Backcountry Notes

NOTE: Click on any image to view a larger versionThe Frontier Culture Museum's 1740s log cabin is displayed as a work in progress.  The cabin is a typical peeled-log, saddle-notched settler's cabin of the kind favored by Scotch-Irish moving into the wilds of the Backcountry.  The construction was simple and required few tools.  This example is built with one door and no windows -- a common practice which led to laws requiring homesteader's cabins have at least one window.

Below: The settler's cabin, circa 1740, under construction.  In the foreground, raw materials. 

Next: Most of the structure is comprised of two easy-to-make items: peeled, saddle-notched logs and cedar shakes. The sill logs and door timbers required more work.

Shown below is an end view of the cabin, demonstrating the placement of logs in the walls and peeled-log purlins in the gable. Some of the gaps have been partially chinked (or chicked) and daubed (dobbed).

Next, a view of the other end of the cabin, from the inside. On the upper right, the purlins have been covered by cedar shakes; on the upper left, the purlins are still uncovered.

A closer inside view of the roof showing the placement of long cedar shakes on the purlins. "Shakes" are made by sawing a cedar log to the desired length of about 2 feet and then using a froe and mallet to split the log into rectangular pieces.  Cedar shingles are made by sawing the log, rather than splitting. Shakes were more quickly made and therefore preferred.

Below: view of door frame.  Note the sill log at the bottom of the frame; this and the door-frame timbers had to be cut or adzed flat on two sides. Some of the gaps (towards the bottom of the log runs) have been partially chinked and daubed.  Chinking was done with rectangular wood chips; a supply of those is shown on the ground at left.  Daubing was common red earth, often mixed with sand to minimize shrinkage.

On the right, a closeup of the door framing.  Holes were cut into the upright timbers and the ends of the wall logs and then wooden pegs were hammered in the hold everything in place. 

OTHER ARTICLES IN THIS SERIES:

Virginia's Frontier Culture Museum

Reconstructing and Replicating Vintage Log Buildings

Frontier Culture Museum -- 1600s English Farm

Frontier Culture Museum -- 1700s Irish Forge

Frontier Culture Museum -- 1700s Irish Farmstead

Virginia Frontier Culture Museum 1700s German Farm