If I may ...

[PogueMahone]

Re: If I may ...

Ok I'm tech savvy enough to paste links that don't require a query but anything else....

Go to the LOC Civil War photo catalog

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/cwpquery.html

Enter search Cedar mountain. Go to #7 Cedar mountain with family in front of house where Gen Winder died.

I like this one because it is clapboard with a small footprint.

Same search, no. 13, says it is where Winder was killed, but it is a log structure? Still, a nice image, also.

[Hank Trent]

Re: If I may ...

Hope this helps:

Here's an example of an unhewn log structure found to be attached to a hewn log structure of the late 18th century home: At the research site photos you'll see a few views of round-log construction in the late 1700's in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Isaac and Margaret Sharp House
New Garden Township Chester County, PA

I'm sure there are others out there still standing nearest the size and style you seek. I seem to recall many cabins built around the Great Lakes/Canada region that were round unhewn tiny cabins that remain intact.

That's pretty cool! One can look at that and notice all kinds of details. It's got some "upscale" touches--the steeple notches are carefully cut rather than saddled out with a felling axe, and the ends of the logs are cut flat. You can see where time was spent, and where compromises were made, such as not hewing and leaving bark on when it didn't matter.

Honestly, I think a house like the Sharp house, or better, was probably more common by the 1860s than the more primitive temporary homes.

Here's a snippet about notching from http://www.nps.gov/history/hps/tps/briefs/brief26.htm

They range from the simple "saddle" notching, which demands minimal time and hewing skill, to the very common "V" notching or "steeple" notching, to "full dovetail" notching, one of the tightest but most time-consuming to accomplish, "half-dovetail" notching which is probably one of the most common, and "square" notching secured with pegs or spikes.

The notching method on some of the earliest eastern cabins and most 19th century western cabins, particularly saddle notching, left an extended log end or "crown."

Okay, I'd argue that it wasn't the notching style that left the extended log end, it was the fact that those who chose the saddle notch also typically chose not to hew or saw the end of the logs flush, and just left them alone after they were cut to length with an axe, either because they didn't have a saw or hewing axe, or just didn't want to spend the time. You see the extended ends a lot on winter quarters pictures like this.

By the way, I agree with what Joe posted above:

There is a suspension of disbelief required for reenacting. We don't use bullets or shrapnel, we don't all have lice, breastworks are usually "stick forts" that wouldn't stop spit, and age and weight must be ignored for the vast majority of participants. The obstacle of housing limits civilian participants at the majority of events to just a few impressions and those roles get repeated over and over again. I think that learning more about the construction styles and methods used would be helpful in creating possibilities for more roles and experiences for civilian participants.

Learning to notice and understand the construction methods and context of various styles of small period cabins/homes is useful in itself, just for general historic knowledge. The first step in reproducing anything is figuring out what one is aiming for, and then figuring out what must be compromised.

Looking at and discussing pictures like the Lincoln birthplace, the Sharp house, original drawings, reading descriptions, etc., all helps in understanding what people were doing.

We've barely touched on A. J. Downing Gothic Cottages with their vertical board and batten siding and steep roofs. I love the image that Joe linked to above. That's got to be A.J. Downing's worst nightmare. Yet you can see how changing times have changed the vernacular architecture. Sawn shingles, nails, and sawn planks are now cheaper than going out and cutting down trees and shaping them with hand tools.

Same search, no. 13, says it is where Winder was killed, but it is a log structure? Still, a nice image, also.

That's an image showing a log house with a stone chimney, closer to the camera than a couple other sided structures, right? No windows, minimal-to-no daubing, the least finished building in the picture from a 19th century standpoint... I'm wondering... Is it a functional outbuilding, smokehouse, washhouse? It's an example, though, of a steeple-notched building with the log ends left long, showing that cutting the log-ends square wasn't dependent on the notching style. They're not planning to side it anytime soon!

We also haven't talked about trans-Mississippi styles yet, like I think there's an image online someplace of Sam Houston's little house that's still restored and standing.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[Virginia Mescher]

Re: If I may ...

This is Virginia's spouse posting.

I wish now I had purchased it. We were in an antique store in West Virginia and they had a glass negative showing a family outside their house. I've forgotten what the house looked like but the element that grabbed my attention was the stick and mud chimney. I think what convinced me not to purchase it was Virginia looked at the woman in the picture and decided, from her clothing, it was post war. I'll have to check the store out the next time I'm there and maybe the negative will still be unsold.

Michael Mescher

[PogueMahone]

Re: If I may ...

We also haven't talked about trans-Mississippi styles yet, like I think there's an image online someplace of Sam Houston's little house that's still restored and standing.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~tx...omeHouston.jpg

Sam didn't put on any pretensions, did he?

[PogueMahone]

Re: If I may ...

What about frame houses? Clapboard or plank-sided or however you choose to call them ...

I've been doing some searches, but mostly find larger two story houses.

[Citizen_Soldier]

Re: If I may ...

Joe,

In looking back at the previous thread that was locked, I didn't really see anyone questioning whether or not small one roomed houses existed. More so the questions was whether such historical structures resemble the portable "play houses" some historical interpreters are using.

There is no doubt that small one room structures existed in the middle part of the nineteenth century. The historical and archeological record strongly support such structures as transitional or temporary housing, especially in more undeveloped areas. However across the eastern United States these structures would have been added on to as time and economic conditions allowed, improved/modernized as the comforts of civilization surrounded once "frontier" areas, converted into outbuildings as farms expanded, or razed as the structures deteriorated.

The people living in unimproved single room round log cabins in developed areas of the eastern United States at the time of The Rebellion would likely be from a low economic class.

Joe, from your lack of knowledge concerning cat and clay chimneys or weight pole roofs, I'm figuring that you are new to the subject of historic architecture. With a little more research, I think you'll gain a better understanding of the topic.

Darrek Orwig

[Hank Trent]

Re: If I may ...

What about frame houses? Clapboard or plank-sided or however you choose to call them ...

I've been doing some searches, but mostly find larger two story houses.

The first example that occurs to me is Thoreau's cabin by Walden pond. Pretty sure it was frame, though I bet most people assume it was log. But it shows that there was a mindset for frame construction among small-town New England intellectuals. And that's no coincidence--the English building tradition was frame, because England had been so short of good woodlots for so long. I want to say the Plimoth Rock-era buildings were frame too.

While Thoreau's house was certainly an anomaly, it does lead back to one place to look--Irish railroad shanties, like the one he bought for salvage, and any other temporary housing for workers, like for building a bridge, canal, etc., which would also include slave cabins, though I don't know anything about their customary architectural tradition.

For reenacting purposes, it's worth mentioning at this point the close ties between architecture and the kind of people who lived in any particular kind of house. Ideally, if we're going for PEC, there should be some kind of fit, the Irish railroad worker in the railroad worker's shanty, the lonely prairie homesteader in the homesteader's house, the poor white trash in the old log cabin, etc. Yes, there were anomalies--the intellectual in the poor laborer's hut, like Thoreau--but the many admonitions about jaguar-skin trousers still apply.

For new construction in the 1860s, framing was shifting from the traditional timber frame to balloon framing, which was closer to what we think of as a typical 2x4 frame today, as timber became more expensive and sawing became cheaper, but older homes, especially in the east, would be more apt to be what's called "timber frame" or "post and beam" today. Then, it was just called frame.

Other than frame and log, another option for a cheap house could be plank, which consists of two layers of overlapping planks nailed vertically to a sill frame. There's no other frame, except for cleats to support the ceiling or second floor, and rafters. I used to live in a plank house built for oilfield workers in the 1890s, that was one story, about 15' x 24' with a shed kitchen added on back, made with two layers of 1x12 planks.

A quick google brought up this description of a plank house, apparently the first one the investigator had seen. They are funny, because they're really nothing but sheathing under the siding. When tearing them down, you expect to take off the siding and then the sheathing and run into a frame, but... there's nothing there! They just dissolve like cotton candy.

I don't know how common they were in the 1860s and before, and it's hard to search, because I don't know any other name for them, yet "plank house" apparently refers to a Native American style of house, and they're also not like the houses which were made of horizontal hewn planks set into corner posts that were sort of a cousin to log cabins. I'd be curious if anyone knows more about them in particular, or what kinds of houses railroads, canals etc. were building for their workers in the 1850s and 60s.

I came to this page, which talks about plank building, but they're also calling very traditional, classic English frame homes "plank homes." The diagram for the White Ellery Frame is not what I'd call a "plank house" by any stretch of the imagination. It's a classic frame house--the overhang of the upper story is a traditional way of building houses in English/European towns because it not only solves a joining problem neatly but it gives a little extra floorspace on your second floor without encroaching on the street. The planks in that case are merely sheathing.

So I don't know when true plank construction without a vertical frame became common for company-built worker housing. Again, one problem is that those kinds of houses didn't survive--the one I lived in has already been torn down--and historical societies etc. are mostly interested in what can be preserved, not what's long gone.

Here's a brief description of the style in a period book. In fact, that whole book might be useful, since it has the enticing title of The Economic Cottage Builder, but with the warning that it seems to be to small houses what Godey's is to working women's clothing. For example, here's the author's conception of log house, or "the primitive dwelling of the backwoodsman, as it might be made with but a trifling attention to details."

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[KathyBradford]

Re: If I may ...

Hank,

You bring up some very good points about original settlers and their traditional building styles. As you said, the English tradition was to maximize the commodity by using sawn lumber. According to the archaeologists, the Jamestown (1607) palisade fence was made of sawn boards and not the "sharpened pencils in a row" construction that comes to mind when we might initially think of forts. Here, it is portrayed at Jamestowne Settlement.


Based on research, sawn boards were used to portray the 1620 English settlement at Plymouth shown at Plimoth Plantation.


Another type of English construction would be very difficult to replicate for our temporary purposes, and it would seem to be very outdated, as well. It's pretty fascinating, though. The Jamestown archaeologists have uncovered the use of wattle and daub in earlier building. Here is a picture of deteriorating wattle and daub from the Jamestowne Settlement former building that portrayed the church.


This description comes from the Martin's Hundred site. "The dwelling measured 12' by 28' and was located within an enclosed area that contained two flankers and three gates. The structure used the same post in the ground construction technique, with slots suggesting an interrupted sill. The timber framed postholes were filled with daub, with at least one post being burned in place. The dwelling was a typical hall and parlor house with two 10' bays. Two small posts within the service may represent a hood covering an open hearth. The walls were wattle and daub and no window glass was found on the site, suggesting the use of wooden shutters to protect the settlers from bad weather (Luccketti 1981)."

http://www.preservationvirginia.org/resource/jt2000/siteh.html?process=0

The Swedes and Finns were credited as being the first to bring log cabin construction to this continent, and they settled the area that is currently Wilmington, Delaware, in 1638. The log cabin that is thought to be the earliest surving example is in Drexel Hill, PA.

http://www.swedishcabin.org/html/sc_history.htm

Here are pictures from their site.






Parts of the original building remain, but there is always a question about how the intervening years and well-intentioned efforts to preserve the place might have changed the original characteristics.

Thanks to all who have contributed to this discussion. It will be interesting to see how it translates into a roof over someone's head.

[Hank Trent]

Re: If I may ...

The Swedes and Finns were credited as being the first to bring log cabin construction to this continent, and they settled the area that is currently Wilmington, Delaware, in 1638. The log cabin that is thought to be the earliest surving example is in Drexel Hill, PA.

That's long before the period I've really studied, but here's what Donald A. Hutslar says in Log Construction in the Ohio Country:

By the end of the seventeenth century, therefore, when the basic precepts of log buildings on the European continent had been transfered to North America, it would have been possible in most cases to identify the national origin of the occupants of a log house by its method of construction. The next generation of immigrants was, in large part, responsible for the diffusion of log building in the colonies and the subsequent loss of nationalistic typology. These people were the Scotch-Irish--Protestant Lowland Scots who had largely resided in stone cottages in northern Ireland a few generations before emigrating to the colonies in several waves beginning early in the eighteenth century...

Thus, by the third quarter of the eighteenth century, due to the movement of the Scotch-Irish as well as the Germans [who had a log building tradition], log building had become the common constructional mode on the boundaries of colonial settlement. As a consequence, the cultural typology of log construction became greatly diluted. The Scotch-Irish, who had no tradition of log building, had no qualms about borrowing elements of any style of construction which they encountered.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[Emmanuel Dabney]

Re: If I may ...

Some sources that may be helpful:

Upton, Dell, and John Michael Vlach, eds. Common places: Readings in American Vernacular Architecture. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986. In this are two articles that you should read. The first is Fred Kniffen and Henry Glassie's "Building in Wood in the Eastern United States: A Time-Place Perspective and Warren E. Robert's "The Tools Used in Building Early Log Houses in Indiana."


Getting back to that Cedar Mountain image the house is clapboard with flaking whitewash (see attachment).

[ewtaylor]

Re: If I may ...

I had a question in which I PMed Mrs. Trent and she mentioned I should post it here also. If anyone could steer me to a good website (I'm pressed for time so don't have time for a book).
I'm looking for descriptions of INTERIOR rooms (kitchens, family rooms, bedrooms) for the following:
Well-to-do family in their mid-50s, they have a handful of slaves if this is important to know. Live in Southern Ky, mountainous area.
Small farmer in thier mid-twenties, young daughter (about 8). No slaves. Live in Middle TN.
I'm assuming the house in Ky would be brick and wood. The house in TN would be a small frame house. Although this info is not important.
thanks for any help you can provide.
ew taylor

[LindaTrent]

Re: If I may ...

I had a question in which I PMed Mrs. Trent and she mentioned I should post it here also.

You know, one thing I love about the computer is that people can ask questions and usually get answers pretty quick. The forums and lists are even better because *usually* one can get several different responses from people who have access to a multitude of primary sources and/or well researched secondary sources both online and off.

Besides, the question itself is something that people on the forum should know. What did the interior of homes of the well-to-do and the common man look like? So this was an excellent question to bring up here. Besides you asked about the well-to-do people as well, and while we study up on them when we need to, that's just not our forte. We tend to focus on more the common man of the era.

I'm looking for descriptions of INTERIOR rooms (kitchens, family rooms, bedrooms) for the following: Small farmer in thier mid-twenties, young daughter (about 8). No slaves. Live in Middle TN.

I did send you a copy of my ggg grandmother's reminiscences of her growing up in western NY state in the 1830s. Admittedly it was written in 1900, but from what I've seen it very closely resembles homes I've researched in SE Ohio and KY in the 1860s.

Here are her reminiscences.

How detailed do you want to get?

Linda.
lindatrent@zoomnet.net

[PogueMahone]

Re: If I may ...

I had a question in which I PMed Mrs. Trent and she mentioned I should post it here also. If anyone could steer me to a good website (I'm pressed for time so don't have time for a book).
I'm looking for descriptions of INTERIOR rooms (kitchens, family rooms, bedrooms) for the following:
Well-to-do family in their mid-50s, they have a handful of slaves if this is important to know. Live in Southern Ky, mountainous area.
Small farmer in thier mid-twenties, young daughter (about 8). No slaves. Live in Middle TN.
I'm assuming the house in Ky would be brick and wood. The house in TN would be a small frame house. Although this info is not important.
thanks for any help you can provide.
ew taylor

Everett,

I don't know if you are familiar with the Tennessee Civil War Veterans Questionnaires, but they might be of some interest to you. I found one online to give you an example: http://www.bribling.net/cwquest.htm He doesn't give interior information, but he describes the house he grew up in and his life. Monroe County is in east Tennessee in the mountains.

You may be able to access these books at your library or via library loan. The state website has a list of names in the books: http://www.tennessee.gov/tsla/histor...tary/quest.htm

His description of his house and the detached kitchen, the work he did and the tools used, as well as that of his mother and sister, is interesting to anyone else that might take a gander. :)

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: If I may ...

Hallo!

Although a generation removed, and although held suspect in some quarters for her snooty "English" anti-American views, Frances Trollope's "Domestic Manners of Americans”, which she wrote after a living in the United States for three years, has a few snippets.


WESTERN MARYLAND. Summer 1830. Family Life and Domestic Arrangements of Small Landowners; Whiskey's Ruinous Effect.

One of these families consisted of a young man, his wife, two children, a female slave, and two young lads, slaves also. The farm belonged to the wife, and, I was told, consisted of about three hundred acres of indifferent land, but all cleared. The house was built of wood, and looked as if the three slaves might have overturned it, had they pushed hard against the gable end. It contained one room, of about twelve feet square, and another adjoining it, hardly larger than the closet; this second chamber was the lodging-room of the white part of the family. Above these rooms was a loft, without windows, where I was told the "staying company" who visited them, were lodged. Near this mansion was a "shanty," a black hole, without any window, which served as a kitchen and all other offices, and also as the lodging of the blacks.

We were invited to take tea with this family, and readily consented to do so. The furniture of the room was one heavy huge table, and about six wooden chairs. When we arrived the lady was in rather a dusky dishabille, but she vehemently urged us to be seated, and then retired into the closet-chamber above mentioned, whence she continued to address to us from behind the door all kinds of "genteel country visiting talk," and at length emerged upon us in a smart new dress.

Her female slave set out the great table, and placed upon it cups of the very coarsest blue ware, a little brown sugar in one and a tiny drop of milk in another, no butter, though the lady assured us she had a "deary" and two cows Instead of butter, she "hoped we would fix a little relish with our crackers," in ancient English, eat salt meat and dry biscuits. Such was the fare, and for guests that certainly were intended to be honoured. I could not help re calling the delicious repasts which I remembered to have enjoyed at little dairy farms in England, not possessed, but rented, and at high rents too; where the clean, fresh-coloured, bustling mistress herself skimmed the delicious cream, herself spread the yellow butter on the delightful brown loaf, and placed her curds, and her junket, and all the delicate treasures of her dairy before us, and then, with hospitable pride, placed herself at her board, and added the more delicate "relish" of good tea and good cream. I remembered all this, and did not think the difference atoned for, by the dignity of having my cup handed to me by a slave. The lady I now visited, however, greatly surpassed my quondam friends in the refinement of her conversation. She ambled through the whole time the visit lasted, in a sort of elegantly mincing familiar style of gossip, which, I think, she was imitating from some novel, for I was told she was a great novel reader, and left all household occupations to be performed by her slaves. To say she addressed us in a tone of equality, will give no adequate idea of her manner; I am persuaded that no misgiving on the subject ever entered her head. She told us that their estate was her divi-dend of her father's property. She had married a first cousin, who was as fine a gentleman as she was a lady, and as idle, preferring hunting (as they call shooting) to any other occupation. The consequence was, that but a very small portion of the divi-dend was cultivated, and their poverty was extreme. The slaves, particularly the lads, were considerably more than half naked, but the air of dignity with which, in the midst of all this misery, the lanky lady said to one of the young negroes, "Attend to your young master, Lycurgus," must have been heard to be conceived in the full extent of its mock heroic.

Another dwelling of one of these landed proprietors was a hovel as wretched as the one above described, but there was more industry within it. The gentleman, indeed, was himself one of the numerous tribe of regular whiskey drinkers, and was rarely capable of any work; but he had a family of twelve children, who, with their skeleton mother, worked much harder than I ever saw negroes do. They were, accordingly, much less elegant and much less poor than the heiress; yet they lived with no appearance of comfort, and with, I believe, nothing beyond the necessaries of life. One proof of this was, that the worthless father would not suffer them to raise, even by their own labour, any garden vegetables, and they lived upon their fat pork, salt fish, and corn bread, summer and winter, without variation. This I found was frequently the case among the farmers. The luxury of whiskey is more appreciated by the men than all the green delicacies from the garden, and if all the ready money goes for that and their darling chewing tobacco, none can be spent by the wife for garden seeds; and as far as my observation extended, I never saw any American menage where the toast and no toast question would have been decided in favour of the lady.

OHIO, OUTSIDE CINCINNATI. Spring 1828. Married Life on a Forest Farm: Provisions, Entertainments.

We visited one farm which interested us particularly from its wild and lonely situation, and from the entire dependence of the inhabitants upon their own resources. It was a partial clearing in the very heart of the forest. The house was built on the side of a hill, so steep that a high ladder was necessary to enter the front door, while the back one opened against the hillside; at the foot of this sudden eminence ran a clear stream, whose bed had been deepened into a little reservoir, just opposite the house. A noble field of Indian-corn stretched away into the forest on one side, and a few half-cleared acres, with a shed or two upon them, occupied the other, giving accommodation to cows, horses, pigs, and chickens innumerable. Immediately before the house was a small potato garden, with a few peach and apple trees. The house was built of logs, and consisted of two rooms, besides a little shanty or lean-to, that was used as a kitchen. Both rooms were comfortably furnished with good beds, drawers, &c. The farmer's wife, and a young woman who looked like her sister, were spinning, and three little children were playing about. The woman told me that they spun and wove all the cotton and woollen garments of the family, and knit all the stockings; her husband, though not a shoemaker by trade, made all the shoes. She manufactured all the soap and candles they used, and prepared her sugar from the sugar-trees on their farm. All she wanted with money, she said, was to buy coffee, tea, and whiskey, and she could "get enough any day by sending a batch of butter and chicken to market." They used no wheat, nor sold any of their corn, which, though it appeared a very large quantity, was not more than they required to make their bread and cakes of various kinds, and to feed all their live stock during the winter. She did not look in health, and said they had all had ague in "the fall;" but she seemed contented, and proud of her independence; though it was in somewhat a mournful accent that she said, " 'Tis strange to us to see company: I expect the sun may rise and set a hundred times before I shall see another human that does not belong to the family."

Curt

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: If I may ...

Hallo!

My wife's grandparents lived in an 1870's salt box in Noble County, Ohio.
The house was built next to a two story log cabin that was used for livestock (chickens and rabbits mostly) until torn down in the 1950's as a danger to the new generation of grandchildren running around.

Another branch of her family arrived nearby in 1803, and built a two-story log cabin. It was abandoned in the 1880's when a new house was built in front of it.

From a distance I did not realize it was a log cabin. Sash windows had been added. There were several log additions (a kitchen being commonly added to three log cabin sites I excavated.) likely as the family grew. Clapboard was nailed to the outside to create the look of a frame house. The interior rooms were lathed over the logs, and plastered- and had undergone a number of paintings and stencilings that were buried under 4-6 layers of wall paper. The now central chimney had two first floor closed-in fireplaces with the stove pipe hole from the later wood burner stove.

It had a well, and root cellar in the back.

Curt