Slave Cabin

A log cabin is housed and protected inside this metal building. The cabin has been visited by historians from the Kentucky Heritage Council and archaeologists from the US National Park Service. They thought that the cabin probably dated sometime near 1800. Since the plantation house was built in 1834, this date seems possible. However, in summer 2013 we had a site visit by a biologist from Hanover College, Indiana. He is a dendrochronologist or more simply a person who dates old buildings by examining tree rings in the logs they are built from. He concluded that the trees were cut to construct the cabin in or around 1884. So the cabin could not have been a Slave Cabin as we once thought. We believe now that it was built possibly for a tenant farmer after Cary and Harry White divorced and Carrie wrote to her son, Dr. James Sanders White, who had just completed medical school at Vanderbilt University. She requested that he come home to help manage the farm. It is our hope is that the cabin can be used as a museum depicting life at Clay Hill Farm. Specifically we want to use the cabin to interpret what life may have been like for slaves on this property. The cabin is constructed of yellow poplar with sill logs of oak. There are also a couple of American chestnut logs in it. You can view an artists rendering of the cabin by following this link : log cabin.

 Published 30 May 2014 ;  last modified 27 March 2018          © Clay Hill Memorial Forest 2014