Society and Culture

Surviving Log Cabins of Tennessee

Jay Henderson — Sun, 23 May 2010 12:57:33 +0000

Walker Cabin -- see (14), belowThe 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. Tennessee was the adopted home of the first Scotch-Irish Backcountry President, Andrew Jackson, who was reputed to have been born in a log cabin in Waxhaws, barely inside the South Carolina line, and who thus became the first of the "born-in-a-log-cabin" paradigm for Presidential contenders. In contrast to the unfortunate situation in other states, Tennesseans are proud of their log-cabin heritage and there are accordingly many surviving examples of this Backcountry architecture in the state.

Note: Click on any of the images below to link to the Wikimedia original with source and licensing information.

(1) Arnwine Cabin, Norris, TN. Built by Wes Arnwine in the early 1800s and used by his descendants until 1936, this single-pen cabin now stands on the grounds of the Museum of Appalachia.

(2) Ogle Cabin, Gatlinburg, TN. Built circa 1807 and the oldest structure in Gatlinsburg, this cabin is located on the grounds of the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts.

(3) Avent Cabin. Built around 1850 by the Ownby family, it was used as a studio by Nashville artist Mayna Avent in the 1920s and 30s. It is located within the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

(4) Baxter Cabin. Built in 1889 by Willis Baxter, now within the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

(5) Mahala Mullins Cabin, Hancock County, TN. The home of Melungeon moonshiner Mahala Mullins (1824–1898).

(6) Brabson's Ferry Cabin. Located on the grounds of Brabson's Ferry Plantation near Sevierville, TN.(7) Cordell Hull Birthplace, Byrdstown, TN. Located on the grounds of the Cordell Hull Birthplace State Park.

(8) "Dan'l Boone" Cabin, Museum of Appalachia. Norris, TN. Never the home of Daniel Boone, this 19th-century cabin was featured in the Fox TV series, "Young Dan'l Boone."(9) Davy Crockett Birthplace Cabin, Greeneville, TN. This cabin was reconstructed in the 1970s with logs from a cabin owned by the Stonecypher family which, according to family tradition, had been built with logs from the original Crockett cabin.

(10) Davy Crockett Cabin, Rutherford, TN. This reconstructed cabin is located in downtown Rutherford, which calls itself the "Last Home of Davy Crockett."

(11) General Bunch House, Norris, TN. Built in 1898, this reconstructed double-pen cabin now stands on the grounds of the Museum of Appalachia.(12) Christopher Taylor House, Jonesborough, TN. Built circa 1777, this unusual two-story cabin has been reconstructed in downtown Jonesborough.

(13) "John Sevier Cabin," Marble Springs, TN. Traditionally attributed to John Sevier, this cabin was built by someone else in the 1830s. Two single-pens, a one-story and a 1-1/2 story, with dogtrot(14) Walker Cabin, built circa 1828 in Knox County and moved in 1987 to Marble Springs, TN.

(15) Mark Twain Family Cabin, Norris, TN. Originally located at Possum Trot in Fentress County, TN, this cabin is said to have been owned by John Clemens, father of Samuel Clemens, better known as author Mark Twain. Now located on the grounds of the Museum of Appalachia.(16) McClung House, Museum of Appalachia, Norris, TN. This classic dog-trot cabin is believed to have been built in the 1790s by the McClung family of Knoxville. (17) Nathaniel Parker Cabin, Sumner County, TN. Built by Nathaniel Parker in the 1780s, this cabin now stands on the grounds of Bledsoe's Fort Historical Park.

(18) Peters House, Norris, TN. Originally located near Luttrell, Tennessee, this early 19th-century "saddlebag" cabin is now part of the Museum of Appalachia's "Old Homestead" collection.(19) Thompson-Brown House, Maryville, TN. This handsomely-symmetrical double-pen two-story cabin is the home of the Blount County Historic Trust Museum.

(20) Smoky Mountain Hiking Club Cabin. Now owned by the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, this cabin was built in 1934 using logs and other materials from the ruins of vintage cabins.

For more Tennessee log cabins, see:

Log Cabins and Buildings of Cades Cove

Log Cabins and Buildings of the Tennessee Great Smoky Mountains

NOTE: The images in this article have been modified and re-sized from the originals. The original images are licensed under one or more of the following: the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license; the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License; the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or later; the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license; or the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license. Image (10): original image by Chiacomo; all others: original image by Brian Stansberry.

Backcountry Folk of the North Carolina Mountains

Jay Henderson — Mon, 10 May 2010 11:08:29 +0000

Casual visitors learn nothing about the true character of the mountaineers. . . . Nor can anyone be trusted to portray them if he holds a brief either for or against this people. -- Horace Kephart, Our Southern Mountaineers (1913) at page 205.

The images in this article are taken from various public domain sources. The descriptions are from the writings of Horace Kephart, who lived in a cabin on the North Carolina side of the Great Smoky Mountains from 1904 until 1907. Kephart had a good eye for the folkways and a fine ear for the dialect of the Backcountry folk of this place and time.

Log Cabin and Moonshine Still at The Breaks

Jay Henderson — Sun, 02 May 2010 14:56:48 +0000

Son Jim came up for a visit this weekend and we spent Saturday at The Breaks Interstate Park on the Virginia-Kentucky border. The Breaks Visitor Center features a single-crib log cabin and a moonshine still -- which comes with directions for use, in case you don't already know how.

Vintage Log Cabins of the North Carolina Smokies

Jay Henderson — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:20:45 +0000

The mountains of western North Carolina are rugged and their settlements were relatively isolated from the rest of the state for many decades. With the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the mountaineers' settlements and their cabins and other buildings were largely destroyed. A handful of log buildings was preserved at the Park's Oconaluftee Visitor Center. The vintage monochrome photographs in this article depict the Oconaluftee Mountain Farm Museum buildings and other vintage log cabins of the North Carolina Smokies.

Recreational Log Cabins of 1908

Jay Henderson — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 11:07:32 +0000

William S. Wicks, author of "Log Cabins: How To Build and Furnish Them"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. While not novel, balloon- and platform-framing were boosted by developments in technology -- mills powered by water or steam which produced standardized dimension lumber, siding, and flooring, along with factories which mass-produced nails. 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.

Another phenomenon of the 19th century was the development of mass-produced books. Predictably, these included do-it-yourself manuals. The first books giving instructions on cabin-building were published before the Civil War. With the rise of recreational cabins came do-it-yourself manuals, beginning (apparently) in 1888 when Buffalo, N.Y. architect William Sydney Wicks published Log Cabins: How To Build and Furnish Them. The book was modest -- 44 pages -- but its line drawings and simple instructions made it an immediate hit. Instructions from Wicks, "Log Cabins . . . ." -- click on image for larger viewA second edition was published in 1889 and in 1908, the year here examined, the 47-page 6th edition was issued under the name Log Cabins and Cottages: How To Build and Furnish Them. Wicks' little book remains in print, either in replica editions or in revised and edited form, to this day. The images in this article are from the 1908 edition.

Civil War Skirmish at Jeffersonville 2010

Jay Henderson — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 12:48:02 +0000

The grounds of Tazewell's Crab Orchard Museum hosted the sixth annual Skirmish at Jeffersonville this past Saturday. I stopped by during a lull in the fighting and took a few pictures. Actually, the re-enactors seem to spend considerable time socializing and very little in actual hostilities -- probably for the best, considering that the age of many of the re-enactors is close to mine, i.e., getting along in years.

Note: Click on any image below for a larger view

Confederate campground. Makes me wish I'd've invested in a canvas factory.

Bear Hunting In The Smokies, 1909 -- Part 2

Jay Henderson — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:22:00 +0000

Originally published in Field & Stream magazine in 1909, this is the second part of an article written by Horace Kephart, a Pennsylvania-born writer and outdoorsman who moved to a cabin in Hazel Creek in the Great Smoky Mountains in 1904. Best known for his book Our Southern Highlanders: A Narrative of Adventure In the Southern Appalachians and a Study of Life Among the Mountaineers (1913; rev. ed 1922), Kephart loved the mountains and the mountaineers and wrote using accurately-rendered Appalachian English. For the first part of the story, see Bear Hunting In The Smokies, 1909.

NONE but native-born mountaineers could have stood the strain of another drive that day, for the country that Cope and Cable had been through was fearful, especially the laurel up Roaring Fork and Killpeter Ridge. But the stamina of these wirey little men was even more remarkable than their endurance of cold. After a slice of meat (about half what a Northern office-man would eat), a chunk of half-baked johnnycake, and a pint or so of coffee, they were as fresh as ever. What soldiers these fellows would make, under leadership of some backwoods Napoleon who could hold them together, some man like Morgan of the Revolution, who was one of them, yet greater!

I had made the coffee strong, and it was good stuff that I had brought from home. After his first deep draught, Little John exclaimed:

"Hah! boys, that coffee hits whar ye hold it!"

I thought that a neat compliment from a sharpshooter.

Appalachian Landscapes of Thomas Cole

Jay Henderson — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 11:27:00 +0000

Thomas Cole, self-portrait, ca 1836Thomas Cole (1801 – 1848) was an English-born American artist who is regarded as the founder of the “Hudson River School,” an American art movement that flourished in the mid-19th century. The Hudson River School is regarded for its realistic and detailed portrayal of American landscape and wilderness subjects.

Cole came to America with his family in 1818. With little formal training in the art of painting, Cole was recognized as a landscape artist by his mid-twenties. Beginning in about 1833, Cole maintained a studio in Catskill, New York, where he painted many landscapes of the Catskill Mountains. He also captured the landscapes of other areas of the Northern Appalachians, most notably the White Mountains in New Hampshire.

Note: Click on any image below for a larger view.

A Home in the Woods, 1847. Thomas Cole's last painting.

Bear Hunting In The Smokies, 1909

Jay Henderson — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 14:50:21 +0000

Originally published in Field & Stream magazine in 1909, this article was written by Horace Kephart, a Pennsylvania-born writer and outdoorsman who moved to a cabin in Hazel Creek in the Great Smoky Mountains in 1904. Kephart is best known for his book Our Southern Highlanders: A Narrative of Adventure In the Southern Appalachians and a Study of Life Among the Mountaineers (1913; rev. ed 1922). Kephart loved the mountains and the mountaineers. "Bear Hunting in the Smokies" is a delightful story complete with accurately rendered Appalachian English, tall tales, and howling gales.

"GIT up, pup! you've scrouged right in hyur in front of the far (fire). You Dred! Whut makes you so blamed contentious?"

The Scotch-Irish -- The First "Americans"

Jay Henderson — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 14:21:07 +0000

So, what happened to all of those Scotch-Irish settlers and their descendants? It doesn't seem that large numbers of Americans identify themselves as Scotch-Irish (or Ulster Scots or Scots-Irish). If they do, the Bureau of the Census surveys don't reveal them. The answer is, the descendants of the Scotch-Irish settlers are legion -- but a great many of them call themselves simply "Americans."