "We've been working backwards down to the historic barn."

In 1995, the old farm house on the Meyer farm was torn down. Strom salvaged enough logs from the building to reconstruct a log cabin on his own property.

Strom launched his effort to find a use or a way to preserve the historic barn. "I didn't want it just destroyed," Strom said.

He offered it to Cape Girardeau for placement in a city park. The city declined, explaining it didn't have an appropriate facility to safeguard the historic structure.

The Cape Girardeau County Park Board gave a similar answer.

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources, which runs Trail of Tears State Park north of Cape Girardeau, wanted the barn but would have moved it to Springfield. Strom declined.

It didn't fit into plans of the Department of Conservation.

Last month, Strom learned about the Saxon Lutheran Memorial at Frohna.

The memorial is a historical tribute to German Lutherans from Saxony who settled in East Perry County.

"They have a wonderful reconstruction going on there, lots of buildings, lots of museums," Strom explained.

He talked with curators and board members at the Memorial and they were interested. The old barn would fit into plans at the site.

Three weeks ago members of Boy Scouts Venture Troop 7, supervised by Art Wood, helped catalog the barn's timbers.

The troop is composed of teen-agers, both boys and girls, who are interested in historic preservation.

The Scouts carefully inventoried and marked all the pieces so when the barn is taken down it can be put back together in the proper order.

Last week volunteers from the Saxon Lutheran Memorial came to Cape Girardeau and helped remove the tin roof, which is not historic. The tin is being used to construct a storage barn at the memorial.

Today, Jim Goggin Excavating is scheduled to bring heavy equipment to the site and take down the structure and load it onto trailers.

"The logs are in excellent shape and alternatively in terrible shape," Strom said. Most can be preserved.

Exact plans for the oak timbers haven't been decided. The logs may be used to construct two log buildings or may be used for some other purpose at the memorial.

Strom is confident the history will be preserved.

"We don't know for sure when the barn was constructed," Strom said.

It is composed of three log buildings covered by a common roof with sheds attached. "It was a huge barn."

The name Masterson and the date 1886 is carved into a log in one of the boxes. Another of the boxes has initials and the date Dec. 21, 1900.

"That's all we know for sure about the age of the barn," he said.

Strom has become something of an expert on the families that lived on that property and likely used the barn.

The property was first entered into property records in 1837 when it was purchased by Green Berry Hobbs. Hobbs was reported to be a very successful tobacco farmer.

He and his wife had a daughter, Martha, who married David Masterson. Eventually the family farm was conveyed to Masterson, the named inscribed on the barn.

Over the years the farm passed down to the Meyer family. Emil Meyer of Cape Girardeau was born in 1913 in the log house and remembers the horse barn.

Strom wants to preserve the history of the property but said it is time for the barn to be removed.

"Time passes," Strom said. "The barn is starting to deteriorate, and it's standing in the way of development."

He is pleased to have found a new home for the structure.

"It's a wonderful place up there," Strom said. "I've been around to many of these reconstruction areas, and this is among the best."