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.*

*resource

Old and Work Photos from 
the Greene County Historical Society