Eric Sloane, author and artist, lived in Brookfield, Conn., in a farmhouse built in 1782. He found a number of old barns on his property, and some of the original tools of the pioneers who built the place. This began a ten-year study of barns and covered bridges, and a collection of paintings depicting the American country scene. This book, he says, began one day when he was dismantling an old barn: "The ironlike quality of the wood and the cleanness of the edge cuts made me wonder what those times must have been like and what sort of man the builder of this barn had been. For on lifting a timber from a part of the dry wall, which had been plastered over on top and protected from 200 years of weather by a covering of wood, I found the imprint of the builder's hand . . . To me it was as though he had reached down across the years to greet me, and right then and there I knew I'd continue seeking to know better that first American, the Barn Builder."