My parents, 11 siblings and I survived in a shack maybe 30'x30' in Ms in the late '50's and '60's we had a dirt floor that was hard and glossy as marble almost and was swept with a broom made of straw. Mama cooked on a cast iron wood stove that was the only heat source and with no insulation in the house it was bone-bending cold in winter. I really enjoyed your video thank you
A lot of times especially in the South, They would build a dog trot that had the kitchen in one side and the living quarters in the other. This was the fire from the kitchen wouldn't heat up the rest of the house in the summer and if the kitchen caught fire, it wouldn't burn the entire house down. My grandparents started out in one of these in the early 20th century.
Bought our 1885 home in rural TN in 2002. The farm land, home and smoke house is all that is left. Home started as dog run. Finally got indoor plumbing in 1965. Enjoyed the content. Thanks, and God bless.
I have to admit, I took you up on your enclosed chicken run idea when I had chickens flying out of the pen. The poles with a simple piece of board nailed on top made the "roof" part strong enough to withstand any snow that would stick and stay on it. Thanks, Pa Mac, pics to come!
When my grand parents on my mother's side were still alive, they had plenty of stories about such cabins. Yes, the floor would get as hard as concrete and my grand mother spent many a day "sweeping". For building plans, they, (my grand parents), always built a 3 room cabin, 2 bedrooms and 1 kitchen. But, were always in a rectangler shape. They'd expand as needed as time went. You're absolutely correct about the majority of "building plans" were all in their heads. They knew what they "needed" at the time, NOT what they wanted. Times were tough back then and money was scarce at best. There were plenty of stories of how they would gather frozen cow dung just to burn to help stay warm in the winters. I'll say yes, these were "simpler" times even when things were rough and tough but, one always knew where the next meal was coming from, always knew there was a roof over one's head. At least that's what my grand parents always told us youngin's as we were growing up. One reason I've learned to never take anything for granted and be grateful for what I do have. Great video, cheers :)
I am really going to enjoy more of your History Lessons . Thanks so much for sharing with us Pa Mac. Your channel brings back so much of the past for today's learning sessions. Stay safe and keep up what you are doing for History Lessons of American Growing. Fred.
You have created an amazing video here. Dwellings have evolved over the last 400 years here in the Americas. Up till about 1970 my great aunt homesteaded in the Niagara frontier in a dog trot home. I didn't realize the significance of it at the time, but even as a child i could recognize the utility and absolute genius of it.
I started building a fence and I'll send it over to you, it's all made with wood I've chopped down on the property, thanks for sharing your information and experience! Without it, I wouldnt have started the project at all
In my parts here in Brazil people would usually build homes with a kind of wattle and daub construction, sometimes with raised wooden floor, sometimes with dirt floors. One thing my great grandma told me about dirt floors is that every few weeks they would sweep it really clean and paint with a mixture of fresh cow manure and water. Both to help consolidate the dirt and to give it a nice color.
I grew up in a house described as a shotgun house. And yes in the daytime in some of the rooms you could see daylight between the planks. We had several layers of wall paper in the bedrooms to stop drafts.
The house I grew up in and my 84 yr old father still owns, started life as a single room log cabin. By the time we bought it in the early 60’s it was a fully modern 3 bedroom house. But it was all built around that single log room.❤️ I’ve always loved the dog trot homes. I’ve seen one with both ends screened in. And I’ve seen one that had a well with a hand pump in the dog trot.❤️🤗🐝
James drive up to Cades cove or drive the motor nature trail in Gatlinburg one weekend. You'll see at least 50 examples of old cabins. They were effective! Bring a tape measure
Two of my great grandparents immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1900's. In the '90's my mom , grandmother, aunt and uncle went to Ireland and visited with relatives. My great grandmothers family still owned the farm. A new house had been built and the original home was now used for livestock.
This would be a good place to discuss the summer kitchen as well. When I was a kid the summer kitchen building was just twenty or thirty foot from the kitchen porch outside of the old farm houses. Sad that you don't see them much anymore.
Foxfire books have a few drawings. Most of the old plans started with one room. Having the kitchen outside with no walls or roof. Then the outdoor kitchen was roofed, then walled. Later on a second room or cabin was built next to the first. That was the kitchen/storage cabin. Between the two was soon a roof to make life easier to commute between the two. That was the living part of the cabin.
Howdy Brother- great information on the old homes. I could understand why the German fellow called them “rustic “ cabins. Some of the best log builders were in Germany and what they built were works of art with some of the most intricate corner notches and wood work ever done. Hope y’all have a great weekend. God bless
My family homesteaded the mighty Buffalo River Newton Co arkansas. ( one side being from Germany - Schmidt ) My granny spoke of sweeping her dirt floors (1911-1986) I have her old woodcookstove that I am installing today ❤
The cement-like quality of some dirt floors was achieved by mixing ox blood with clay and then compacting it and some used cow manure and mud. A mirror-like finish can be obtained.
Very interesting. I found a petal stool milk separator the other day and some iron work tools. I'd love for you to discuss your tool organization. Particularly that behind you. Blessings
Several decades ago, my maternal lost a brother. My grandmother had several sibling, but my twin brother and I knew of only one, her sister Aunt Chet. On the day of the funeral my grandparents, and my family drove up into Yazoo County, Mississippi to her brother's home. The house was OLD. It was an open dogtrot with 3 rooms along each side of the trot. Uncle Oscar was laid out in his best bib overalls red check shirt, new pouch of Red Man Chewing tobacco in the front pocket. The coffin was set upon 2 sawhorses in the parlor. The right front room of the house. Being 8 years old this was the first dead man that my brother and I had ever seen. Aunt Chet noticed our curiosity and suggested that we go get something to eat. She told us to go down to the end of the trot and turn left to go to the kitchen. The trot ended in a porch that ran the width of the house. About 20 yards away stood another building. This was the kitchen. No A/C in those days and through the screen door my brother and could see a man sitting at a table with his back to the door. As we opened the door the spring creaked and the man turned around to see who was coming in. The sight of his face nearly scared my brother and me half to death. It was Uncle Arthur, Uncle Oscar's twin brother! I have since found out that twins had twins in my maternal line and that mirror identical twins are in my paternal line, It just ganged up on my mother. If anyone is interested in viewing some long cabins and the stencil house can be seen at the Ames Plantation, north of Lagrange, Tennessee and there is a dog trot cabin in a park Britton's Lane, SW of Jackson, Tennessee.
My first farm was just down the road from Ames Plantation. That's where I first started demonstrating my old time farm ways at their yearly festival. I love all of those old buildings!
Im’ma have to be on the lookout for that dog trot cabin near Jackson, TN. I live just up the road from Britton Lane and think I might have seen it at one point not too long ago, but can’t be sure. Now that I know, I’ll be on the hunt!
Check out "Into the Backwoods of Canada. In 1833, a couple moved from Europe and start their lives in around Montreal. In one of the letters back home they talk about their home.
My Dad talked about the house he lived in as a kid in Indiana - it had newspaper-lined interiors. We visited the house years later, but I don't remember seeing the interior. We might not have gone in. It was vacant at the time.
I really like your homesteading and history videos! We have a dogtrot house at the museum I work at; it's originally from Scott, AR, thought to have been built roughly around the 1840's as a rural homestead before being bought out from under the homesteader family in the 1850's by wealthy planters who used it as a kind of in-between house between when they were just getting to Arkansas and when they had their plantation house built. We've got it set up as a historic homestead cabin, so it might be interesting for your research!
@@farmhandscompanion Historic Arkansas Museum, in Little Rock, AR. We've got some field trips coming up in the next couple weeks, so afternoon will probably suit better for coming in and doing a bit of research. We're open Tuesday thru Saturday from 9-5, tours on the hour at 10AM, 11AM, 1PM, 2PM, and 3PM; Sundays we're open from 1PM to 5PM, tours at 1PM, 2PM, and 3PM; Mondays we are closed up. Hopefully we have some info that will be useful to you! Just be careful driving in LR; people are a little crazy, and not many of them should actually have a driver's license. You may have to ask specifically to see the cabin across the street, as it's mostly only open for field trips and such.
There’s a couple at Sparkman that my wife went to school with that built a house with a dog trot. It’s about 10-12 years old now. I’ll try and get a picture of it. And the coach at Centerpoint had a friend that lived in a house with a dirt floor. He said that it looked like concrete. That was about 30 years ago.
In my part of the country (NW Ohio), pioneer cabins were typically single pen, story and a half or, occasionally, two story. Dimensions were nearly always a multiple of 3, with 18x24 being the most common. I was always told this was because an axe handle was 3 feet long. The cabin my 2xgr grandparents started their marriage in(1864) was still standing when I was a kid. It was about 30 years old when they acquired it.
It’s cool to see another Ohioan here, my property borders the western line between Lorain and Huron county. I wish your family’s cabin was saved. Such a shame
A lot of old cabins were not built "from scratch". It's easier to build with squared lumber than raw logs. But squaring logs was expensive and/or time consuming whether you saw or hew. So what a lot of people did was to keep an eye out for derelict barns or other structures from which they could salvage some squared lumber. Their salvaged lumber would determine the size and shape of the cabin that could be built from it.
My ex's family's house in Ohio just west of the Amish was built up from mid 1800s. I knew it was of where it'd been improved up to the 1970s. They themselves had 2 woodstoves, one a heater they never used, and one a cooker they used all year, but those weren't part of the original design. The original just had a fireplace with a stone deck surround too short to fit a stove on, too up off the ground to put a stove in the fireplace. Started with something like the single pen, no walkways or evidence of it being a dog trot, about 18x24 with her parent's room at one end of what was the original building. It looked like an old root cellar was at the front, probably started as just a slightly deeper "get that in the shade" kind of dug out 3ft under grade below the porch that then earned a hole going under the building. In the inside part of the main house where that went, but not yet to the part dug to a full basement, it had boards like the Jenny Lind pictures you showed, with old paper barely still there, just up from the stone foundation under the main structure. There was probably a bigger cellar dug second under the back, since that's were the basement was eventually dug from. Basement was all old logs stuffed in there to hold everything up with a stone floor. Even the stairs were an uneven live-edge half spiral on 2ft wide steps that gave you a fear of falling and breaking your neck if you didn't hold the wall or beams, no better than I'd expect from a root cellar. There was a loft covering 3/4 the original main build's "upstairs", to stuff her and her 11 siblings in over the years, boys in the part open to the stairs, girls in the part closed as a room, until it was just her left. (Sounds like a lot of kids to fit in there, but it was over 30 years, so it was more like 3-5 boys or girls to a room at a time, though the boys had less of a room. As they got older they'd sleep downstairs on a couch or something.) The "loft" was standing height for about 6 feet up and either 3 or 6 feet across at the center for the only part of the ceiling that was flat (can't remember), sloping down the sides at something like a 30 degree angle. Less than 45, more than 12. The sides of the room were used for beds or "closet" space if 3ft high at the room edge and 6ft long can be called a closet in a girl's room. There were 2 windows on each of the gable ends, not in the center, so maybe there was the option of having 2 chimneys and only 1 got built or maybe it got taken down. Not quite a cape cod style but close- nowhere near that steep of a slope or that much room, most of it not standing room. The 3/4 floor allowed the heat from the fire below, if lit, to get upstairs, to the boys area, and enough through the thin floor and door to the girls area to work. I guess if it got too cold they could open the door. They never did though. I suppose after a while living with the main building a summer kitchen was put on the back that got turned into a real main kitchen and dining area with the stairs to the back "basement" getting moved inside, and the basement was dug up to be joined up to the front root cellar. The basement was only under the original building, with only the front-house-side remains of the root cellar in the shape of a porch being outside of that. Eventually the front porch got turned into a living room and family room matching full width of the house like the kitchen, but on the front, way later a bathroom/laundry section was joined to the kitchen and a garage got added off the opposite side. The time I stayed there with her, I stayed in her room with her. (She was the youngest sibling, so nobody else was still there) They never lit the main room's wood stove (added awkwardly at some point in front of but off to the side of the fireplace with enough room to walk under the chimney pipe shooting horizontally into the actual chimney) nor the fireplace, unless a big event expecting people not wearing enough layers was going on, as either one made it too hot, even in winter. After being in a few homes that overdid their stoves, it's nice to have a publicly available warm area (kitchen table) and cool area (family room add-on or outside area under cover) to be able to switch to at leisure when visiting someone burning wood, especially if they built the fire thinking you weren't going to be layered up. The only heat they used day to day was the full cast iron wood cook stove in the kitchen with a box I'm guessing was 8in wide by 10 tall and 2ft deep, not even directly under any of the rooms. With the heatmass of the whole cook stove, it was enough to get all the way across the house and into her room for just of a night. In the summer they just opened windows so it all ran out instead of building up. If the stove was too big, it would heat faster while cooking than it could escape, if not in a regular "inefficient" fireplace. Yes, she was on the far end of the house from the fire, and you woke with frost on the outside of your blankets by morning after the fire died down, but it wasn't cold long, there were no pipes up there to burst, and it was just fine under a wool blanket and a quilt. Somebody was going to add wood soon enough, first thing, and if not it was motivation to do something about it. If you're really cold, do pushups and pullups or chop some wood. The sun came into her and her parent's windows right on their beds below her on daybreak, too. Not even close to the discomfort of nights I've spent in tents or just sleeping bags. Long story to say, if anything, a wood stove more than a cook stove was too much heat for the place, if you layered yourself properly. Just don't put modern plumbing coming out of the ground for bathroom and kitchen more than 10ft from the cook stove. Even that wasn't anybody's consideration at the start of it all. If it did get real really really bad, they used bed irons, water bottles, or heating stones easy to keep in the stove's warmer to heat the bed before you got there.
Very nice video once again Pa Mac....its too bad we didn't get the chance to visit for the heritage festival but we will get to your store at some point...Maybe after this house gets delivered and we get a little down time.
I know when my maternal grandmother was growin up ( born in 1918) in southern West Virginia their cabin was wallpapered with cut down flour sacks thatd been whitewashed. They had
I haven't heard anyone mention a Jenny Lind house in years. There was one above me built by a single civil war veteran. Do you know the history of the term? The one time I looked it up, she was "The Swedish Nightingale" a popular singer in the day. How this relates to single wall construction, I don't know. Bargeboard in Cajun country is a single wall building made from dismantled keelboats, the farmer would sell his goods and the boat and walk back on the trace with his pockets full of money and miles between him and home. Frank Lloyd Wright made Jenny Lind houses famous with his "Usonian" houses. Dogtrot has chimneys on the outer ends, a saddlebag house is 2 pens around a common central chimney. I bought and took one down for the logs for another cabin's repair some years ago. My wife saw the blue dolomite chimney and I spent several more weeks bringing that home. The finds during the process were an icey ball refrigerator and a set of confederate trace chains. It had seen interesting times, if those walls could talk.
sure your right, but nobody has ever really wanted to live in the SW Florida Pioneer "cabins" along that Coast. Insect screening? Nope! Imagine THAT, kids :-) you can keep the rain off easy, but a zillion little biting critters? THAT takes a different kinda person to endure. But...they DID. not me, folks! :-) Course, now, in Naples, its where zillionaires live. Life is funny....
Don’t forget log cabins are built and have been built for hundreds if not thousands of years all along the article circle .. Many Native American s have built log cabins back hundreds of years … Best bet get a set of Lincoln logs and start modeling !!!
My parents, 11 siblings and I survived in a shack maybe 30'x30' in Ms in the late '50's and '60's we had a dirt floor that was hard and glossy as marble almost and was swept with a broom made of straw. Mama cooked on a cast iron wood stove that was the only heat source and with no insulation in the house it was bone-bending cold in winter. I really enjoyed your video thank you
A lot of times especially in the South, They would build a dog trot that had the kitchen in one side and the living quarters in the other. This was the fire from the kitchen wouldn't heat up the rest of the house in the summer and if the kitchen caught fire, it wouldn't burn the entire house down. My grandparents started out in one of these in the early 20th century.
Bought our 1885 home in rural TN in 2002. The farm land, home and smoke house is all that is left. Home started as dog run. Finally got indoor plumbing in 1965.
Enjoyed the content. Thanks, and God bless.
I have to admit, I took you up on your enclosed chicken run idea when I had chickens flying out of the pen. The poles with a simple piece of board nailed on top made the "roof" part strong enough to withstand any snow that would stick and stay on it. Thanks, Pa Mac, pics to come!
Yes, please send photos!
When my grand parents on my mother's side were still alive, they had plenty of stories about such cabins. Yes, the floor would get as hard as concrete and my grand mother spent many a day "sweeping". For building plans, they, (my grand parents), always built a 3 room cabin, 2 bedrooms and 1 kitchen. But, were always in a rectangler shape. They'd expand as needed as time went. You're absolutely correct about the majority of "building plans" were all in their heads. They knew what they "needed" at the time, NOT what they wanted. Times were tough back then and money was scarce at best. There were plenty of stories of how they would gather frozen cow dung just to burn to help stay warm in the winters. I'll say yes, these were "simpler" times even when things were rough and tough but, one always knew where the next meal was coming from, always knew there was a roof over one's head. At least that's what my grand parents always told us youngin's as we were growing up. One reason I've learned to never take anything for granted and be grateful for what I do have. Great video, cheers :)
I am really going to enjoy more of your History Lessons . Thanks so much for sharing with us Pa Mac. Your channel brings back so much of the past for today's learning sessions. Stay safe and keep up what you are doing for History Lessons of American Growing. Fred.
Thanks as always, Fred!
You have created an amazing video here. Dwellings have evolved over the last 400 years here in the Americas. Up till about 1970 my great aunt homesteaded in the Niagara frontier in a dog trot home. I didn't realize the significance of it at the time, but even as a child i could recognize the utility and absolute genius of it.
Always find your posts interesting and informative.
Thank you so much, Wilburn
I started building a fence and I'll send it over to you, it's all made with wood I've chopped down on the property, thanks for sharing your information and experience! Without it, I wouldnt have started the project at all
In my parts here in Brazil people would usually build homes with a kind of wattle and daub construction, sometimes with raised wooden floor, sometimes with dirt floors. One thing my great grandma told me about dirt floors is that every few weeks they would sweep it really clean and paint with a mixture of fresh cow manure and water. Both to help consolidate the dirt and to give it a nice color.
I grew up in a house described as a shotgun house. And yes in the daytime in some of the rooms you could see daylight between the planks. We had several layers of wall paper in the bedrooms to stop drafts.
The house I grew up in and my 84 yr old father still owns, started life as a single room log cabin. By the time we bought it in the early 60’s it was a fully modern 3 bedroom house. But it was all built around that single log room.❤️
I’ve always loved the dog trot homes. I’ve seen one with both ends screened in. And I’ve seen one that had a well with a hand pump in the dog trot.❤️🤗🐝
James drive up to Cades cove or drive the motor nature trail in Gatlinburg one weekend. You'll see at least 50 examples of old cabins. They were effective! Bring a tape measure
In my literary travels, I found many of these ideas support your video. Thank you.
Two of my great grandparents immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1900's. In the '90's my mom , grandmother, aunt and uncle went to Ireland and visited with relatives. My great grandmothers family still owned the farm. A new house had been built and the original home was now used for livestock.
This would be a good place to discuss the summer kitchen as well. When I was a kid the summer kitchen building was just twenty or thirty foot from the kitchen porch outside of the old farm houses. Sad that you don't see them much anymore.
Maybe not 'SAD.' Summer kitchens served a purpose and passed away. They required a housewife to take plenty of extra steps to do daily tasks.
Foxfire books have a few drawings. Most of the old plans started with one room. Having the kitchen outside with no walls or roof. Then the outdoor kitchen was roofed, then walled. Later on a second room or cabin was built next to the first. That was the kitchen/storage cabin. Between the two was soon a roof to make life easier to commute between the two. That was the living part of the cabin.
Any idea which volume?
This is a great introduction to the subject.
Great topic. Looking forward to the next one.
Howdy Brother- great information on the old homes. I could understand why the German fellow called them “rustic “ cabins. Some of the best log builders were in Germany and what they built were works of art with some of the most intricate corner notches and wood work ever done. Hope y’all have a great weekend. God bless
Great video! Thank you, sir!
Great video , great detail and information, ive been interested in log buildings for a while and your adding to the knowledge 👍🏴
My family homesteaded the mighty Buffalo River Newton Co arkansas.
( one side being from Germany - Schmidt )
My granny spoke of sweeping her dirt floors (1911-1986)
I have her old woodcookstove that I am installing today ❤
Great video and informative
The cement-like quality of some dirt floors was achieved by mixing ox blood with clay and then compacting it and some used cow manure and mud. A mirror-like finish can be obtained.
Great vid as always
Very interesting. I found a petal stool milk separator the other day and some iron work tools. I'd love for you to discuss your tool organization. Particularly that behind you. Blessings
Will do, LittleJordanFarm!
Several decades ago, my maternal lost a brother. My grandmother had several sibling, but my twin brother and I knew of only one, her sister Aunt Chet. On the day of the funeral my grandparents, and my family drove up into Yazoo County, Mississippi to her brother's home. The house was OLD. It was an open dogtrot with 3 rooms along each side of the trot. Uncle Oscar was laid out in his best bib overalls red check shirt, new pouch of Red Man Chewing tobacco in the front pocket. The coffin was set upon 2 sawhorses in the parlor. The right front room of the house. Being 8 years old this was the first dead man that my brother and I had ever seen. Aunt Chet noticed our curiosity and suggested that we go get something to eat. She told us to go down to the end of the trot and turn left to go to the kitchen. The trot ended in a porch that ran the width of the house. About 20 yards away stood another building. This was the kitchen. No A/C in those days and through the screen door my brother and could see a man sitting at a table with his back to the door. As we opened the door the spring creaked and the man turned around to see who was coming in. The sight of his face nearly scared my brother and me half to death. It was Uncle Arthur, Uncle Oscar's twin brother! I have since found out that twins had twins in my maternal line and that mirror identical twins are in my paternal line, It just ganged up on my mother.
If anyone is interested in viewing some long cabins and the stencil house can be seen at the Ames Plantation, north of Lagrange, Tennessee and there is a dog trot cabin in a park Britton's Lane, SW of Jackson, Tennessee.
My first farm was just down the road from Ames Plantation. That's where I first started demonstrating my old time farm ways at their yearly festival. I love all of those old buildings!
@@farmhandscompanion Sadly the festival has not been held for several years due to the man that ran it for Ames retired.
@@twentypdrparrott694 Yep, good ole Jamie; he was the one who hired me to demonstrate
Im’ma have to be on the lookout for that dog trot cabin near Jackson, TN. I live just up the road from Britton Lane and think I might have seen it at one point not too long ago, but can’t be sure. Now that I know, I’ll be on the hunt!
Check out "Into the Backwoods of Canada. In 1833, a couple moved from Europe and start their lives in around Montreal. In one of the letters back home they talk about their home.
Great video! Thank you for making these!
I'm pretty partial to the Dog Trot house. I love the idea of having my kitchen separate from my living quarters.
FOIST!
LOVE YOUR CHANNEL
Thumbs up everyone!
Roofies....funny.😂
My Dad talked about the house he lived in as a kid in Indiana - it had newspaper-lined interiors. We visited the house years later, but I don't remember seeing the interior. We might not have gone in. It was vacant at the time.
I really like your homesteading and history videos! We have a dogtrot house at the museum I work at; it's originally from Scott, AR, thought to have been built roughly around the 1840's as a rural homestead before being bought out from under the homesteader family in the 1850's by wealthy planters who used it as a kind of in-between house between when they were just getting to Arkansas and when they had their plantation house built.
We've got it set up as a historic homestead cabin, so it might be interesting for your research!
Absolutely!
Where is your museum?
@@farmhandscompanion Historic Arkansas Museum, in Little Rock, AR. We've got some field trips coming up in the next couple weeks, so afternoon will probably suit better for coming in and doing a bit of research. We're open Tuesday thru Saturday from 9-5, tours on the hour at 10AM, 11AM, 1PM, 2PM, and 3PM; Sundays we're open from 1PM to 5PM, tours at 1PM, 2PM, and 3PM; Mondays we are closed up. Hopefully we have some info that will be useful to you! Just be careful driving in LR; people are a little crazy, and not many of them should actually have a driver's license.
You may have to ask specifically to see the cabin across the street, as it's mostly only open for field trips and such.
There’s a couple at Sparkman that my wife went to school with that built a house with a dog trot. It’s about 10-12 years old now. I’ll try and get a picture of it. And the coach at Centerpoint had a friend that lived in a house with a dirt floor. He said that it looked like concrete. That was about 30 years ago.
Hey Richie, I may have seen that Sparkman house (if it's the one on the highway)
Well yes, kinda. It’s off of the road that goes to Shady Grove Church. You can see it from the highway. On the east side of the highway
Great stuff! It’s getting colder here in Central NY any videos on wood stoves. Thanks!
My father in law grew up with a dirt floor
In my part of the country (NW Ohio), pioneer cabins were typically single pen, story and a half or, occasionally, two story. Dimensions were nearly always a multiple of 3, with 18x24 being the most common. I was always told this was because an axe handle was 3 feet long. The cabin my 2xgr grandparents started their marriage in(1864) was still standing when I was a kid. It was about 30 years old when they acquired it.
It’s cool to see another Ohioan here, my property borders the western line between Lorain and Huron county. I wish your family’s cabin was saved. Such a shame
Thanks so much for the information
The blacksmith's house at Lincoln's New Salem in Illinois is a Dog Trot style.
Thanks Pa!
Dirt floors were hardened by spreading ash from the stove over the floor and then spray with water. Sand/ash/water= mortar add gravel = concrete
A lot of old cabins were not built "from scratch". It's easier to build with squared lumber than raw logs. But squaring logs was expensive and/or time consuming whether you saw or hew. So what a lot of people did was to keep an eye out for derelict barns or other structures from which they could salvage some squared lumber. Their salvaged lumber would determine the size and shape of the cabin that could be built from it.
My ex's family's house in Ohio just west of the Amish was built up from mid 1800s. I knew it was of where it'd been improved up to the 1970s. They themselves had 2 woodstoves, one a heater they never used, and one a cooker they used all year, but those weren't part of the original design. The original just had a fireplace with a stone deck surround too short to fit a stove on, too up off the ground to put a stove in the fireplace. Started with something like the single pen, no walkways or evidence of it being a dog trot, about 18x24 with her parent's room at one end of what was the original building. It looked like an old root cellar was at the front, probably started as just a slightly deeper "get that in the shade" kind of dug out 3ft under grade below the porch that then earned a hole going under the building. In the inside part of the main house where that went, but not yet to the part dug to a full basement, it had boards like the Jenny Lind pictures you showed, with old paper barely still there, just up from the stone foundation under the main structure. There was probably a bigger cellar dug second under the back, since that's were the basement was eventually dug from. Basement was all old logs stuffed in there to hold everything up with a stone floor. Even the stairs were an uneven live-edge half spiral on 2ft wide steps that gave you a fear of falling and breaking your neck if you didn't hold the wall or beams, no better than I'd expect from a root cellar. There was a loft covering 3/4 the original main build's "upstairs", to stuff her and her 11 siblings in over the years, boys in the part open to the stairs, girls in the part closed as a room, until it was just her left. (Sounds like a lot of kids to fit in there, but it was over 30 years, so it was more like 3-5 boys or girls to a room at a time, though the boys had less of a room. As they got older they'd sleep downstairs on a couch or something.) The "loft" was standing height for about 6 feet up and either 3 or 6 feet across at the center for the only part of the ceiling that was flat (can't remember), sloping down the sides at something like a 30 degree angle. Less than 45, more than 12. The sides of the room were used for beds or "closet" space if 3ft high at the room edge and 6ft long can be called a closet in a girl's room. There were 2 windows on each of the gable ends, not in the center, so maybe there was the option of having 2 chimneys and only 1 got built or maybe it got taken down. Not quite a cape cod style but close- nowhere near that steep of a slope or that much room, most of it not standing room. The 3/4 floor allowed the heat from the fire below, if lit, to get upstairs, to the boys area, and enough through the thin floor and door to the girls area to work. I guess if it got too cold they could open the door. They never did though. I suppose after a while living with the main building a summer kitchen was put on the back that got turned into a real main kitchen and dining area with the stairs to the back "basement" getting moved inside, and the basement was dug up to be joined up to the front root cellar. The basement was only under the original building, with only the front-house-side remains of the root cellar in the shape of a porch being outside of that. Eventually the front porch got turned into a living room and family room matching full width of the house like the kitchen, but on the front, way later a bathroom/laundry section was joined to the kitchen and a garage got added off the opposite side. The time I stayed there with her, I stayed in her room with her. (She was the youngest sibling, so nobody else was still there) They never lit the main room's wood stove (added awkwardly at some point in front of but off to the side of the fireplace with enough room to walk under the chimney pipe shooting horizontally into the actual chimney) nor the fireplace, unless a big event expecting people not wearing enough layers was going on, as either one made it too hot, even in winter. After being in a few homes that overdid their stoves, it's nice to have a publicly available warm area (kitchen table) and cool area (family room add-on or outside area under cover) to be able to switch to at leisure when visiting someone burning wood, especially if they built the fire thinking you weren't going to be layered up. The only heat they used day to day was the full cast iron wood cook stove in the kitchen with a box I'm guessing was 8in wide by 10 tall and 2ft deep, not even directly under any of the rooms. With the heatmass of the whole cook stove, it was enough to get all the way across the house and into her room for just of a night. In the summer they just opened windows so it all ran out instead of building up. If the stove was too big, it would heat faster while cooking than it could escape, if not in a regular "inefficient" fireplace. Yes, she was on the far end of the house from the fire, and you woke with frost on the outside of your blankets by morning after the fire died down, but it wasn't cold long, there were no pipes up there to burst, and it was just fine under a wool blanket and a quilt. Somebody was going to add wood soon enough, first thing, and if not it was motivation to do something about it. If you're really cold, do pushups and pullups or chop some wood. The sun came into her and her parent's windows right on their beds below her on daybreak, too. Not even close to the discomfort of nights I've spent in tents or just sleeping bags. Long story to say, if anything, a wood stove more than a cook stove was too much heat for the place, if you layered yourself properly. Just don't put modern plumbing coming out of the ground for bathroom and kitchen more than 10ft from the cook stove. Even that wasn't anybody's consideration at the start of it all. If it did get real really really bad, they used bed irons, water bottles, or heating stones easy to keep in the stove's warmer to heat the bed before you got there.
Very nice video once again Pa Mac....its too bad we didn't get the chance to visit for the heritage festival but we will get to your store at some point...Maybe after this house gets delivered and we get a little down time.
I'm usually in here on Fridays. Send me an email before you come so I'll be sure and be here
I know when my maternal grandmother was growin up ( born in 1918) in southern West Virginia their cabin was wallpapered with cut down flour sacks thatd been whitewashed. They had
Was the Little House on The Prairie house a Jenny Lind home?
Thanks
Many people didn't have their wood stoves inside their homes. They were housed in a stand along kitchen building, out of fear of fire.
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11:40 The word you're looking for is "roofen"
I haven't heard anyone mention a Jenny Lind house in years. There was one above me built by a single civil war veteran. Do you know the history of the term? The one time I looked it up, she was "The Swedish Nightingale" a popular singer in the day. How this relates to single wall construction, I don't know.
Bargeboard in Cajun country is a single wall building made from dismantled keelboats, the farmer would sell his goods and the boat and walk back on the trace with his pockets full of money and miles between him and home. Frank Lloyd Wright made Jenny Lind houses famous with his "Usonian" houses.
Dogtrot has chimneys on the outer ends, a saddlebag house is 2 pens around a common central chimney. I bought and took one down for the logs for another cabin's repair some years ago. My wife saw the blue dolomite chimney and I spent several more weeks bringing that home. The finds during the process were an icey ball refrigerator and a set of confederate trace chains. It had seen interesting times, if those walls could talk.
A talk show?
3rd 😁
sure your right, but nobody has ever really wanted to live in the SW Florida Pioneer "cabins" along that Coast. Insect screening? Nope! Imagine THAT, kids :-) you can keep the rain off easy, but a zillion little biting critters? THAT takes a different kinda person to endure. But...they DID. not me, folks! :-) Course, now, in Naples, its where zillionaires live. Life is funny....
Do you ever hear "I should have built smaller"?
Only in reference to human dwellings-but never in reference to a farm outbuilding.
Don’t forget log cabins are built and have been built for hundreds if not thousands of years all along the article circle ..
Many Native American s have built log cabins back hundreds of years … Best bet get a set of Lincoln logs and start modeling !!!