Log Cabin Rescue

[Briar Lee]

Our little town was founded sometime in the 1830s and the folks that date these things date this log cabin to about 1840. It was in continuous occupation until a couple of years ago when an old lady died, and her heirs started tearing it down for the lot. The local historical society has bought the cabin and will be moving it to a local park, where it will be restored to original configuration as much as is practical.





Right behind the cabin is a creek, and a hand dug stone well. To think of the heat, humidity and bugs during the summer is sobering to the modern mind.

The cabin has been remodeled many times, and the last occupant had no idea it was a log cabin.

It was only striping the fairly modern asphalt siding away was it discovered the core was an antebellum log cabin.

 

[HawkeyeLinus]

Yikes, looks like almost nothing left of the original whether material or architecturally, guessing almost 100% so on the inside. Sometimes old, crappy stuff just needs to get burned. You should donate a plaque about the cabin (if anything about the various owners was of any real interest) to the park along with something fun for the kids to actually play on!

Did they buy it just to remove an eyesore that wasn't getting removed fast enough? One of the neighbor's mom's on the board?

 

[Briar Lee]

Yikes, looks like almost nothing left of the original whether material or architecturally, guessing almost 100% so on the inside. Sometimes old, crappy stuff just needs to get burned. You should donate a plaque about the cabin (if anything about the various owners was of any real interest) to the park along with something fun for the kids to actually play on!

Did they buy it just to remove an eyesore that wasn't getting removed fast enough? One of the neighbor's mom's on the board?

Missouri became a state in 1821. But before settlers could move to the interior (outstate Missouri) every foot of the land had to be surveyed. The Osage Indians had to be dealt with by treaty (two of my great great grandmothers were supposedly born Osage princesses, not your usual flat footed squaw woman. ) and the survey crews worked in a howling wilderness.

The family was tearing it down to remove the eyesore when a local history lover called in the University of Missouri and that cabin is a fairly late one, with flat sides and openings for store bought windows and doors.

The earlier cabins had no glass, rough hewn door frames, and those that know anout those things can date them.

The earliest other dwelling in the county was brick and is still occupied, small but beautiful.

The historical society also will do a dig around the site for other clues as to the age of the building.

The old dug well will be filled in and covered over so it won’t kill a kid.

There are several other restored log cabins in Missouri State parks and they look new.

 

[telescopes]

I am glad the locals have decided to save it. Local history helps establish a continuum of context for those who are new to the area.

 

[FurCoat]

That's really cool. I'm glad someone stepped up to preserve your counties history.

 

[HawkeyeLinus]

Hope it turns out but sounds like your history is more historically significant and interesting than the cabin.

 

[Briar Lee]

Hope it turns out but sounds like your history is more historically significant and interesting than the cabin.

Some Europeans had to be the first to settle in the Ozarks and it was no country for old men, or poor ones, or poorly educated men.

Consider for example the founder of Humansville, James Gilliam Human.

Born in 1798 the of a an emancipated mulatto slave and an adopted Cherokee Indian he fought in the Black Hawk War, found the Big Spring at what is now Humansville and during the Great Rebellion rode with the fabled 8th Missouri State Militia cavalry commanded by his son, scouring the countryside for Jayhawkers and Bushwhackers and routing any marauding Rebels, when in his middle sixties.

He fathered nine children with his first wife, one with his second, and six with his third, and the last seven children were born after he was sixty.



He was highly educated, a lawyer, judge, and legislator.

And lived by the ancient motto

non ministrari sed ministrare

 

[Gimlet]

Sounds like a case of Triggers Broom (UK sitcom joke): "I've had this old broom for 20 years. It's had 17 hew heads and 14 new handles".

 

[RookieGuy80]

I'm glad they're trying to save it. Hopefully an Eagle Scout can come along and help with finishing the job.

 

[mawnansmiff]

non ministrari sed ministrare

It's always baffled me that Americans love to use Latin in quotes and mottoes despite the language never being spoken there .

It's good that the cabin has been saved for future generations to see, once these places are torn down that's it, history has been trashed.

Some forward thinking guy over here started 'collecting' old buildings that were due to be demolished. He had them rebuilt brick for brick on his land at Chichester. The oldest there dates from 950AD.

We visited there about 30 years ago and just couldn't fit it all in on a one day visit.

Weald and Downland Living Museum - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Jay.

 

[Gimlet]

It's always baffled me that Americans love to use Latin in quotes and mottoes despite the language never being spoken there .

It's good that the cabin has been saved for future generations to see, once these places are torn down that's it, history has been trashed.

Some forward thinking guy over here started 'collecting' old buildings that were due to be demolished. He had them rebuilt brick for brick on his land at Chichester. The oldest there dates from 950AD.

We visited there about 30 years ago and just couldn't fit it all in on a one day visit.

Weald and Downland Living Museum - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Jay.

That's somewhere I've always wanted to visit. I'm i the building trade myself and I'm a firm believer in traditional building methods. I love looking behind the scenes on historic buildings. You can read the old tradesmen's thoughts as they built them. Why the did something in a certain way, how they got round that little problem.

I was born in a 250 year old chalk cob cottage with a thatched roof. It was cool in summer, warm in winter (our roof was always the last one in the village to retain its snow) and wasn't damp. And there was nothing more noxious than lime and horse power used in its construction. Yet you wouldn't be allowed to build like that now because someone who's been to university but doesn't know one end of a trowel from the other has decided the wheel needs reinventing.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

We have a dentist here that has been buying old log cabins and having them moved out to a state park here... where they are used as cabins for vendors at the park. I'm glad he is saving the cabins, but I am not crazy about how they are being used.

 

[mawnansmiff]

That's somewhere I've always wanted to visit.

You should find the time to visit, you won't be disappointed. I imagine it's grown since we went there.

You'd need a good 3 days to enjoy it properly, it's a fascinating place. If you have kids it'd be a great education for them too.

Some years ago I was working on an old Suffolk farmhouse (circa 1450-1550) that my boss had just bought. After ripping out some Victorian lath & plaster (horsehair mix of course) I discovered some mediaeval wall paintings underneath.....got the shock of my life. My boss wasn't best pleased as work had to stop so they could be recorded & properly conserved.

Jay.

 

[Gimlet]

Wow. I've never found anything like that. But I've done a lot of work on old mostly rural houses and a couple of times I've found children's shoes buried in the walls. Apparently this was a once a common practice though opinion is divided as to why, whether it was to ward off evil, bring general good luck, bring peace to the spirit of a dead child (there must have been a lot of those) or as a fertility charm.

I've known several thatchers who've found dead cats hidden in the eaves of rooves. I've heard of that one. It was thought to protect against witches, but never found one myself. The holy grail of strange finds for me would be a witch's bottle. Seen them in local museums but never found one. I think if I did I'd put it back where I found it..

 

[mawnansmiff]

I've known several thatchers who've found dead cats hidden in the eaves of rooves.

There was a shrivelled cat up in the attic, attached to one of the beams with a small metal chain in the Suffolk farmhouse! It was a common thing back then as you say.

I also recall having to resort to using a chainsaw to cut into a couple of the huge baulks of timber used in construction as they were almost petrified. Soft as cork on the outside, hard as rock inside.

Jay.

 

[Gimlet]

There was a shrivelled cat up in the attic, attached to one of the beams with a small metal chain in the Suffolk farmhouse! It was a common thing back then as you say.

Some of these traditions persisted for longer than we might think. The last child's shoe I unearthed in a building was about ten years ago, in a 300 year old rented cottage which I was living in myself. I was doing some structural work after a flood and had to reinforce an internal corner where the cob had cracked. It was a blind corner in the kitchen, not over a door way or fireplace where shoes were traditionally interred. I had to chip off the plaster to expose the damaged cob and I found a small void which had been filled in with lime mortar and plastered over. Inside was a child's shoe, but it was made of some synthetic material, not leather. It looked like one of those red plastic sandals from the Janet and John story books. It was definitely 20th century. I would estimate late 40's / early 50's. It couldn't have found it's way there by accident. Someone had put it there deliberately and comparatively recently.