Saturday, May 1, 2010

Galloway Log House

Saturday night we went to a fundraiser dinner
at our counties Historical Society
to help pay for the restoration of a log house






























History
Recent restoration efforts have made this visual 
center for Historical Society ready to stand 
for many more generations. New logs to replace rotting
 ones, a new kind of chink made from an epoxy mix 
that should hold water damage to a minimum,
 unlike the cement chink fix that was used in 1974,
 all work to make the building 
safe for visitors and historians, Wilson said.

"The Galloways had money," Wilson said.'
That is why this home
 was a mansion in its day. It had two
 front doors, an upstairs 
door that led from the outside
 to the sleeping area and a loft 
area where they stored their food
 and excess household goods.
Galloway was also known 
to have a library, 
which brought visitors
 to the home.
The house became the property  
of the Hunt family and when 
they decided to tear it down
 in 1936, Alice Galloway Eavey had
 it moved to the newly formed 
Greene County Historical Society.



By 1965, two donations of property
 to the group gave them land
 and buildings on Church Street.
 That year, they again moved the
 log house
 by flatbed trailer to
 the present location.



Nine years later, on April 3,
because of a tornado they
 lost half of the Galloway Log House.
There was nothing left above the
 bottom floor, and only a few logs remained.
Now, looking at the squared logs
 people imagine
 those are the very logs
 hand hewn by Galloway men more
 than two centuries ago. But there 
are only "five to 10" 
original logs left, according to Wilson.
When they rebuilt in 1974, some logs
 were donated from the 
McEwen house. Other beams
 came from an old barn. Some 
came from a home that was
 discovered to be a log house after
 the 1974 tornado, and some 
of the supporting structure 
is made from telephone poles.
"You notice that the parts 
don't all match up,
 but somehow, they all work together,"
 Wilson said. Ben Thompson,
 president of the society, 
said they replaced the roof
 in 2002 or 2003, and 
"the doors were reset then, 
"but more needed to be done.


Asked how they raised the money
 for the repairs this
 time around, he chuckled and said,
"we're still doing that
."We didn't have huge donations,
 but lots of good, solid 
donations from a lot of people,
" he said.

James Galloway was not thinking
 about preserving
 his home for two centuries,
"he was thinking about
 raising his kids in this home
," Wilson said.*
Old and Work Photos from 
the Greene County Historical Society


2 comments:

  1. Jo, will they have more dinners? It looked like a very nice time.

    ReplyDelete
  2. We do the same thing here at the Old Wade House Stagecoach Inn.
    Very interesting post!

    ReplyDelete