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Building with Logs
© By Abraham Lincoln
Schools were built close to a branch or creek for the convenience of
having water at hand for the use of the scholars. Building a
schoolhouse or a log cabin for a home required lots of helping hands.
The weather could stop building for several days so it was smart to be
under roof earlier than the rainy season and before cold weather set
in. People came from all around on the appointed day with their tools —
axes, crosscut saws, broad-axe, plow, and augers. Some began felling
trees overshadowing the site, others cutting logs near5 by the woods,
other felling of a large oak for clapboards and still more cutting a
slightly blue ash tree for puncheons, benches and writing desks.
When the site was cleared, the logs began to arrive, being snaked
through the woods by horses. The foundation was soon laid, and four men
were selected as corner men, who took their respective stations and,
with axe in hand, saddled and notched down the corners of the logs were
delivered to them on skids.
When the cabin was about eight feet in height, the joists were laid
from one side to the other, which consisted of round saplings cut the
proper length. This are beneath the joists was called the basement.
The last one of these schoolhouses stood in Preble County until 1826
and it stood a long time as a kind of memento of the past. It finally
rotted away where it once stood and the site was plowed over, and not a
vestige of it now remains.
Towns with log cabins for houses stood in virgin forests. Places like
Xenia, Ohio consisted of a group of wooden houses with a courthouse,
one church, a post office, and printing office.
Urbana, having been the base of military operation, against the
Indians, had developed into a form of about one hundred houses with a
newspaper and bank, but without any public buildings.
West of the Miami River was Greenville, a military post, and Eaton, one
of the first military posts in the area, and Eaton had thirty buildings
and a post office but no public buildings.
There were few natural meadows or prairies and an almost unbroken
forest stretched over the entire face of the countryside. Sometimes
there were beautiful groves of fine oaks, as grew along the ridges
skirting the Mud Creek prairie. In level wet places the soft maple
prevailed as the extensive maple swamp in the place we call Butler
Township.
Hard maple predominated in many places, much to the delight of the
Indian and pioneers who tapped them for their sweet sugar water. Beech
groves were found in a few places along the southern and western part
of the county.
Only a few places that I know about still have the stately beech trees
growing naturally tall and rich with the squirrel’s delight—beechnuts.
The forests were chopped down and burned to create space to plant
crops. Each settler kept a few acres, called “woods,” they might need
and use daily.
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