I have to admit I’ve always been fascinated by log cabins. The ones you can find in the woods along old roads and at old homesites especially. No two seem to be alike and most of the settlers who built them had a variety of skill sets and some are built more formal than others. The ones bought from the pre-arranged kits are usually all milled precisely and are sometimes assembled at the factory and reassembled at the homesite of the owner.
The big fancy ones are nice but I tend to favor more rugged, unconventionally built cabins. I like the ones in movies like Monte Walsh, where Tom Selleck and Keith Carridine had to spend the winter saving frozen cattle and trying to get an old wood burning stove to work properly.
My grandfather moved to the Canoe, Alabama area in the mid-1930s and when he arrived he purchased a homestead which contained a huge wood framed house with a dog run and out back was a log cabin and a huge log barn. The structures were old when he bought the place. The house burned and the log barn faded into the decades yet the tiny log cabin was disassembled and moved to other places on his homestead over the years and eventually was reduced in size but continued to exist under my dad’s care for many years.
It was an unusual cabin in its own right because my grandfather put a roof on it framed with sweet gum poles and then he roofed it with tiny, square ornate tin shingles.
Years later I learned the tin shingles were actually turpentine cups he had beaten flat and made into shingles after he left the turpentine business. I might be a little partial to his endeavors because he was my grandfather, but Fred McKinley seemed to always find a way to build or create off the land and with what he had on hand. This was as much out of necessity as it was innovation in that he wasn’t a wealthy man.
The old cabin above Cowpen Creek eventually fell to the weight of years, pine boring beetles and generations of livestock that called its overhangs home. I managed to save some of the old turpentine cups and a few of the old logs.
The old cabin on my grandfather’s place may have existed over the span of a 100 years. I’d be proud if one I built lasted fifty years. As a young boy I hiked Cowpen Creek nearly to its intersection with Big Escambia Creek, roughly about 8-10 miles, as generations of other young boys did in the later half of the last century. I think every young boy in those days wanted to be Lewis and Clark or some other great explorer and in their own way did so by crossing over the next hill, travelling further down the creek or by building forts in the woods.
Along the way of those trips of 30+ years ago there was numerous old homesites. Some of these sites belonged to settlers and others who I never knew, others belonged to the Moyes, like the cabin of John Moye that is pictured in Shadows and Dust III.
I always found it interesting to see the plants, which people planted around their homesites, which often remain as the only testimonial to the former residents. These heirloom plants often can not be purchased today but many still grow in the local woods. A plant called Spanish Bayonet, used by settlers to hang meat for smoking, or otherwise used as a sort of rope, is probably the most common plant I see that still hints at the old ways of our ancestors and where they lived.
Sometimes yellow root can be found in the creek bottoms, it was used as a home remedy for many things but Robert Thrower told me many years ago it’s nearly gone because druggists would pay locals for the plant during the Great Depression and due to the hard times most of the plants were cleared out for sell by desperate people looking for answers, and income, during the Great Depression.
Deeper still in the woods some may find arrow heads, nutting stones or other signs of the first settlers who came here and lived in a time so ancient that predated the concept of tribes or nations.
Therefore when you’re in the deer woods this fall remember there were ancestors and the ancients who existed here before we arrived and among the pine needles and hickory trees there’s a story waiting to be told.
Don’t miss the Claiborne Pilgrimage October 13-14, 2018. The event promises to give a rare glimpse into the settlement of the forgotten town of Claiborne, Alabama. This event will feature tours of stately antebellum homes, churches and historic sites along the Alabama River in Monroe and Clarke Counties. Ticket information is available through the Old Courthouse Museum in Monroeville at 251 575 7433.
Shadows and Dust Volume III: Legacies is available for purchase in the amount of $30.00+$5.00 shipping and handling to PO Box 579 Atmore, AL 36502 or visit Lulu Publishing.com; Amazon.com, Barnes and Nobles.com OR at the Monroe County Heritage Museum in Monroeville, Alabama or by calling 251 294 0293.
