Recalling the Log Cabins of the Southern Piedmont

The following is from my friend Tom Evans, a distant kinsman through Clan Gunn, who hails from the Virginia Piedmont.

My father, sixth of the seven children of his family, was born in July, 1919, in a one-room log cabin on a rented farm near Wentworth in Rockingham County, North Carolina. A later owner of this land burned the cabin in the late 1960s to "get rid of that nuisance." It had stored farm tools for more than 30 observed years, before it was burned, and probably since the Evans family moved out of it.

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Map of Cumberland and Franklin

I have had the good fortune to find a digital version of Ramsey's Map of Cumberland and Franklin, published in 1853. The map depicts Tennessee during the time of settlement, when it was the frontier of the Backcountry. It shows the road, named "Robertson's Route," leading southwest from the Wilderness Road (from Virginia to central Kentucky) into Middle Tennessee. Two areas of settlement are illustrated: Northeast Tennessee, lying between the Great Smokies and the Cumberland Mountains; and upper Middle Tennessee, accessed by way of Robertson's Route. In between these areas there was no settlement in early Tennessee history.

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Vintage Log Cabins and Stone Buildings

The early settlers of the Backcountry built cabins, barns, spring-houses, and other structures of the materials at hand - - logs and stone. Foundations, fireplaces, chimneys, and sometimes walls were built from fieldstones and river-rocks. Trees were felled and hewn into logs, planks, and shingles used to construct cabins, sheds, barns, and shops. Because nails and iron hinges were expensive, these structures were made as much as possible without them; a cabin can be built entirely from stone and wood.

The basic unit of cabin construction is the "crib," a single rectangular room, usually with a loft overhead. Logs were cut, squared, and then notched on the ends so that they could be stacked securely. After the logs were stacked, the open spaces were "chicked" with wood chips and then "chinked" with mud. A crib was from 10 x 12 feet to 18 x 24 feet in size. Cribs could be joined by "dogtrots," and sometimes double-crib cabins were built. A few of the early log cabins had stairs and a second story rather than a ladder and a loft.

There are various ways to construct the roof of a cabin; in Southwest Virginia, the method often used was to lay long poles on the top ends of the logs making up the eaves, so that the poles (called "purlins') ran with the long axis of the crib. Boards and then shingles were used to complete the roof. This construction method was simple, but eventually resulted in sag in the center of the roof unless the poles were reinforced.

Glass was also expensive and so windows typically were small. Often the windows were constructed with few or no iron components. Doors also could be made entirely of wood.

Foundations, fireplaces and chimneys were made of stone, and mantles were usually made of hewn timbers. Some buildings were made with stone walls; these were usually out-buildings such as spring-houses and root cellars where a cool temperature was desirable for most of the year. Building stones were gathered from fields and riverbeds; the use of cut stone was unusual.

The vintage log, stone, and timber-frame buildings located in Pioneer Park at Crab Orchard were carefully disassembled, moved, and reconstructed with the original materials as much as possible. The buildings cover a broad range of types, including log cabins used as residences, log and timber farm buildings, a stone and timber spring house and apple house, and shops for a blacksmith, a carpenter, and a shoemaker. For images of the many log buildings and construction details, see the Crab Orchard Museum gallery.For information on Crab Orchard Museum and Pioneer Park, go here. See also the Museum Links in the right-hand column of the Backcountry Notes Society & Culture journal, where you can find more Backcountry museums which feature vintage log buildings.