OLRHS Website!

[Robert Braun]

Introducing our NEW OLRHS website:

www.geocities.com/old_lead/

Please bookmark this site...update your homepage with a link to our site... and VISIT us often!

Your comments are welcome!

Bob Braun,
Secretary.

[Rusty Ayers]

I love it! Who did the design? Was it Mike? I only wish you could click on the photos to make them larger... maybe we can create a dedicated photo gallery? I have some pics from the Lincoln Home that would look good. Extreme kudos to everyone who put this site together!

Rusty

[Robert Braun]

Rusty said:

I love it! Who did the design? Was it Mike? I only wish you could click on the photos to make them larger... maybe we can create a dedicated photo gallery? I have some pics from the Lincoln Home that would look good. Extreme kudos to everyone who put this site together!

Rusty

Rusty, your questions are answered in the "What's New?" page on the site!

Many thanks for your kind words!

Bob.

[Larry Koschkee]

I enjoyed the new website immensely... the individuals responsible, please stand up and take a bow or curtsy.

A couple of questions here regarding pictures in the distaff page.

1) I thought I recognized the picture of the hand-hewn "single-pen" log cabin with the two young girls standing in the foreground. Is that the cabin built by Thomas Parish in 1831 that was located at present day Montfort, Wisconsin?

2) I am also curious about the log construction shown in the other pictures. One style of construction appears to be hand hewn sidewalls with a "V" pattern end notch... one other picture seems to be round log construction with a end "saddle notch." Is this correct?

3) Also, are we looking at two seperate buildings, one hand-hewn sidewalls and one round log side walls?

4) Do any of the buildings have chimneys, "catted" or masonry?

Again... great website.

Larry K

[Robert Braun]

Larry said:

I enjoyed the new website immensely... the individuals responsible, please stand up and take a bow or curtsy.

A couple of questions here regarding pictures in the distaff page.

1) I thought I recognized the picture of the hand-hewn "single-pen" log cabin with the two young girls standing in the foreground. Is that the cabin built by Thomas Parish in 1831 that was located at present day Montfort, Wisconsin?

2) I am also curious about the log construction shown in the other pictures. One style of construction appears to be hand hewn sidewalls with a "V" pattern end notch... one other picture seems to be round log construction with a end "saddle notch." Is this correct?

3) Also, are we looking at two seperate buildings, one hand-hewn sidewalls and one round log side walls?

4) Do any of the buildings have chimneys, "catted" or masonry?

Again... great website.

Larry K

Larry... many thanks for the kind words. In truth the credit goes to my college-aged son Nate. While he would protest that I provided a portion of the content and production of the page headers, in truth I provided only some of the ingredients. It was Nate who truly baked the cake... so to speak! To him deservedly should go the lion's share of credit! THANKS, Nate!

Regarding your cabin questions:

Answer to question no. 1: Yes! You are correct. If you have an occasion to return to the OLRHS webpage, try rolling your mouse cursor over several of the pictures on the Distaff Page. A caption and credit box should pop up for many of them... incuding the Parish Cabin. Nate used this technique for many of the images seen on the website. [ Question: Is it your impression that Thomas Parish built this cabin? Or another in the Parish family?]

Answer to question No. 2: Yes, I believe you are correct.

Answer to question No. 3: Yes, you are indeed looking at two seperate buildings. (Good eye, by the way!) The hewn log construction is that of the reconstructed blockhouse at Apple River Fort-- the original believed to be a build-up of a barn that originally stood at what became the fort site. The other structure is a replica of a rapidly -built storehouse, believed to have been erected during the original fort construction.

Answer to question No. 4.: The "miner's cabin" (incorporated--based on archaeology--into the original fort palisade, but not seen in the views on the "Distaff Page") indeed has a catted chimney and I think a scotch-back firepace of (probably) site-found stone. The building was indended to offer typical construction representative of the highland Southern tradition of log homes in the region. The fine folks who did the building of the replica fort at Elizabeth really did their homework, and IMHO did an outstanding job in nearly every respect!

[Larry Koschkee]

Silly me... I was so excited to see the Montfort log cabin picture on the world wide web, I did not think to roll the cursor for information.

Your question regarding the cabin: Is it your impression that Thomas Parish built this cabin? Or another in the Parish family? Thanks for asking... I conducted all this research and always thought I would live out my life without anyone asking about this cabin.

Several Montfort resident historians, some living... some deceased agree with these observations:

Thomas B. Parish, one of three brothers, the other two being John G. Parish, and Dawson E. Parish, and their families, also two sisters, American and Amanda Parish came to what was once called Wingville and now Montfort in 1827. Their former homes were in the blue grass region of old Kentucky, where they had large plantations and numerous slaves. Some of the slaves came north with them and for a long time made their home with the Parishes.

Thomas B. and Dawson E. builit a double log house on the branch of the Blue River northwest of the present village. Thomas B. lived there only a short time as he built a log cabin on a site what is now Montfort in 1830. This cabin was only a temporary dwelling for Parish and his family as the same year he commenced building a "mammoth" log tavern consisting of thirty rooms where the present day Montfort Creamery building site is.

The cabin lot was traced back from James T. Taylor's ownership in the 1880s to the 1844 date that Thomas B. Parish entered the tract of land at Mineral Point.

In this thread you mentioned the miner's cabin constructed at Apple River Fort... The building was intended to offer typical construction repesentative of the highland southern tradition of log homes in the region. This raises all sorts of questions for me. Probably more appropriately needs to be directed to the Apple River Fort individuals. I will list some here any way.

1) What exactly are "highland southern" log construction characteristics? I have done some log building construction in the past and attempted to research style and evolution of the log building in America. I followed the first generation "frontier" styles from the Delaware River, Shenandoah Valley, Cumberland Gap of the 1600s and 1700s, but from there on it seems one particular valley or mountain had certain craftsman tendencies.

After fervent research, I felt relieved when I read Fred Kniffen's significant statement about log construction. Building with logs was a mode of construction, not an architectural type. Log, frame, stone or brick may all be the material for a type.

2) Generally speaking, under what criteria is a cabin a cabin or log house a log house?

Larry K

[Robert Braun]

Larry... great questions.

My commentary regarding the log-style construction of homes stems from an observation I had as a teenager when visiting Plimoth Plantation. Here was a representation of the earliest colonial life (outside of say Jamestown) and... no log homes! The construction was typical of English cottage dwellings, complete with thatched roofs. Where were the log homes I had dished out to me in 7th grade history?

YEARS later, I came across some theories which began to address my dilemma:

Log cabins had not been much used by English colonists in Massachusetts, Virginia or the Delaware Valley during the seventeenth century and were not invented on the American frontier. The leading authority on this subject, H. B. Shurtleff, concludes after long study that the log cabin was first introduced by Scandinavians, and popularized mainly by Scots-Irish settlers in the eighteenth century. "The log cabin did not commend itself to the English colonists," Shurtleff wrote. "The Scotch Irish who began coming over in large numbers after 1718 seem to have been the first . . . to adopt it." (Source: Harold B. Shurtleff, The Log Cabin Myth (Cambridge, Mass., 1939). Log houses of various types appeared at an earlier date throughout the colonies, often for special purposes such as forts and jails and garrison houses, where walls of unusual thickness were desired. Source: Albion's Seed

According to Shurtleff's theory, the log home, or cabin, is primarily of Scot-Irish derivation. The Scots-Irish--their customs, habits, and traditions-- were the stem of what we today call "highland Southerners." According to several noted historians including Thwaites, the majority of emigrants of the Illinois country and the Mineral District were of "highland Southern" derivation or ancestry-- having previously populated lands in western Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri.

These highland Southerners... like the Parishes... brought their log home or "cabin" building tradition with them when they emigrated to the Wingville area.

[pshrake]

I was just reading through some great articles by Greg Carter and Mat Kastel on the website tonight...truely first rate original research! In fact I would say that all of the articles presented on the web page are really fantastic and reflect long hours of painstaking reseach and are very well written.

I would like to offer one possible suggestion. As many know, we have been in the process of building a archive, which as I currently understand, is maintained by Society Secretary Bob Braun. I would suggest that the Secretary recieve hard copies of all of the articles written by members of the Society. But more than that, the ariticles submitted for the collections of the society ought to have a works cited section to each article.

This is not to say that the articles posted on the web page ought to include such an addition. I know that the longer we make the articles on the page, the more we take up space. But if the articles that are housed in the Society archives contain the works cited page, I think it would add to the scholarly worth of the collection as a whole.

I do not mean to sound like the anal historian, but I am a lover of foot notes and works cited sections. Not only do they support and validate the conclusions of any historical work, they are also aids to evey other historian who comes after you.

I would also urge the collection of hard copies for one other important reason. However unlikely, it is possible that years down the road our website might come off line. As we all know these things happen for a multitude of reasons. By establishing a hard archive, we truely preserve for posterity the hard work we all have done to preserve the history of early Wisconsin.

I would also envision that at some far future date, that our archival collections would be depostited with a historical society or historical library for safe keeping.

These are just thoughts for consideration.


Pete

[Robert Braun]

Mr. Pete... an excellent suggestion!

Sources, citiation, and footnotes are an important part of any research project... because it lends scholarly creedance to the work. This creedance comes in two forms: accuracy and precision.

"Accuracy" should be properly defined as "reproducability"-- or the ability for scholars to examine one's sources and generally derive like or similar conclusions time after time.

"Precision" is defined as how close one's hypotheses are to "zero error" when tested against the source material. Because of differing interpretations, the degree of closeness to "zero error" can be differently derived. However, consensus in historical circles generally defines the degrees of precision of historical interpretation.

We have examined a few authors on this discussion board with regard to both accuracy and precision, as I have defined them here.

Among these are Dr. Michael Bellesiles, formerly of Emory University, who authored Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture-- whose shoddy and sometimes spurious sources led him (not surprisingly) to his pre-conceived and pre-determined conclusions and out comes. Columbia University's unprecidented revoking of the Bancroft Prize underscores the historical community's negative conclusions regarding Dr. Bellesiles' accuracy and precision.

Regarding John Lee Allaman's "Uniforms in the Black Hawk War and the Mormon War," published in the Western Illinois Regional Studies, we learned that, while his sources accurately supported the use of waterproofed fabric for the American Revolution and the American Civil War, the lack of a single primary source linking the use of this material to the Black Hawk War militia experiance destroyed any precision in his hypothesis.

Bob.

[Greg Carter]

Pete,

Thanks for your compliments on the recent article additions. I am afraid I am new to the this article writing business, so I am not used to including footnotes.

My list of citations for my forts article is short, so I will be submitting it to Bob for addition to the article soon.

GMC

[Robert Braun]

Back to the website....

After one month in operation, our homepage has had more than 700 hits!

These results are very encouraging! Our thanks to all for your continued interest and support!

Bob and Nate ("Natescape.")

[Robert Braun]

We approach the 60 day mark with the new website. To date, we have logged more that 1000 hits on the homepage, in less than two months!

Since the last update, we've added more features, more articles, and more links!

Your continued support and comments is appreciated... and keep those comments coming!

Regards,

Bob and Nate ("NateScape")

[Robert Braun]

Thanks to member Rusty Ayers, four new images from 2003 grace our web pages...

• Two have been used to update our Distaff page;
  
• One was used to enhance our Links page;
  
• And the fourth (of questionable subject matter ; at least there's a nice shot of the cabin) was added to the article on men's clothing.

Many thanks... keep those images coming!

Bob.

[Robert Braun]

Yet another update... this time a new addition to the Oops! Page www.geocities.com/old_lead/oops.htm

This update includes a treatment of the so-called "Fort Meigs Belt Axe."

Our Oops Page is becoming a popular read among reenactors of our time-period and earlier. I have received many positive comments from historical enthusiasts, who NOW shut their "hammers," shout "Hurrah!" and eschew those wretched "corn boilers."

If you folks promise to keep reading and improving, we'll keep these "Oops" additions coming!

Regards,

Bob.

[Chris]

I like that OOPs page, Bob. Sort of reminds me of an oops of my own--- hidden on these pages.