The place to begin in studying the 18th century crafts that were practiced on the upper Ohio frontier is where the earliest inhabitants lived, before there was a need for most of the specialized trades. As these frontiersmen, or pioneers, if you prefer, prepared the groundwork and their materials, and built their cabins, at the same time they laid the foundations of the Anglo-American civilization that followed. So we begin, logically and historically, with a look at the log cabin and log houses: the myths about the cabin. Defining what we mean by "log cabin," and review the history of log construction on the back country of Pennsylvania and Virginia surrounding the forks of the Ohio and its major tributaries. Then we will address the debated issue of distinguishing between the log cabin and the log house, and identify the domestic log structures that were built or owned by important figures and ordinary people that lived in them. Finally, we will study the tools, techniques, and skills necessary to build an 18th century reproduction of a log cabin and a log house.

DOMESTIC LOG CONSTRUCTION ON THE UPPER OHIO FRONTIER

An important part of the colonial and early American landscape in the upper Ohio back country was its domestic architecture. What follows represents much of what is known about domestic log construction in the region.

Demythologizing the Log Cabin

A Democratic orator, impugning the rival candidate's refinement, said that the White House was too good for him; William Henry Harrison would be content, he orated, with a log cabin and a jug of hard cider. The Whigs took up this golden opportunity with alacrity. William Henry Harrison, they averred was the kind of American who would be proud to live in a log cabin; the log cabin became a symbol of courage, simplicity, honesty, ruggedness, and plain democratic homely Americanism. They passed out log-cabin badges, sang log-cabin songs, and celebrated with plenty of hard cider. Daniel Webster, in a moving speech at Saratoga, pictured his old family log cabin 'amid the snowdrifts of New Hampshire' as the home and hearth of all the toil, sacrifice, indomitable courage, and domestic virtue that had been wrought into this great land. Harrison won the election, and for the rest of the century the log cabin became a valuable political asset.

Priscilla, all before log-cabin settings. Serious historians accepted the myth as a matter of course, and even found much evidence in early chronicles to support it. Small wonder: building records of the early seventeenth century are scanty, and their terminology obscure with forgotten words about unknown techniques. It was easy to misinterpret them. But with the publication in 1939 of Shurtleff's book, a model of exacting scholarship, there can be no longer be any doubt in our minds about the log-cabin myth.

1 Hugh Morrison, Early American Architecture (New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1952), 13-14. Defining "Log Cabin"

Defining "Log Cabin"

Log Cabins Versus Log Houses

As architecture of the forest, log buildings (cabins and homes) were at first generally built with round, untrimmed logs in horizontal tiers to form the walls or "crib." As noted earlier they were chinked with a variety of materials mixed with clay. The roof covering consisted of long thin riven (clapboard) shingles, which were held in place by weight poles laid upon them and separated by triangular "knees." Early on there were no windows to provide security against Indian efforts to enter the building. Two doors in front and back, hanging on wooden or leather hinges, allowed the smoking fireplace to clear out of the room, but also gave optional escape routes in the event of Indian attack. At first, chimneys were made of wood and daub. Clay-lined flues were added to curb leakage and additional fire damage. Floors in cabins consisted of packed dirt.

That the early "log cabin" eventually gave way to the later more sophisticated "log house," became possible when it was safer for the frontier settler to do so, greater means and manpower became available, and necessary when expanded family size required it. It boasted square-hewn logs, iron hinges and other hardware, and stone chimney(s). Floors were made with wood planking or "puncheons" (boards fixed in place with wooden pegs). Windows were added and made of greased paper; for security reasons they were covered at night or when its inhabitants were away with wooden shutters fastened from within. Glass panes, manufactured in England, may have been transported from the east during the period between the end of the Seven Years War and the Revolutionary War. It is certain that the local manufacture of glazed windows did not occur in the vicinity of the forks of the Ohio until the end of the century (e.g. the Albert Gallatin plantation and Old Allegheny).

In his 1803 Journal of a Tour into the Territory Northwest of the Allegheny Mountains Thaddeus M. Harris' lends period authority in his description that carefully notes the difference between a log cabin and a log house:

[Cabins] are built with unhand logs, the interstices between which are stopped with rails, caulked with moss or straw, and daubed with mud. The roof is covered with a sort of thin staves split out of oak or ash, about four feet long and five inches wide, fastened on by heavy poles being laid upon them...If the logs be hewed; if the interstices be stopped with stone, and neatly plastered; and the roof composed of shingle nicely laid on, it is called a log-house. A log-house has glass windows and a chimney; a cabin has commonly no window at all, and only a hole at the top for smoke to escape.

What is meant here is a dwelling constructed of round logs, which are laid horizontally course upon course and held together by notched corners and protruding ends. The nature of the joints in the corner construction is the half-dovetail, lap, or saddle-notch. In the case of the last named, top and bottom saddle notching creates a close interlock with a small space requiring little chinking; top notching better prevents water damage. The latter requires less work and

Log cabin construction was the method of choice for pioneers. The technique is simple and relatively easy to apply. A small cabin (20'x118') can be constructed by one man all by himself.. In the eighteenth century upper Ohio frontier (and elsewhere), it was sometimes made of pine and spruce logs, because it was straight, easy to work and abundantly available in wilderness areas. Still the strength of oak (in spite of its weight) made it the wood of choice. No tools are necessary, except the pioneer's axe. As Theodore ("Teddy") Roosevelt wrote, "The backwoods axe, shapely, well-poised, with long handle and light head, was a servant hardly standing second even to the rifle; the two were the national weapons of the American backwoodsman, and in their use he has never been excelled." Nails and hardware, almost impossible to purchase on the frontier and too heavy to transport from the east, were unknown in early log construction. As a strong, durable, and (sometimes) weatherproof building, the ingenuity of the early frontiersmen is reflected in what proved to be a welcome answer to the need for quick and easy shelter. Of course, in-ground dugouts or caves covered with interwoven saplings or branches, and in some cases canvas, were the only advance over the first form of covering, the branch-covered hunter's lean-to whose open side exposed the pioneer to the fire for warmth and cooking. Doubtless some early frontiersmen adopted the Indian wigwam for shelter, just as they did native clothing, herbal medicine, and other useful aspects of native culture. But like these earlier coverings, even the log cabin proved to be a makeshift shelter of the frontier that was replaced with a more commodious and sophisticated log house.

The History of Log Construction

Contrary to myth, the log cabin did not appear in the English American colonies in the seventeenth century and outside of the frontiers was built relatively rarely in the eighteenth century. In New Netherland (New York) the Dutch made no use of it. Nor did the French in Canada as revealed by the fact that as early as 1740 they constructed "Logs Town" for Ohio Indians, complete with squared logs and stone chimneys and did the same outside the walls of Fort Duquesne in 1753. Nor had the log cabin been known in England, France, Holland, and generally in southern Europe. Native Indians in North America, except perhaps under Anglo-American influence, did not construct log cabins due to the lack of adequate tools and technology (they burned trees down). Their common practices of the hunt, warfare and moving village locations, in any case, would have made the labor and time involved in log construction impractical.

The English colonists in the east did build blockhouses, prisons, and storehouses out of logs hewn square and notched at the corners for lapped or dovetailed joints. Of course, this more sophisticated form of log construction required considerably more time, skill, work, as well as many more tools.

It is generally believed that true log cabin construction was brought to North America by the Swedes upon settlement in Delaware in 1638. In the early seventeenth century log cabins were common in Scandinavia, especially in Sweden and Finland. Literary records of "log houses" in seventeenth century Delaware attest to their existence. A Dutch traveler named Danckaerts

witnessed one in 1679 with notched corners and protruding ends of the logs. What is of special interest here is that in the eighteenth century German settlers in Pennsylvania built large numbers of log houses with both round and square log construction. Given that they passed through Delaware to immigrate to Pennsylvania it is entirely possible that they learned log construction from the Swedes. On the other hand, log construction was practiced in Switzerland and some regions of Germany, and thus immigrants may have brought it to North America apart from Swedish influence.

The Scotch-Irish were primarily responsible for popularizing the use of log construction in the eighteenth century, while the English inhabitants were reluctant to do so. The Scotch-Irish had been accustomed in their country of origin to living in inferior dwellings. But more important they found the simple log construction practical and relatively easy to maintain. As they expanded their settlements into New England and to the southern colonies, they also moved across the Alleghenies into the upper Ohio frontier, making the log cabin the symbol of the colonial American pioneer. In its modern sense, the term "log cabin" was first used in an Irish community in the Valley of Virginia in 1770. But, as noted above in reference to "Logs Town," such structures thanks to the French, were clearly present at least thirty years before in the region of forks of the Ohio.

If the early history of Euro-American habitation of the upper Ohio frontier includes the traders with the Indians, the beginnings of log construction may be fixed as early as the 1730s, possibly earlier. As the Delaware and Shawnee moved westward under duress from eastern Pennsylvania, these traders followed them to the Ohio country to carry on the trade. Trading posts were almost certainly constructed of logs. John Frazier's trading post, blacksmith shop, and residence near Venango, was among these earliest log structures. From that time to the end of the eighteenth century, the protracted pioneer period, most of the buildings were made of logs, including the military and settlers' forts. It was highly adaptable to the precarious and limited resources of the frontiersmen whose background, character, and manner of settlement, influenced the exact form this primitive architecture assumed. Most of them were Scotch, Irish, Scotch-Irish, German, and English. Many of them were refugees or children of refugees from poverty (sometimes due to famine) or persecution (often religious in nature) in their former country. They typically took up residence in the countrysides east of the Appalachians in the colonies of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. The combined experience in their former abodes and their colonial experience doubtless prepared them, in part at least, for the tough wilderness living they encountered when they crossed the mountains for independence, freedom, and land on which to establish their homes on the far back country of the upper Ohio valley.

Early Domestic Log Buildings in the Upper Ohio Frontier

Although there are no known remains of the oldest log structures in the upper Ohio valley region, the historical record keeps them alive in the human memory. Chief examples are the house, trading post, and gunsmith shop of John Frazier, first at Venango (Franklin, Pa.), and later at Turtle Creek, where George Washington and his colleagues stopped on their journey to and from Fort LeBoeuf on behalf of Lieutenant-governor Dinwiddie of Virginia (1753). Meanwhile Christopher Gist had built his log plantation (and others subsequently joined him as part of his "settlement") as did other early settlers (e.g. the Stewarts, the Browns, the Connells, the Eckerlys, etc.). The king of the traders George Croghan had his log trading post near the mouth of Pine Creek (Etna, Pa.) as it emptied into the Allegheny River. Nearly twenty years later, Washington was entertained by Croghan in 1770 at his log "castle" on the east bank of the river (near modern Lawrenceville). One of John Neville's three post-Revolution plantations gave what had been called "Long Island" on the Ohio the new name of Neville Island. Extant records indicate that Neville's residence there was a log house, although it was " a structure of unusual size and elaboration" (Stotz, 34).

The domestic log cabins and houses were easily adapted to non-residential uses in the upper Ohio frontier. Cabins were often converted to "lumber" buildings, containing anything and everything the owner chose to store there. Sometimes the cabin was used to house animals or served as corncribs. Houses were changed into taverns, schools, churches, courthouses, stores, and even "the grim essential, the settlers' blockhouse" (Stotz, 35).

There is no evidence that log houses were designed for defense, though as elsewhere on the frontier, it is likely that some were pressed into service for that purpose. Legends associated with many log houses in the region claim that they were used as "forts," but the absence of loopholes (unless later filled up) may suggest otherwise. As the Indian wars became fewer in number and less threatening in nature, the long, low, barricaded windows were replaced by larger ones with glazed sash. Likewise, heavy plank doors and shutters gave way to lighter ones with more appealing raised panel features.

Footnote: Black and white photographs of log houses and taverns still standing in Western Pennsylvania in 1936 appear in Stotz' Early Architecture, 36-42. Likewise, the same author provides useful information on military and governmental architecture on pages 252ff, including a cautious summation of the evidence on the settlers' forts. More specific information on and invaluable conjectured drawings of the military forts of the French and Indian war period and Indian war period, appear in Stotz' contribution to Alfred Procter James and Charles Morse Stotz, Drums in the Forest (Pittsburgh: The Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania and The Allegheny Conference on Community Development,1958), 59-193.