Staff photos / Beth Shiller Sandra Elser Ciminero shows Youngstown native Robert Kroeger old photos of her barn and tells him stories about growing up and playing in the barn. She reached out to Kroeger for him to consider her barn for his book.

NORTH LIMA — Youngstown native Robert Kroeger found the perfect barn to add to his collection of paintings and essays for his new book, which he plans to release in 2021.

The book will feature 88 barns — one from every county in Ohio. On Friday, his quest took him to North Lima.

Kroeger’s mission is to keep the valley’s rural history alive through his paintings and essays.

“The thinking is that if somebody stumbles upon one of the paintings 50 to 100 years from now and reads the essay that they’ll relive a little bit of the early part of Ohio because the barns were the moneymaker. That’s where the crops and the livestock went. Without the barn, farmers wouldn’t have been able to farm and Ohio would not have been built,” Kroeger said.

Kroeger credits barns for not only building up the state but also giving Ohio a way to help win the Civil War.

“So the barn was the symbol of what farming was, and so many people now who live in the suburbs, in the cities, don’t understand it, and they don’t drive into the country,” he said,

The Vindicator published a letter to the editor in May seeking barns, and he said a lot of people were sending him their barn stories.

“When all the stories came forward, this one was great. I like to do barns built prior to the 1930s for the most part, because it’s interesting to me to see how the people got through the Great Depression,” Kroeger said.

He said most of the barn owners he talked to who lived through the Depression didn’t know it was happening.

The Mahoning County pick for Kroeger’s book belongs to Sandra Elser Ciminero, who resides in North Lima. Ciminero reached out to Kroeger and told him all about the history of the barn and the family that lived there.

The barn was built in the 1930s by her grandfather, Ralph Elser, who was the Mahoning County sheriff in the 1930s.

Not only did Elser’s story draw Kroeger in, but so did Ciminero’s. Ciminero grew up in the barn with her three sisters, Patty, Jeanne and Paula. They were a very artistic family who put on plays and circuses in the barn when they were young. The most memorable play was Peter Pan.

“My eldest sister (Patty) was, of course, Peter, and Jeanne was Wendy. I was Tinkerbell. They got to fly by swinging out on a hanging rope. I was too young, thank goodness, as it was rather dangerous,” Ciminero said. “The barn provided a start for my three sisters to go into theater, while I went into art.”

The barn housed five weddings and a few wedding photo shoots, and was a setting in Ciminero’s son’s movie for film school, titled “Hellsworth Haunting.”

Even though the barn is showing its age, Ciminero is honored that Kroeger is preserving her childhood memories in his painting.

Several of Kroeger’s barn paintings, including an old train depot in Trumbull County, will be available at the fundraiser for SMARTS on Oct 25. The paintings will be sold in a silent auction.

bshiller@tribtoday.com