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While going through some of my grandfather's slides, I found two pictures of my grandparents' weekend cabin. This cabin was not a full-time residence, but it had been built by a man named Cecil who lived in a cabin nearby, which he had built himself.

Andrew Jackson would not be "politically correct" in today's world. A Backcountry warrior, made famous by the Battle of New Orleans, and a rough-hewn politician who became America's first Scotch-Irish President, Jackson was also a farmer and a slave-holder. His estate, The Hermitage, in Davidson County, Tennessee, has been preserved -- including some of the log cabins where Jackson's slaves lived. [Vintage photographs]

The State of Tennessee was pure Backcountry, untainted by Cavaliers or Puritans in colonial and early American times, and so a large proportion of its settlers lived in log cabins. . . . Tennesseans are proud of their log-cabin heritage and there are accordingly many surviving examples of this Backcountry architecture in the state. [Contemporary photographs of 20 log cabins]

During the second half of the 19th century, traditional methods of constructing residential buildings -- by using logs, timbers, or solid masonry of stone or brick -- rapidly were displaced by balloon-framing and platform-framing methods. But while the building of log cabins as primary residences faded, Americans did not stop building log cabins. They simply built them for other purposes, to serve as vacation cottages and fishing and hunting camps.

In this article, a selection of mountain cabins which were photographed when folks were living in them. The cabins depicted are all believed to have been located in Appalachia, although the location was in some cases not specified.

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.

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...

In 1875, writer Edward King published a travel memoir, "The Great South: A Record of Journeys in Louisiana, Texas, the Indian Territory, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland." The book contained numerous illustrations by James Wells Champney, including drawings of log cabins of Backcountry folk. [Vintage illustrations]

Tennesseans are proud of their frontier heritage and have preserved quite a few vintage log cabins and farm buildings. After the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was established in the 1930s, mountain communities were displaced but some of their habitations were preserved. This article presents an archive of monochrome photographs which documented these historic structures.

Cades Cove is a community frozen in time. Some of the log cabins and other buildings in Cades Cove were preserved and restored. These log and timber buildings now make Cades Cove a major draw in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. {30 vintage photographs}

A look at the corner joinery of vintage log cabins in the Virginia Backcountry, for those interested in history and folkways. Then again, the way things are going in Washington, you may want to get out the broadaxe and polish up your hewing skills.

That is because Tom Delay has now been indicted by a Democratic District Attorney in Texas. From Fox News. Rep. Tom DeLay said he would temporarily step down as House majority leader on Wednesday after he and two political associates were charged by a Texas grand jury with conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme. House sources said Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill, would recommend Rep. David Dreier of California to take over DeLay’s majority leader duties. There is some talk that the Republican leadership in the House has been preparing for this eventuality. Probably not what Tom Delay was hoping for…to...