the presumptive date for the building of the barn , 1832 , more than a decade before the first railroad tracks were laid in this region , a period when boats , barges and log rafts , carrying lumber , freight , grain , and passengers , were still plying the susquehanna and its adjunct canals , seems likely to be the approximate time in which the poems were written and during which the events they present happenedif they werent just by-products of someones imagining .