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By LORENA BENIQUEZ West Branch Life Magazine

One Montoursville barn sits upon land that bore witness to the birth of America and one historic clash between Native Americans and European settlers

That barn is home to Herman & Luther’s, an event space with a rustic elegance celebrating the barn’s former life

The once dilapidated barn on Route 87 was transformed to play host to weddings and other events Becky Yeagle, Herman and Luther’s general manager, says brides are awed by its thoughtful restoration.

“All I hear is, ‘Oh my gosh’ when they walk up They always say, ‘It is so much more beautiful than the pictures.’ There was a respect to the integrity of what they kept here That is what is important to a lot of people,” she says.

Prior to the present barn’s construction, another barn occupied the property. Six years before America’s founding, the first barn was built by Henry Scott, a wealthy Philadelphia Quaker. Unfortunately, less than a decade later, the

LORENA BENIQUEZ/West Branch Life barn burned down According to an 1980 article in “Now and Then” (a quarterly magazine formerly published by the Muncy Historical Society), there is some evidence to support the theory that Native Americans torched the barn in 1778, during “The Big Runaway.”

Prior page, the event hall at Herman and Lutherʼs in Montoursville. Above, the tented space is used for wedding ceremonies and dining. At right, the entrance to the venue, which occupies a chic, renovated bank barn.

The term refers to the retreatment of settlers to the Sunbury area to avoid the wrath of British Soldiers, who aligned with Native Americans to burn homes, crops and barns. Soon after, the bank barn was rebuilt but eventually fell into disrepair. Then in the 1980s, it got its first restoration from Luther Heim. When the Logue family purchased the property in 2014 from Heim, it became the jewel it is now after one year of construction on the main structure and Carriage House

Yeagle says of the main structure, “We are rustic, chic elegance ”

That perfectly describes the property in its totality The interior’s event space is minimalist with a stone wall acting as a focal point