Interior of the Cabin - Big Plans

have you ever wondered what it'd be like to live in a log cabin in early america there's a wonderful memoir by william nolan called the bark covered house and in this memoir he he describes his time growing up in frontier michigan in the 1830s he describes us in intimate detail telling us all about the house he lived in how it was built their life he even gives us this true picture of what it would be like to look inside the cabin what you're going to see as you turn and look in each corner of the cabin i love this chapter it is so fun to study and there is so much to learn let's dig in this is from chapter 12. it's called the inside of our house a picture from memory i will now return to the second or the third year of our settlement i described how the body of our second house was made and the roof was put on and now look at its interior the lower floor was made of white wood boards in their rough state nailed down the upper floor was laid with the same kind of boards though they were not nailed when they shrunk they could be driven together to close the cracks the chimney was what was called a stick or a dutch chimney the way it was built two crooked sticks six inches wide and four inches thick were taken for arms the foot of these sticks were placed on the inner edge or the top of the second log of the house and the upper ends laid against the front beam of the chamber floor these sticks or arms were about six feet apart at the mouth of the chimney father cut a green black oak and sawed off some bolts took a fro which he brought from york state and arrived out the shakes three inches wide and about an inch thick and of these and clay he laid up the chimney it started from the arms and the chamber beam after it got up a little it was like laying up a pen he spread on some clay then he laid on four sticks and he pressed them into the clay and then he spread on clay again covering the sticks entirely and in this way our chimney was built and its size at the top was two feet by four feet it proved to be quite a good and a safe chimney the last thing before retiring at night after the fire had burned low and big coals were covered with ashes was to look up the chimney to see if it had taken fire if it had and it was smoking on the inside father would take a ladder set it up in the chimney and take a little water and go up and put it out this was seldom necessary as it never took fire unless the clay cracked in places or the weather wore it off when there was a small fire in the evening i could stand on the clay hearth and look through the chimney at the stars as they twinkled and shone in their brightness i could count a number of them as i stood there father drove in to the log at the back of the fireplace two iron eyes on which hung a crane they extended into the room about one foot on one side of these he built the back of the fireplace of clear clay a foot thick at the bottom but thinner when it got up to the sticks after the clay dried he hung the crane it is seen that we had no jams to our fireplace father sometimes at night would get a backlog in i have seen those which he got green and very large which were sometimes 20 inches through and five or six feet long when he got the log to the door he would take a round stick as large as my arm and lay it on the floor so that his log could come sideways or crossways to it and then he'd crowd the log i've seen him crowd it with a hand spike and a stick and the stick would roll in opposite the fireplace and then he would tell us children to stand back and take the chairs out away and then he would roll the log into the fireplace and very carefully so this not to break or crack the clay hearth for mother had all the care of that and wished to keep it as nicely as possible when he had the log on to suit him he would say there i guess that'll last a while and then he would bring in two green sticks six or eight inches through and about three feet long and he'd place them on the hearth at the ends against the backlog and these he called his michigan and irons and he was proud of them and he said they were wood instead of iron to be sure but he could afford to have a new pair whenever he wanted when he brought in a large four stick and laid it across the and irons he had the foundation for a fire for 24 hours on the crane hung two or three hooks and on these over the fire mother did most for cooking as we had no oven mother had what we called a bake kettle and this was a flat low kettle with a cast cover and a rim of which turned up an inch or two to hold the coals and in this kettle she baked our bread the way she did it she would heat the lid and put the loaf of bread in the kettle take the shovel and pull some coals on the hearth and set the kettle upon them and put the lid on and shovel some coals onto it and then she would watch it and turn it around a few times and then the bread was done and it would come to the table steaming when we all gathered around the family board we did the bread good justice we were favored with what was called michigan appetites sometimes when we'd finished our meal there was but a few fragments left of anything except the loaf which was four or five inches through and a foot and a half across later mother bought her tin baker which she placed before the fire to bake her bread and cake and pies etc and this helped her very much in getting along it was something new and we thought it quite an invention mother had but one room father thought he would build an addition on the west end of our house as the chimney was on the east end he built it with a shed roof and the lower floor was made of boards and the upper floor of shakes and these were gotten out long enough to reach from beam to beam and they were lapped and nailed fast this room had but one window on the west and a door on the east which led into the front room in one corner stood a bed surrounded by curtains as white as snow and this mother called her spare day bed two chests and a few chairs completed the furniture of this room it was mother's sitting room and parlor i remember how pleased she was when she got a rag carpet to cover the floor i have in my mind a view of my mother's front room there is the door on the south with its wooden latch and its leather string and east of the door is a window and under it stands a wooden bench with a water pail on it and at the side of the window hangs a tin dipper and in the corner beyond this stands the ladder the top resting on one side of the opening through which we entered the chamber in the center of the east end burned the cheerful fire and at the left stood a kettle a pot and a baked kettle and a frying pan with its handle four feet long and a griddle hung over them and under the north window stood a table with its scantily legs crossed and its white wood board top as white as hands and ash could scour it and further on in the northwest corner stood mother's bed with a white sheet stretched on a frame made for that purpose over it and another at the back and the head and on the foot in the front of the frame were pinned calico curtains with roses and rosebuds and little birds some perched on a green vine that ran through the print and others on the wing flying to and from their straw colored nests and these curtains hung oh how gracefully around that bed and they were pinned back a little at the front revealing blue and white coverlet of rare workmanship and then the next in the last corner stood the family cupboard the top shelves were filled with dishes which mother brought from the state of new york and they were mostly blue and white and red and white and there were some on the top shelf which the children called their golden edged dishes the bottom of the cupboard was enclosed by opening two small doors i could look in and i found not there the luxuries of every climb but what was found there was eaten with as much relish as the most costly vaynes would be now it was a place i visited often in hooks attached to a beam overhead hung two guns which were very frequently used a splint broom and five or six splint bottom chairs constituted nearly all the furniture of this room and before that cheerful fire in one of those chairs often sat one making and mending garments a little and big and this she did with her own hands never having heard of a sewing machine as there were none in existence then and she had to make every stitch with her fingers we were not so fortunate as the favored people of ancient times our garments would wax old mother made a garment for father to work in which he called his frock and it was made of linen cloth which she brought from the state of new york and it was like a shirt only the sleeves were short they reached halfway to his elbows and this he wore in place of a shirt when working hard in warm weather in the southeast of the house father dug into the ground and made him an outdoor cellar in which we kept our potatoes through the winter without freezing them we found it very convenient isn't it amazing we get a chance to to look in to walk in the door of william nolan's uh childhood home the cabin the the log house we get to look in each corner and describes what's in the corner he describes what it looks like he describes the chimney you know the furniture the colors all that it's uh it's it's truly like we can walk back in time and look at this house so i'm so thankful that william nolan went through his mind's eye went back to his childhood and walked through that for us and gave us every description we have great plans for the homestead here this is so helpful for you know figuring out exactly what kind of furniture goes in a cabin like this there's not much room there's not much you can do and there are very few things in the in his home and it was probably a little bit bigger than this one so we got a lot of challenges on the homestead here we've got a roof to fix and furniture to make so lots of projects also the bark covered house we are reading through the entirety of the bark covered house over on townsend's plus so if you're interested in a deeper dive on what's going on inside the bark covered house make sure to check out townsend's plus i'm so glad you come along with me today as we walk in william nolan's footsteps and we walk into the cabin of his childhood and look around it was a great picture so thanks for coming along i hope you have a wonderful day and thanks for watching

Channel: Townsends

Views: 96,513

Keywords: townsends, jas townsend and son, reenacting, history, 18th century, 19th century, jon townsend, 18th century cooking

Id: Rv2dohnuTpk

Length: 11min 56sec (716 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 09 2021