Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
new gentry. And until she had her painted rooms and
her plastered walls, she'd have them hewn as smooth
as possible, thank you.
But of course the availability of so much timber,
and soon the influx of log-wise Scandinavian and
Middle European craftsmen, saw the log house
emerge as the frontier structure. It could be built
with only an axe if need be, and built well with an axe,
auger, broadaxe, drawknife, hammer, and nails. No
whipsawn boards, complicated mortising, or care-
fully finished woodwork went into the average fron-
tier log house, although some finely crafted speci-
mens were built.
But it wasn't that simple: Corner-notched log pens
just about mean square or rectangular houses or sec-
tions of houses, so the choice of types is somewhat lim-
ited. I do know some zealots who've built odd, multi-
sided log houses in an attempt to be “different,” but
some other material would have been better. I think
the materials — logs — influence type considerably.
More about this later.
In
Folklore Today,
Warren Roberts discusses simi-
larities in and differences between Scandinavian log
houses and those in America, and concludes that there
is little resemblance overall. Montell and Morse, in
their book
Kentucky Folk Architecture,
write that the
Pennsylvania Germans introduced the classic Amer-
ican log house. Henry Glassie, in “The Appalachian
Log Cabin,” states that “the log cabin stands as a
symbol of this meshing of German and Scotch-Irish
cultures.”
We can safely say that the cultural building patterns
of the Scandinavians, Germans, Scots-Irish, English,
and even the Dutch underwent some necessary mod-
ifications to fit the conditions and materials available.
The New Sweden houses were not of the careful oval-
log, tightly fitted, chinkless style Roberts found where
these people came from.
The Scots-Irish must have been overjoyed at tall,
straight trees to build with, instead of the mud and
stones and thatch of Ulster. And the Germans set to
work building those wonderful barns of log and stone,
along with their substantial American log houses with
the Old Country touches in decorative beading, miter-
ing, and even painting. In this land of trees, our ances-
tors naturally used them freely.
The spread of log housing followed the flow of set-
tlers to new territory. Germans, traveling to the
Shenandoah Valley in 1732, passed through Mary-
land, and of course many settled along the way. The
Scots-Irish moved into western Virginia, too, and to
the Carolinas. Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and north
Georgia were penetrated as the 1700s wore on. Even
during the Revolution, thousands of land-hungry pio-
neers moved west, into the rich lands of the Tennessee
River basin, fighting their own battles with Indians,
the ever-encroaching forest, and the elements.
By 1800 the tide had reached into Alabama, where
Eugene Wilson, in his book
Alabama Folk Houses,
Early Log House Construction
The settlers of New Sweden, on the Delaware River,
are credited with the beginning of log house con-
struction in America. Fort Christina, at what is now
Wilmington, was built in 1638. In his book
The Log
Cabin in America,
C. A. Weslager writes that half of
the first settlers in New Sweden were Finns, whose
building techniques were closer to the later styles here
than those of the Swedes. Log houses were built inside
a log stockade wall for protection, and soon others
spread out into the countryside.
It takes some imagination today to envision this
land blessed with straight trees that fit so well into the
building traditions of these new Americans. Picture
these settlers venturing farther and farther from the
fort's walls to raise their log houses and establish their
farms: up the Delaware, out into the waiting wilder-
ness, the Indians, the wild game, the good land.
Some of these earlier dwellings were of round logs,
some of hewn. Corner fireplaces were a Scandinavian
feature different from either the German or Scots-
Irish log houses soon to appear.
The influx of Germans into Pennsylvania and the
advent of large numbers of Scots-Irish into the region
by 1700 combined with the spread of the Scandina-
vian influence to create the log house as it has become
known. Fred Kniffen, in his article “Folk Housing: Key
to Diffusion,” makes the significant statement that
“Building with logs was a mode of construction, not
an architectural type. Log, frame, stone or brick may
all be the material for a type.”
