 Built about 1867, the barn is possibly the only example of such a barn in Virginia, as the building style was more popular in the expanding midwestern United States in the immediate post-American Civil War era than in economically-depressed Virginia.The octagonal style was popularized in 1853 by "A Home For All, or the Gravel Wall and Octagon Mode of Building" by Orson Squire Fowler.The barn was built for Robert Samuel Harnsberger in 1867, following the example of his brother Stephen, who had built an octagonal house nearby in 1856.