Log Cabin in America

From the dust jacket:

Although the log cabin is widely believed to be the one expression of indigenous American architecture, it is, in fact, of European origin, having been first introduced in the New World by Swedes and Finns who settled the lower Delaware Valley in the seventeenth century. Log buildings were unknown to the English colonists of Jamestown, Plymouth, and St. Marys, or the Dutch founders of New Amsterdam, who built the kinds of dwellings they had known in their homelands.

Because it was perfectly adapted to the needs and resources of pioneers as they advanced the American frontier south and west through forests and across mountains, the log house became the means whereby a man could keep moving and yet maintain a home and family, and much of America's history can be traced in the cabins left behind in the westward trek. The Lincoln family, for ex- ample, are known to have built five log cabins before they finally settled in Illinois.

Later, log cabins were introduced to Alaska and the West Coast by the Russians, and a number of the buildings they left behind when the United States purchased Alaska still stand.

Mr. Weslager has, over a period of twenty years and more, studied the log cabin in all its implications and he has developed views on its relation to the physical and social mobility that has always characterized American people of whatever origin. The log cabin in the nineteenth century became the symbol of family solidarity, grassroots origins, and the pioneer virtues. From this context it was moved into politics and one section of this book is devoted to an account of the years when the log cabin became such a political shibboleth that even a wealthy aristocrat had to establish a log cabin background in order to survive in the political arena.

Mr. Weslager has traveled the length and breadth of this country seeking out and photographing log structures and he has obtained rare photographs of other log buildings that no longer exist. The volume includes ninety-two illustrations of log cabin typology and the tools used to build the cabins.

In its broad dimension, this book is social history, frontier sociology, and even a bit of archaeology, for the author describes the first recorded excavation of a colonial log cabin, conducted under his direction in Delaware, where log structures made their American debut.