History of Linn County Iowa: From Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time [1911]Brewer, Luther Albertus
History
History of Linn County Iowa: From Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time [1911]
Brewer, Luther Albertus
Linn County (Iowa) -- Biography; Linn County (Iowa) -- History; Registers of births, etc. -- Iowa -- Linn County
G. R. Carroll, in his _Pioneer Life_, mentions the first cabin erected
by his father, Isaac Carroll, in 1839. It took about ten days to erect
an ordinary cabin. "It stood on the east side of the road near Mr.
Bower's nursery on the boulevard one and a half miles from the river.
It was a very primitive looking structure, 16 x 18 perhaps, with what
we called a cob roof, made of clapboards with logs on top to hold them
in place. It was quite an agreeable change from our tent and wagons
when we entered this new cabin, although there was not a great deal of
room to spare after our goods were unloaded and the nine members of the
family were gathered within its walls. When the table was spread there
was no passing from one side to the other, except as we got upon our
hands and knees and crawled under."
Mr. Carroll also speaks of the second house, which was erected the same
fall on the same premises. "It was, however, not to be a common kind of
a cabin, it was to be a somewhat ambitious structure for the time, in
fact it was to be the best house in Linn county, and when completed, it
enjoyed that distinction. It was said, that there was nothing in the
county that equalled it. The dimensions of this house were 14 x 16, a
story and a half high. There were in the walls of this house between
fifty and sixty white oak logs, most of them quite straight and free
from knots. The ends of the logs were cut off square and the corners
were laid up like square blocks, care being taken to cut off enough at
the ends to allow the logs to come as close together as possible so as
to leave but little space for chinking and plastering when it came to
the finishing up. The only boards about the entire building were in the
door which I think were brought with us on top of our wagon-box, which
was of extra height. The joists above and below were made of logs, the
upper ones squared with a broadax. The casings of doors and windows,
and the floors above and below, were made out of bass wood puncheons.
Slabs were spread out of the logs and then hewn out with a broad axe
and the edges were made straight by the use of the chalk line. The
gable ends were sided up with clapboard rived out of oak timber three
or four feet long, and then shaved off smooth like siding. The rafters
were made of hickory poles trimmed off straight on the upper side, and
strips three or four inches wide were nailed on the sheeting. Upon
these strips shingles made of oak eighteen inches long and nicely
shaven, were laid. The logs of the walls in the inside were hewn off
flat, and the interstices between were shingled and plastered with lime
mortar, the lime being burned by my father on Indian Creek. There were
three windows below of twelve lights each, with glass 7 x 9, and a
window in each of the gable ends of nine lights, which furnished light
for the room above. The fire place was built up of logs on the outside
and lined with stone within, and the chimney was built of sticks split
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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