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Show student, Gary Stanton. A year spent measuring German-American houses in Franklin County, Indiana, taught Gary and me much about how not to study folk architecture and this experience proved invaluable when I was preparing for this work in Utah. Peter Goss of the University of Utah introduced me to the fine points of architectural history. Peter's unselfish interest in my research, though in many ways it overlapped his own, is rare today. Utah folklorist William A. "Bert" Wilson was a close friend and confidant; in some small way I hope that this is the type of study Bert might do if he chose to study folk architecture. Dell Upton, a fine banjo player, friend, and companion on several long field trips to the Sanpete Valley, got me excited about this stuff again after a long period of inactivity. Dell helped me measure several complicated barns, and it was his encouragement and example that pushed me into the final act of writing. 'Steve Siporin, Meg Brady, and Dave Stanley, friends and colleagues, all read painfully incomplete stages of the manuscript and urged me on when things looked pretty bleak. Thanks to you all. My work was made easier by support from several institutions. The Utah Division of State History and its director, Mel Smith, gave me a home during most of the time that I was working on this study. My boss, Kent Powell, thought it would never end, and it might not have if he had not let me use the office word processor. My colleagues at the Historical Society were initially puzzled by my preoccupation with the 11 vernacular," but they have slowly come around. Thanks especially to Bonnie Rogers and Barbara Murphy for being comrades-in-arms. Jim Kimball and Bill Slaughter at the Historical Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made the vast resources of their vi |
