Posted on 04/06/2010 7:15:17 AM PDT by jay1949
This article features a single cabin which is perhaps the most primitive example of such a habitation you'll ever see. But it is the real McCoy -- a one-room, round-log Backcountry settler's cabin, the kind of structure that was thrown together quickly by tens of thousands of immigrants in the mountains of Southern Appalachia during the colonial years. Previously I would have been confident in stating that not one of these structures had survived much past the time of the Civil War -- but not only was this one still standing when it was photographed in 1902, it was the home of one Pharaoh Jackson Chesney.
(Excerpt) Read more at backcountrynotes.com ...
Mountain Folk and Log Cabins Ping List
All I can say is...thank God for lumber!
My aunt has pics of our ancestors from the hills of Tennessee and Alabama who were living in cabins only slightly better than the one in the picture.
Being free in a primitive cabin sure beats being a slave in government housing.
Too bad so few of our fellow citizens feel that way.
Love this stuff. My ancestors were in Maryland in the mid 1600’s.
Thanks.
I love the mountaineer’s names - Pharaoh Jackson Chesney.
That roof doesn’t exactly look water proof.
Those were days as Louis L’Amour wrote that “Men were so rough that they wore their clothes out from the inside.”
Interesting read. Notice who he voted for?
“... living in cabins...”
My grandfather and his brother came to Nebraska from Sweden in the 1880’s. They homesteaded on the prairie. They each built one room sod houses. They and many frontier families raised families in these sod houses. In the summer, when my grandfather came in from the field after dusk (before he was married and had family), the first thing he had to do was chase the rattlesnakes out - they came in during the heat of the day to keep cool.
“Notice who he voted for?”
Obviously he knew more than is known today about where opportunity lies. But that was before the lies of the likes of Jesse Jackson & others, the lies of Pelosi, Reid, Obama, and the Black Caucus. That was before the dumbing down of those caught up by the serf-creating welfare system. Slavery is not dead - it is just that the Democrats have become their new masters, and even many who have never bought into the welfare system for themselves, those with education, good jobs etc, have become serfs (slaves) to these Democrat masters.
Sure, but I wonder about the author’s politics, since he put a small “r” in Republican . . .
Great — How long ago were the pictures taken? Had those cabins survived to the 20th century?
I’m guessing mid to late 1800’s, so the cabins were built say around the Civil War, long after this one. They were all wood and built better but not much. I imagine they survived into the 20th century but are likely long gone now.
I do recall seeing old abandoned cabins from the road in Tennessee back when I was a kid in the 70’s.
Agreed. Mine were as well. Both sides of my family came out of the Richmond colony in the 1670's and settled in the Church Creek area of MD. The settlement was and still is called World's End. There are fewer people living there today than when it was settled.
Isn’t it amazing how far we’ve come in so short a time! My Sweetie’s mother grew up in a half dug-out in the southwest. He went back to see it & it was being used as a chicken coop.
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