Built in 1858 (vernacular architecture). Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.
From the record
“The DeFries House, Barn and Carpenter Shop are a collection of historic buildings located north-west of Andrew, Iowa, United States. They are three of over 217 limestone structures in Jackson County from the mid-19th century, of which 101 were houses, nine were barns, and 36 were other farm-related buildings.”
Wikipedia article DeFries House, Barn and Carpenter Shop, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 77 National Register listings published here for Jackson County · listed in 1992 · category: Building · built in 1858, vernacular architecture.
Also known as. Limestone Architecture of Jackson County MPS
Township. Perry township
When was it built? 1858
Architectural style. vernacular architecture
National Register reference number.92000910- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
Fires near this property
15 since 2006
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 15 fires within 5 miles of DeFries House, Barn and Carpenter Shop
between 2006 and 2018, burning about 264 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Debris and open burning
8
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
7
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
2 workings within 5 miles of DeFries House, Barn and Carpenter Shop: 1 past producer, 1 producer.
1 still produces. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Andrew, the town this property stands in, in 14 storm reports between 1995 and 2023: 8 thunderstorm wind, 2 hail, 2 tornado, 1 flash flood.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
A NWS storm survey team reported an EF-1 tornado crossed the southern parts of the town of Andrew. A building at the local coop was destroyed and numerous trees were snapped.
Moisture streamed north over the central United States during the 24 hours prior to this event. Surface dew point temperatures were in the 65°-70° F. range. A strong southerly low level jet had also become established during the day with speeds at the 850 mb level in the 50 kt range. On the surface, two fronts were approaching Iowa. One was a warm front to the south of the state. A cold front was moving in from the west. An upper level low pressure area was over north central Kansas during the early afternoon hours. The air mass was quite unstable with lifted indices in the -5° to -7° C. range. The air was even more unstable to the south of Iowa. Convective available potential energy (CAPE) values were around 2800 J-kg-1 with helicity values around 400 m2-s-2 by mid afternoon. Surface mesoscale analysis during the afternoon revealed strong moisture convergence into northwest Missouri and southwest Iowa. That is where the thunderstorms formed. During the mid to late afternoon, a line of thunderstorms formed rapidly from southwest into central Iowa. These storms produced a few funnel clouds, but there was not real threat of them touching down. During the early stages of development, lightning from one of the storms struck a house in Atlantic. No fire was started, however electrical damage was reported. The freezing level on this day was quite high, in excess of 13,500 feet MSL. As a result, hail was not a dominant feature with the storms. Spotty reports of hail between three-quarters on an inch and nearly an inch in diameter were received, but most of the hail was marble-size or smaller. Wind became the major problem with the storms. Within two hours of the initial onset of convection, the thunderstorm complex assumed a bow echo configuration. This bow echo tracked across the entire state producing high winds and brief torrential rains. In Taylor County of southwest Iowa. high winds in the Sharpsburg area downed trees onto a house. The trees crashed through the house and even resulted in some foundation damage. Damage to the house was estimated between $50 thousand and $60 thousand. Near Bedford, high winds downed a tree onto a house. One man was seriously injured as he was unable to get to shelter before the tree fell through the house. He was still in the hospital the following day. Damage to the house was between $8 thousand and $9 thousand. Other damage around the state was mainly tree and power line damage. There were spotty reports of roof damage, such as in the Prairie City area of Jasper County and the Brooklyn area of Poweshiek County. A tractor-semitrailer was overturned by the high winds on Interstate 80 near Newton. For the most part winds were around 60 mph with many of the storms. A few of the storms produced brief stronger gusts in what appeared to be microburst activity. Considerable damage was done in the What Cheer area in Keokuk County. There was some increase in the wind strength over the eastern counties of the state as the storm system began to die out. Winds from the decaying storms reached 60 to 70 mph in several areas of east central Iowa. One of the collapsing storms produced high winds west of Andrew in Jackson County. The winds picked up a 2 x 4 and threw it through the side of a pick-up truck. Flooding was not a large problem except during the early stages of the storm systems development. Heavy rainfall was reported in Taylor County. Two inches fell in 55 minutes time in New Market, while .90 inches fell in 15 minutes in Bedford. The rainfall only resulted in bank full stages on the smaller streams. Minor flooding, mostly in urban areas, was reported in Union County as the heavy rainfall moved through. It did not last long, nor did it cause much damage.
Major flooding occurred on the Maquoketa River between the evening of October 10th and the morning of the 11th when the gage exceeded 28.5 feet. The Maquoketa River crested at 28.9 feet at 12 AM, October 11th.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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