The Mail Pouch Tobacco barn sign on M-99 in 2017. Nic Rowan | Collegian Archives
What do a tobacco ad, a groundhog, and a fictional character from a Will Carleton poem all have in common? They all live in the Will Carleton Poorhouse barn, which will be the final resting place of Hillsdale’s Mail Pouch Tobacco ad.
The disassembled ad is now in the barn and will be put on exhibit there after the barn undergoes a restoration. The Hillsdale County Historical Society recovered the ad from Mejier, which built its store on the property where the barn that displayed the ad once stood.
“When they removed the barn, they had this scissor lift, and they removed all the siding with the ad from the barn, and then stacked and actually diagrammed it for us,” said Morgan Morrison, a board member of the historical society. “So we have a piece of paper showing us where each piece of siding goes because it’s all in a pile right now. Eventually we’ll have to assemble it.”
The barn, which used to sit along M-99, is considered historic because West Virginia-based company Mail Pouch Tobacco had a 101-year-long ad campaign of painting ads on roadside barns. The campaign peaked in the 1960s, resulting in thousands of barns with tobacco ads.
“There aren’t many Mail Pouch barns left,” Morrison said. “Mail pouch was this old tobacco company and instead of using billboards and having to pay for billboards, they hired painters who would go around the country and paint people’s barns.”
Farmers were paid in addition to having their whole barn painted for free, while Mail Pouch tobacco would get a relatively cheap roadside ad, Morrison said.
The poorhouse barn, located on Wolcott Street near the corner of State Street, was given to the historical society by Bob Evans Farms Inc. in 1987. The society named it after Will Carleton, whose famous poem “Over the Hill to the Poorhouse” references the property.
Kevin Burkett, board member of the historical society and overseer of the barn renovation project, said a lot of work has gone into the property over the years.
“They redid the roof, and then kind of stabilized the barn and did some other work on it,” Burkett said. “The house was in quite a bit of disrepair too. Over the last 40 years, it’s had a lot of work done, and at this point, once the barn’s done, everything should be in pretty good shape for a while.”
Burkett said they were installing a wood panel along the base to keep out a “wayward groundhog.”
The barn restoration has only come after the historical society raised enough money to hire a crew, and they still hope to raise more money, Burkett said.
“They’re definitely still fundraising for installing electricity,” Burkett said. “Then anything past that, there will be additional phases. We’re going to need some barn paint to paint the back. Morgan has a GoFundMe set up for that.”
The historical society has been able to renovate the poorhouse barn thanks to $20,000 in donations from the community and a grant of more than $27,000 from the Hillsdale County Community Foundation.
“Who we are today is because of all the groundwork that our fathers in the community laid many years ago,” said Sharon Bisher, the president of HCCF. “We really believe in preserving our history. It has gotten us to who we are today, and while we have to care for today and plan for tomorrow, we also have to honor our history, and we think preserving that any way we can is a critical piece of our county.”
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