Lost Log Cabins of the Allegheny and Cumberland Mountains

Backcountry Notes ^ | April 8, 2010 | Jay Henderson

[jay1949]

The log cabins in this collection of vintage photographs have been lost, to the best of my knowledge. Timbers may have been salvaged from some, and it is possible that one or two have somehow survived, but if so I can find no trace of them.

[jay1949]

Mountain Folk and Log Cabins Ping List

[blueyon]

basical what our 1890 home looked like before they put siding on................................cold as can be

[huldah1776]

Beautiful they are. Here in Republic, MO, a house was being taken apart, lo and behold, inside was a log cabin. It was not destroyed but moved and preserved. I’m from Bucks County, PA, and historical buildings are precious.

[Ciexyz]

Even stone houses from the early 1800's are rare.

[muawiyah]

Many of the very best log cabins in Southern Indiana have simply been boarded over ~ or had aluminum siding installed to preserve them.

Brown County once had one of America's largest collections ~ and it still does ~ and most of them are hidden inside more modern houses.

My Great Grandfather took a log house my Great Grandmother had inherited on a piece of bottom land and moved it to his regular house to serve as a kitchen. You'd never know it had a log substrate.

One place to look is inside older barns ~ sometimes the cabin's timbers have been worked into the structure.

[ErnBatavia]

Thanks for the ping.....here in southern California, other than the Spanish missions - any home older than “mid century” (that would be 1940’s - 60s) - is pretty much nonexistent.

[silverleaf]

I'm from western PA, my ancestors were original settlers of Hannastown

One of the very few pre-revolutionary war blockhouses built by my ancestor Archibald Lochery (used to make and store black powder and weapons for the defense of the frontier from the Laurel Ridge to Pittsburgh, along with his neighbor Samuel Persing, an ancestor of Blackjack Pershing) was discovered under siding of a farm house near a grist mill on what is now the grounds of St Vincent's college.

Fortunately the site is being preserved by Arnie Palmer in memory of his late wife Winnie.

[jay1949]

I've been working on a piece about why log cabins and such are so scarce -- they really shouldn't be, if you consider the numbers which were built. The general theme is this: The traditional cultures of Appalachia (and elsewhere) were almost destroyed during the 20th century and much of that destruction was intentional. Until the beginning of the 20th century, most Americans were free to be happy living as they pleased as long as they conducted themselves within the bounds of the law. The coming of the "progressive" movement brought with it the imposition of social judgments about whether someone should be happy in life circumstances which didn't measure up to certain standards or ideals. Reformers engaged themselves in, among other things, using the power of government to make life "better" for those determined to be misguidedly enjoying their lives in "substandard" housing located in "blighted" communities. This often meant that the "ignorant" and "uneducated" were shamed into believing that they would be happier when the government "resettled" them elsewhere.

Of course, now at least some of us know better, but there was a wholesale destruction of traditional cultures and their manifestations. What managed to survive -- an old cabin here, a limestone-block "fort" house there, pockets of old-timey dialect -- are treasures for anyone who appreciates the history, not only of Appalachia, but of America. Sometimes it was nothing but sheer luck, but quite often a cabin survived simply because some ignorant knothead was too stubborn to give it up. I pay homage to those ignorant knotheads at every opportunity.

[silverleaf]

You should get in touch with the Westmoreland County(PA) Historical Society

They had a project to locate and map every surviving log cabin in their area. And visit Hannastown (and Ft Ligonier and Ft Duquesne, Bushy Run and other western PA history sites) sometime if you can.

Westmoreland County Pa was the frontier during the American Revolution, Hannastown the last seat of English Law built in the colonies, and settlers there were among the first in 1775 to petition against the English (Hannastown Declaration) and was destroyed in one of the last (maybe the last) attack in the Rev war

http://www.starofthewest.org/html/hanna.html

Also an interesting site where the German and Scot-Irish settlers came together in one community for one cause, mostly in earlier PA frontier settlements the communities were pretty segregated based on their religion/church and occupation

[jay1949]

Thanks for the link — I am hoping to get up to Pennsylvania with a camera and notebook sometime this year — there is a museum in Somerset which has a collection of preserved log cabins and farm buildings, and there are many limestone-block houses and barns in the Cumberland Valley.

[Thermalseeker]

TVA bulldozed a lot of cabins in their efforts to tame the Tennessee River and it’s tributaries back in the 1930’s. In most incidences this was done because dams were built and the land the cabins were on would be flooded by the lakes the dams formed. In quite a few incidences, though, land was seized, along with the cabins on it, families were displaced and the land was never flooded or used. There are quite a few law suits ongoing brought forth by families who had their land seized and never used by TVA. They want the land back, especially now that TVA is making noises about developing the land for profit. This is particularly true in the Tennessee River Gorge where it cuts through the Cumberland Plateau west of Chattanooga.

[I Buried My Guns]

"...What managed to survive...are treasures for anyone who appreciates the history, not only of Appalachia, but of America...."

What you said. I agree 100%.

No, wait. Let's build more Walmarts.

[silverleaf]

Here's some info on the Lochry Blockhouse
The articles say was built in 1780, but my geneaology research shows that Lochry had his blockhouse much earlier, maybe 1773. He was in dispute with the military commander in Pittsburgh (an arrogant pos) over who should control the weapons and militias to defend Hannastown, since Hannastown lies squarely between Somerset and Pittsburgh and neither fort was close enough to respond timely to constant Indian attacks on the Hannastown settlers.

Archibald was brought up on military charges of stealing weapons and hoarding powder (keeping them in his Blockhouse) but history shows, he was just “keeping it dry”.
He was an old guy by the time of the Rev war (brought from Northern Ireland to Cumberland Valley as a boy and moved west as a scout with the French and Indian campaign) but LT Col Lochry fought for the entire Rev War, in his end he was scalped in 1781 in Ohio. There is a monument to him at the site of Lochry’s massacre, south of Cincinnati, I keep meaning to go.

I would have liked to follow the trail of his lost expedition from Hannastown down to Wheeling, then down the Ohio. There is a DAR chapter there named after him. Ironically, Lochry’s last will and testament was probated in the Hannastown courthouse on 13 August 1782, the very day the town was attacked by Indians, Brit scouts, and tories, and courthouse destroyed destroyed by fire. The fact that it survived was testament to the bravery of another of my ancestors, Nancy Jack, wife of Sheriff Matthew Jack, who rescued the courthouse documents during the attack

The story of the attack on Hannastown that day and how the settlers managed to survive inside the stockade with about 23 functional weapons and the use of a classic deception campaign mounted by Matthew Jack et al, is for another time!

Lochry blockhouse
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_395261.html

Lochry final expedition
http://www.pa-roots.com/westmoreland/lochryexpedition.html

[mbarker12474]

In quite a few incidences, though, land was seized, along with the cabins on it, families were displaced

Likewise, Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia, N. Carolina

Interesting story re the history of this event as originally written, then later revised. FDR tie-ins. Great Depression. Government programs.

[Thermalseeker]

Interesting story re the history of this event as originally written, then later revised. FDR tie-ins. Great Depression. Government programs.

Yep. Don't believe for a minute that this "revisionist history" is accidental, either. Leftists have been trying to make a god out of FDR for sixty years......

[Viking2002]

This is an historic favorite - I was born and raised about a 15 minute walk from here. They did some serious chinking on those logs:

[Louis Foxwell]

A friend in MD built a circa 1850’s log cabin into the middle of his 4000 sq ft home in Araby, MD., not far from Frederick. He preserved the walls but not the roof or floor.

[Osage Orange]

More chink than log.......

[beckysueb]

This is particularly true in the Tennessee River Gorge where it cuts through the Cumberland Plateau west of Chattanooga.

This is my neck of the woods. Center Hill Lake was formed by the flooding by TVA. First they stole the land, then the taxpayers built TVA. Now we have to pay to use the boat docks and parks that resulted from the project. Nice.