Tom Bartholomeaux and Mary Jane Pottebaum, co-owners of the Spirit Tree Inn Bed and Breakfast outside Patagonia, stand by the wood from a Pennsylvania barn they will re-erect.

Doug Kreutz / Arizona Daily Star

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PATAGONIA — A late-1800s-era barn from an Amish region of Pennsylvania has been taken down and shipped to Southern Arizona — where it is to be raised anew next to a rural bed-and-breakfast inn.

"I was drawing up plans for a barn on the property and said, kiddingly, to the contractor that the perfect barn would be an Amish barn," says Tom Bartholomeaux, co-owner of the Spirit Tree Inn near Patagonia.

"I punched the words 'Amish barn' into an Internet search engine just for the heck of it — and we ended up finding this barn in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania," Bartholomeaux says. "It dates from between 1860 and 1880. We think it was probably an Amish barn because of its simplicity."

He and the inn's other owners — Bartholomeaux's brother, Joe, and Mary Jane Pottebaum — bought the 40-by-50-foot barn for about $35,000.

Components of the building, which had been slated to come down to make room for a shipping depot, were transported to Arizona by truck. Plans call for the barn to be re-erected next month under the direction of Caleb Ebby, a Mennonite barn-building expert from Pennsylvania.

"We're saving a piece of history from about the time of the Civil War," says Pottebaum. "And it will be a great addition to our property here."

She says the barn won't be used as lodging space but will add to the historic atmosphere of the inn site, which occupies a former ranch headquarters dating to the 1920s.

"We'll use the barn for our horses when it's needed for them, and also for storage and display" of historic farm equipment from the late 1800s, Pottebaum says. "I'm planning to try for some grant money to help make it into a museum — a place where school kids could visit for free on field trips."

Bartholomeaux says the old farm equipment includes hand-forged tools and a wheat thrasher built in the 1880s.

"Stepping into the barn will be like stepping into the past," he says.

Pottebaum estimates the total cost of the barn project — including expenditures for transportation and reassembly of the building — will be about $100,000.

Workmen poured footings for the barn earlier this month. Pottebaum says Ebby and his crew of two or three workers will need about three weeks to raise the barn in its new location.