Townsends On The Road! - The Search For The Perfect Cabin

[Music] [Music] it's August 13th 7:30 in the morning we're on the road that we are headed out east to go visit the two oldest existing log cabins in the United States that's what we're doing we're on the road why we're gonna go because we want to build one from scratch just the way they would have done Josh hey hey Josh did you get it did you came yeah we first created the Townsend's YouTube channel in December of 2008 at first we created videos just to help our customers understand and use the products we were selling after the first couple of instructional videos we made funny videos because that's what was happening on YouTube at the time we tried making a full-length movie we made a horror short film but it wasn't till we stumbled upon 18th century cooking that we really understood what we should be doing the channel immediately took off and then we realized that our audience really wanted to understand 18th century lifestyle how regular people lived throughout the evolution and growth of the channel we've done many things we've created items like the earth and oven we've cooked hundreds of 18th century recipes we've studied skills we've gone to historic sites and we visited them interviewed people we've done things like building dugout canoes but one of the things we've talked about from the very beginning was building a fully functional authentic 18th century homestead a living and breathing environment that's made by our hands so that's what we're doing we're going to visit these cabins because I want to go I could touch and feel a real log cabin that's 2 3 350 years old so I know exactly what those cabins were like because this is a huge project it's gonna take more time cost you know more money than any of the projects we've ever done and I really really want to get this one right so we're researching for this cabin this is this first building in this homestead here's a quote from a 1790 a book says the first settler in the woods is generally a man who outlived his credit or his fortune in the cultivated parts of the state his time for migrating is in the month of April his first object is to build a small cabin of rough logs for himself and his family the floor of this cabin is Earth the roof is of split logs the light is received through the door and in some instances through a small window made of greased paper the problem is is that cabins like these don't really exist anymore these this this first generation cabin this first building that you put on a homestead very few of these exist at least like these are described we visited cabins all over Tennessee we were at the the bridal house there are multiple log homes in our area of Indiana there's this wonderful site that has five or six different log homes but they're there that second house or the third house that's on a property not this first cabin that we're trying to make we want something with round logs something that's got a simple notching system like a v-notch possibly with a catted chimney you know those chimneys that you see that are not made of brick or stone but of logs with clay on the inside we need to know things like how those parts are built because we can't find these existing ground log cabin seats this first generation cabin they just they don't exist to see at least around our area of the country there very few of them that exist anywhere in the United States but we've found a couple that that hopefully we'll see here as as we go out east so when I say first-generation I mean that first building you put on a property when you first move there before you have a real house a barn or any of those other little structures you need something to live in why you build the rest of the homestead so you build this cabin first then you're gonna build a bar and you're gonna build a house you're gonna build outbuildings but we want to figure out what that first structure is like so we're at Old Bedford village Bedford Pennsylvania and this is a site with a bunch of different historic buildings we're just kind of stopping on the way here this is the oldest structure that's on the site that I know of 1762 or so as you can see it's a log house it's not necessarily a log cabin but let's take a look and we've got I mean it was built as as two story with these through through beams let's look around the side of it this is probably like 25 foot in square it looks almost 30 ya thinks you just certainly not a cabin and it's this must be an inserted piece because it's round log instead of all the other ones are human these are all hewn we're gonna be working with a non non hewn just round logs you can see his how difficult it is to keep these historic buildings in good shape because they historically might probably didn't leave them exposed less like this it would have been sited and when you expose them they weather very very rapidly so this may have weather more in the last 50 years than it did in its first 150 years this has got an internal fireplace and it looks like it was story and a half instead of two story yeah look at that internal nice big into ours here definitely a more Rumford fireplace shallower still pretty low though and but we don't know what the age of the fireplace is it could have rebuilt it [Music] oh yeah it's not darker here we're talking about 1786 but I don't build that these are the original rafters we saw the ones that I've seen around blog rafter Jesus it's got an interesting notching system it's that sort of dovetail II or half dovetail notch it's got a lot of interesting features but certainly not quite what we're looking for so this is the oldest building it's got some really kind of interesting notching but it's all over the place some of them are very picky here like they didn't know what they were quite where they wanted to put that notch this is a real interesting site there are so many historic buildings here to look at 25 or 30 different historic buildings most of them log structures so we can we can get a look at a whole bunch of them unfortunately they were all meant as sort of the permanent home structure so they're not exactly what we're looking for but there are some great hints here the notching isn't perfect it isn't just you know Gore just notching unfortunately these structures have weathered over the over the time they've been repaired multiple times so you know we don't we still can't get a perfect glimpse of how they were when they were made originally still a lot of great hints about exactly what we're looking for in you know what the endures individual structures were like now it's time to head to Philadelphia area where two of the oldest log cabins for lack of a better word are still standing here in the United States so off to Philly to go today was a long haul a good 12 hours on the road even more rained the whole time it felt like it was a it was it was a long drive and we just got to visit one site multiple buildings there but nothing was really helpful for what we're trying to achieve so hopefully hopefully tomorrow we'll see something that will be a lot more helpful to give us some some clues about what we need to build [Music] so it's Wednesday August 14th and we got up this morning and drove through the city for a half hour and then down this long winding road into this park here is the first of the really two of them apparently oldest log cabins in America and this one is so cool I mean I haven't even got enough - gotta touch it look at it but really it's starting to get a lot closer to what I'm looking for for a log cabin than the than the ones we've looked at previously so great looking I'm sure what the what the wood is might be oak it's got these that cut across so it's got some sort of sealing on it it's got one heck of a good foundation the notching is to get really up close and tight and notice exactly you know how tight this this V is these are a V but that the top of the V probably has a good two to three inch flat at the top of it sometimes it's down to an inch and a half but you can see that that's not a they're not trying to make a full tight point to it but just really a rounded top with sloping flat sloping slides instead of a you know a full round satellite that's the first thing I'm seeing and still some of these are pretty tightly done pretty finely done and other ones you know kind of semi sloppy but really pretty pretty tight overall that's and it looks like this thing has been weathered for a long time I don't know if it was ever sighted but I would imagine at some point in its life it was sighted or else after 350 years which apparently this is that sort of age this would have weathered a whole lot more that it would just be disintegrated would really pretty much the whole cavern is original okay now we say it is as early as the mid 1640s that's when the Swedes settled in the Delaware Valley okay and it's been modified here and there it's its original so here we are in the main room like the point out that the first people came here were settlers and they traded with the Indians and we believe this was where the original family lived and then probably had children and they built a second room for the children both rooms have a loft accessible by ladder and that's where we believe everyone slept and so even when these pieces are and and even the chimney as it's built yes it has been relined really but no its original one of the things that it's interesting to me right off the bat is the idea that they're right here beside and they haven't moved this right you know Savion so they're right here they had all this rock available and yet they built a wood structure in the end of the stone structure even though they've got a stone you know fireplace built on the inside that's large and fairly complex do we have a guess as to what the floor was like it was it was clay until we concreted it over there was a flood here well in the late 90s where the water was up to about three feet high and that made that clay so slippery that it was a safety problem right so it did originally have a packed clay floor it did when I first was introduced to it this lower Swedish cabinets got some great features some wonderful table look at these round logs they're just the right size this notching system I think that's exactly what we're gonna use this one is very very just almost like what I want to do our next stop is right across the river in New Jersey probably the oldest log home in America still existed or here at the naathan a goal cabin this is Gibbs town New Jersey it's the oldest sort of log structure like this in its original location 1638 something like that amazingly old amazing that it's still in the still condition that you can walk into it this is just a regular home so it's not an open historic site just incredible apparently this chinking is just like it would have done in the in the time period I don't think this was ever sited over this has always been sort of exposed log which is kind of rare you can see this wall bulges out and some of that is too apparently to protect the lower parts so that they didn't rot as bad it really still is in some very very amazing condition I had an opportunity to go inside a little bit and the interior it was just so much so interesting to be able to walk in that spot and you know feel that kind of feel that you would you would like you were walking into history so incredible I really want to thank Doris and Harry rink for preserving this building it's so easy for these to disappear so they preserve this I want to thank them for letting us come and tour this inspiring structure [Music] so we've been to the two oldest log structures none of those were exactly what we're looking for you know we're looking for that quintessential American log cabin that first structure and so we decided we would these were all historic structures you know from the time period the problem is what we're looking for it might not exist in its original form anymore no historical structures exactly like what we're looking for still exist even though it was a very popular thing I've got this this piece this is George Washington um right before Valley Forge and he's giving directions he says directions for building soldier Hut's 14 feet by 16 feet each the sides the ends the roof made of logs the roof made tight with split slabs and some or some other way besides tight with clay a fireplace made of wood and secured with clay on the inside 18 inches thick this fireplace is to be in the rear of the hut the door to be at the end next to the street the doors can be made a split oak unless boards can be procured the side walls six and a half feet high the Huntley soldier Hut's the George Washington was directing to be made this is actually exactly like the cabin we want to make a so similar to those first structures that anybody would set up if they needed to build it a quick structure on a homestead so where are we going we're going to Valley Forge National Historic Park so we can see their reproduction soldier outs these aren't actual the huts from you know two hundred and forty years ago but they're reproductions of them that's what we're gonna go see so we're at the cabin site at Valley Forge National Historic Park in what a King of Prussia Pennsylvania and I'm excited to see these reproduction Hut's even though they're them they're not you know historic pieces here are our cabins and these are inspirational they still probably aren't I mean I would have to build one a little bit differently than these he's got very very nice big logs on these I don't know if I was building a cabin with just a bunch of guys I don't know I if I'd pick smaller logs than this let's go around the back what we do have is simple saddle notches on this wood they have made simple saddle notches most of the buildings we've seen so far had dovetail notches or even a simple V notch system I don't know about doing saddle notches like this none of the houses we've seen had primitive chimneys but you could see you know George Washington was giving directions for sometimes what's called a catted chimney in this case built like the log cabin with logs and then lined on the interior with clay I'm not sure how they've done these reproduction ones because that kind of stuff takes a it takes a lot of maintenance to keep those up and Washington only meant for those cabins to be very temporary only lasting till spring we got a simple roofing system - it's got simple shakes on this one over here so these are kind of you know worn out whether to out but it gives us a lot better idea of what the simple cut roofing material was like now the directions did not say necessarily to make shakes though it said to you know like McClung splits or long strips that they would probably put vertically and lay one on top of another it's hard to say exactly how these different groups would do it he really left a lot of the design free for the soldiers themselves to figure out how to make the the way they wanted to he you know gave directions for make it this size make the chimneys out of this material and they even had a contest about who could make their huts the fastest and he had there was a prize for that so there was definitely some innovation different soldier groups would build their huts different ways you can imagine the same thing happening with settlers all over America they'd come into an area if they were gonna build a shelter they were gonna make them in a lot of different designs let's take a look at their interpretation for the fireplace and how it hooks into the wall they're using stone here you could see in those original directions he was expecting a fireplace that was lined with clay 18 inches of clay and it wouldn't it wouldn't have been just clay it would have been a mix likely of sand and clay and sometimes a binder like straw that they would put in sometimes those catagen knees will call cats because they would make these sort of like a big loaf sometimes we call it today a cob the construction you'd take these these cobs of clay lay them in place and then pack them up nice and tight they would dry and if it's made if you have the right mix of clay and sand it doesn't shrink very much so you have a really really strong and impervious at least to heat type of chimney lining that's probably what they would have done or at least that's what George Washington was directing these soldiers to do and I really wanted to see how they connected up the logs and how that chimney connects up here and it really is really neat they in some of the other cabins they interpreted this with boards across here it's sort of a built-in shelving situation I think that's a pretty fair interpretation that's what I would do if I saw it like this but it also means that the logs that we use for the chimney section have to be basically the same size as the logs you use for the rest of the structure at least when we're down here at the bottom here's another connector with some of those earlier cabins we looked at we've got just an earth and floor a clay floor they've put down straw to keep it warm in the winter time but a simple simple floor that's just basically packed earth is really typical of this you know first generation cabin the foundation on the structure is another thing that we have to consider to a great extent some some of these cabins apparently were just built straight on the ground with basically no foundation whatsoever it's likely that though you would have put down four cornerstones at least to put the four corners of the structure on and then sort of put your your chinking material between the logs and the ground to keep the the air out I'm not sure exactly what I'm gonna do I'm not sure what I want to take out of this the last two days we visited more than 25 historic buildings some of them just 150 years old some to 350 years old we've looked at these reproduction cabins and there's no one structure that gives me the whole story like I'm gonna have to take little bits and pieces from each one of them and put them together I'm gonna have to think about this one for a while [Music] it's been a rough couple of days we visited a lot of different structures we're tired we're headed home you know I was hoping to come out here and find this this one structure that we could get all aren't ideas from all the inspiration all the components that would let we need it to build this structure that we need for our the beginning of our homestead it didn't exist we didn't get that and I don't know that it does exist anywhere in the United States these kind of structures are gone now so but we didn't see lots of individual components that we can put together you know what kind of notching did we want to go with on the corners what kind of long size do we need I think a lot of those those things come from the lower Swedish cabin has some great ideas there the the North Nangal cabin had we that was really kind of that was felt the most like you were walking into a cabin from 350 years ago and that was very inspiring the chimney construction that we could see they didn't have it perfect but got a lot closer to what I think is right at the Valley Forge Park with those cabins and that size of those cabins was just like perfect something like you know 14 by 16 maybe 12 by 20 something in that range that's a little smaller than a typical law call that was built you know after the fact or the second structure that you might build so there are so many takeaways and little pieces that we saw from all these different buildings are really gonna help us it was inspiring to be able to walk you through some of these structures you know I'm so glad that these structures still exists that we can walk through them I'm excited about putting together these components and and you know getting to build this ourselves as close as we possibly can to just the kind of cabin there were thousands and thousands of these made there's not a single one left we're gonna try to make one it's gonna be a real adventure [Music] you

Channel: Townsends

Views: 445,492

Keywords: townsends, jas townsend and son, reenacting, history, 18th century, 19th century, jon townsend, 18th century cooking, log cabin, cabin, valley forge, george washington, road trip, building a cabin, building a log cabin

Id: jv3hsU1NlPo

Length: 26min 39sec (1599 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 09 2019