Couple of things ....
Very fortunate to have ‘known’ both sets of my grandparents, all of whom had tough lives and who survived by working hard every day - the kids, my parents, had to pitch in as well - everyone worked for food & fuel - it was a matter of survival. My dad in particular had a more austere life on a farm in the Shenandoah Valley. We spent nights in the house as kids. There was ONE source of heat, a large coal stove down in what was a ‘family’ room next to the kitchen. It had a large table where the family gathered to eat, some chairs and an old couch. It was the one ‘warm’ room in the house & the farther you got from that stove, the cooler it was. Granddad had his rocker right in front of that stove.
When visiting, we slept upstairs in an unheated room. The bed was piled high with quilts. There was ice on the inside of the windows. When electricity finally came, there was a small electric heater that really didn’t take much of the chill out of the air and the bucket for use if you had to pee during the night was still cold as ice. I found out that if you put your clothes under the covers for a while, they warmed up & it was much more pleasant getting dressed for the dash downstairs to the coal stove to really warm up. As a boy, my dad slept in a small room that was above the family room - he would open the window and in the morning, sometimes snow would have drifted in.
My maternal grandparents had built a house when mom was a kid - the old house (that I never saw) had no modern source of heat, but the new one had an oil furnace in the basement. Hot air was blown up through a grate in the floor - the grate was in a hall between the kitchen and their bedroom downstairs. Granny also had an electric stove, but half of that stove was a ‘fire box’ - she could burn small pieces of wood, paper, etc. in it & that was a small source of heat in the kitchen. It was also great for warming up food.
There was another grate in the ceiling above the grate on the ground floor - the heat went straight up into the upstairs, but the only place it was really warm was to stand on that grate ... we kids loved to do that and get warm, before piling into bed with heaps of blankets so we could stay warm during the night.
I’ve done a lot of hiking in Shenandoah National Park. There are some cabin ruins still visible - those made out of chestnut logs have lasted a long time. What struck me, seeing these cabin ruins, is how very small the cabins were - basically one room with a stone chimney. When keeping warm is a struggle, the smaller the area you have to heat, the easier it is and with enough wood, I suspect they could stay fairly warm.
“What struck me, seeing these cabin ruins, is how very small the cabins were - basically one room with a stone chimney.”
When I bought my other farm there was a Homestead House in the far corner of the property. It was just as you described, but it was built into the side of the hill with a stone foundation - where they kept a cow and a pig and some chickens. They lived there while building ‘the big house’ which was a basic 4-square colonial. Such luxury!
Quite practical, actually - one room, one fireplace, and the heat rising from the animals below you. (Not to mention the smells, LOL!)