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Log Cabin ConstructionI got this article today from a geneaology link, about Maury County Tennessee, where my great-grandfather was from before he came to Texas in 1870. It tells about the labor involved in log cabin construction - kinda 'voo period, and it was interesting to me. Thought y'all might like to read it. Wish I lived closer, I'd go hear this guy. This was in The Daily Herald yesterday in Columbia, Tennessee. Thought some of you might enjoy it. Gives a little insight to the early settlers of the Maury County area. - Rick From The Daily Herald, Columbia, Tennessee - 7 Aug 2005: Michael Gavin, log house guru, is coming to speak The year is 1807 and you and your family, along with your flocks, herds and meager possessions, have just forded the Duck River and arrived at your new land grant farm. It is very late winter, and the first signs are appearing. There are a thousand things that must be done -- set out fruit trees, burn off the cane, break ground for planting and cut trees, cut trees and cut trees. Taking down the trees serves many purposes. The wood will provide for cooking fires, fences, rough furniture -- and during the summer when the crops are growing, the trunks will become your new home. It is hard for us to imagine the sheer physical labor that went into the construction of a log house. By the time the pioneers had their crops in the ground they had a limited amount of time to get a structure up in which they could survive the next winter. Notching and stacking logs to form the outer frame of the house was just the beginning of the work. A roof frame would be erected and laboriously joined together using wooden pegs. Iron nails were a rarity on the frontier and were made, one at a time, by a blacksmith. Then the roof framing must be covered. Cedar was the wood of choice for making shingles. Using a mallet and a tool called a "froe" the shingles would be "riven" one at a time by splitting thin slabs of wood from a short section of a cedar log. Your cabin will need many of these shingles. But how do we attach the shingles to the roof framing as we do not have any nails? It looks like we will have to sew our roof on! That's right, we will use laces of hide, vine, hemp or any other material that we have available. Two holes are drilled near the top of the shingle. If we do not have a drill, we will burn the holes using a red hot iron "needle." Then we tie each shingle down to the roof framing. Are you tired yet? If not, you soon will be. With the walls up and the roof on we can now move inside, but there is still much to do before winter. We have left two holes in the walls -- one for a door and the other for a fireplace. It is time to take the wagon and gather stone. Finding the stone in Maury County is easy, but carrying it back and building it into a fireplace is back-breaking. The big flat stones will be used for the hearth and the firebox. The blockier stones will be used for the outer shell. We will pack dirt into the space between. After we have dragged up all the stone we need, we start forming up the firebox. It is only then that we realize that we need more stone -- and then some more stone. The chimney is built atop the firebox with "wattle and daub." This is a stack of limbs stacked crossways and then slathered with muddy clay mixed with straw. This is only a temporary fix. Maybe next year there will be time to build a stone chimney. Have the kids gather up the wood chips from all the chopping that has gone on. Make a big pile of them and then send the kids to gather all the small flat rocks they can find. Oh, and buckets of more wet clay from the creek bank. We are going to need all this stuff for chinking the logs. Our log walls have gaps between every log. This is great during the summer and allows the breeze to blow through, but come winter we are going to want to fill all those gaps. Using our wood chips, small stones and any other filler material we can lay hands on, we fill these gaps and then smear on a layer or two of wet clay to fill in the gaps. And during all this fun we have also had to harvest our crops, gather the eggs, hunt and fish, wash the clothes in the creek, gather nuts and berries, grind our corn by hand and maybe deal with the occasional Indian visitor. Whew! Maury County still has many of its old log homes. Most of them are camouflaged behind clapboard, but they are still around. This coming Thursday night at 6 p.m., here at the archives, Michael Gavin of the Middle Tennessee State University Center for Historical Preservation is coming to speak on "Maury County Log Houses and Early Settlers." Michael Gavin's name should not be unknown to you. He has been around Maury County for a long time and lives just down the road in Summertown. His own story is quite interesting. Michael came here back in the late 1960s with "The Farm." He was on one of the brightly painted buses that rolled into town from California. Since that time, Michael has devoted most of his time to innovative construction and has become the source for everything about log houses -- old and new. If you own a log house, live in one, know about one or are just curious about early construction techniques, this is your chance to hear Michael and ask him questions. Come early and get a seat as the room will be crowded. Michael has been around here long enough to be considered a "hometown" boy, although we have not been able to scrub all of the "Yankee" off him. He still talks like a machine gun, has the nervous energy of a house fly and retains his glorious (but now gray) mop of "hippie hair" from the days of his youth. Hearing Michael Gavin speak will be a rare treat and one you will remember for a long time.
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