What, then, were the general farming habits of the Yankees who form the background of Wisconsin’s pioneer age? First of all, they lived in decent houses which were usually of lumber. Dwight contended that not one New England village in a hundred was disfigured with the presence of even one log house. He also gives the result of a count made in 1810 of the log houses along the road from New Haven to Windsor in Vermont, thence across the Green Mountains to Middlebury, and back by a direct route to New Haven, a distance of over 460 miles, much of it through new settlements. It showed only fifteen to Middlebury and thirty-two on the return route. It seems to have been a matter of pride with the Yankee to desert his pioneer log house as quickly as possible. His personal skill with tools, and abundance of saw timber, made the construction of a frame house a family undertaking calling for labor indeed, but only a minimum of hired skill; and for little material involving the outlay of actual money. So the frame houses rose wherever the Yankees settled. Along the great road from Albany to Buffalo, in western New York, they began to spring up before the settlements were ten years old. When, about twenty-five years later, travelers passed that way they saw many houses of squared, framed timbers, covered over neatly with boards at the sides and ends, and roofed with shingles.[14] These common frame houses were sufficiently inartistic, no doubt. Perhaps, as one traveler remarks, they did look like “huge packing boxes.” Similar architectural designs can be seen scattered over the West--and the East, too--at this late date. Still, they were more commodious than the log houses, and improved the families’ living conditions. The next stage was likely to mark a very distinct advance. “In the more cleared and longer settled parts of the country,” says a none too sympathetic English traveler, “we saw many detached houses, which might almost be called villas, very neatly got up, with rows of wooden columns in front, aided by trees and tall shrubs running round and across the garden which was prettily fenced in, and embellished with a profusion of flowers.” Yankees had the habit of building by the roadside, whatever the economic disadvantages of such a situation, because it enabled them to keep in touch with the world--a reason which is by no means frivolous, and for them highly characteristic.