Houses today are marvels of architecture and technology.
Especially when you consider what our forefathers called home.
The more I read about pioneer life in Wisconsin, the more I'm amazed at what sturdy folks settled this place.
Families traveling to homestead land they had never seen before lived out of a wagon. Living while on the move was a dirty, muddy, dusty affair. Once a family arrived at their new land, they continued to live out of the wagon until their new house was built.
Often a wagon was shared by extended family, parents and children or siblings.
Sometimes a man would leave his family for a season and go build a home. Once it was ready, he'd go back and gather his family and take them to their new home.
The new house likely wasn't a log cabin, but instead it was what's known as a mud hut, sod house or a dugout.
This "house" was a step up from living in a wagon, as it provided protection from two things - bad weather and exposure to bothersome insects.
Most pioneer homes were less than 200 square feet in size. These huts, built by pioneers from the east coast to the west, were built mainly of earth.
Green County's early settlers had enough wood to build cabins. In places where the prairie did not have enough trees to provide the wood for a home, a mud hut would be built.
In the case of a mud hut, things like formal doors and windows were luxuries.
Barring a catastrophic storm, a mud hut that was well maintained could provide shelter for years. A more permanent structure would require stripped, rolled logs or split and stripped logs.
Unless the builder was skilled, the Big Bad Wolf could huff and puff and blow a poorly constructed house all the way back to Ohio.
While practices of building such a structure were similar, no two were exactly the same. A sod house didn't use bricks; instead it piled grass sod into framed forms. A dugout was exactly that, a house dug out of the side of a hill with some wood added to provide a sturdy entry. Wisconsin's early miners, the "Badgers," lived in dugout homes. Settlers from Europe were well known for their dugouts.
After talking so much about mud huts, it's easy to understand how a real log cabin with split-log walls and even a split-log floor, was a major improvement. The framing and siding for such a structure required a lot of wood. If the builder was a trained farm carpenter, the cabin could include a sleeping loft, two doors and a couple of wooden-hinged, trap-door window openings. In the 1840s, these windows would not have had glass. Rather, they could simply be propped open to let a breeze blow in and be easily closed in the event of a storm or cold weather.
Most pioneers who opted to build log cabins were not trained farm carpenters. Early cabins were kept simple - one room, one door, no windows ... In this area, you might have a limestone fireplace and a shake roof. In Kentucky, a sod house might have a fireplace made out of hard-baked mud, framed with sticks.
Americans romanticize living the frontier life. Consider Laura Ingalls Wilder's series of "Little House on the Prairie" books or the 2001 PBS "Frontier House" project in which three families reenacted the early pioneer lifestyle.
Many people love the thought of life in a cabin in the woods or on the prairie.
Before anyone gets too dreamy, they should consider there was no running water. With no running water there's no indoor plumbing. The luxury of indoor plumbing for most rural Wisconsinites is less than 80 years old.
People went to bed when it got dark because lanterns were fragile, expensive gadgets and both lanterns and candles caused fires.
The pioneer life was a hard life with illnesses we take for granted as easy-to-cure often leading to death.
But that's not to say it was abominable. The only thing that can make a house a home is the happy people dwelling inside it.
No matter how much our 2,000 square-foot houses feel like a castle, a cold winter night spent in a tiny but solid sod hut must have felt like heaven.
- Matt Johnson is publisher of the Monroe Times. His column is published Wednesdays.
Especially when you consider what our forefathers called home.
The more I read about pioneer life in Wisconsin, the more I'm amazed at what sturdy folks settled this place.
Families traveling to homestead land they had never seen before lived out of a wagon. Living while on the move was a dirty, muddy, dusty affair. Once a family arrived at their new land, they continued to live out of the wagon until their new house was built.
Often a wagon was shared by extended family, parents and children or siblings.
Sometimes a man would leave his family for a season and go build a home. Once it was ready, he'd go back and gather his family and take them to their new home.
The new house likely wasn't a log cabin, but instead it was what's known as a mud hut, sod house or a dugout.
This "house" was a step up from living in a wagon, as it provided protection from two things - bad weather and exposure to bothersome insects.
Most pioneer homes were less than 200 square feet in size. These huts, built by pioneers from the east coast to the west, were built mainly of earth.
Green County's early settlers had enough wood to build cabins. In places where the prairie did not have enough trees to provide the wood for a home, a mud hut would be built.
In the case of a mud hut, things like formal doors and windows were luxuries.
Barring a catastrophic storm, a mud hut that was well maintained could provide shelter for years. A more permanent structure would require stripped, rolled logs or split and stripped logs.
Unless the builder was skilled, the Big Bad Wolf could huff and puff and blow a poorly constructed house all the way back to Ohio.
While practices of building such a structure were similar, no two were exactly the same. A sod house didn't use bricks; instead it piled grass sod into framed forms. A dugout was exactly that, a house dug out of the side of a hill with some wood added to provide a sturdy entry. Wisconsin's early miners, the "Badgers," lived in dugout homes. Settlers from Europe were well known for their dugouts.
After talking so much about mud huts, it's easy to understand how a real log cabin with split-log walls and even a split-log floor, was a major improvement. The framing and siding for such a structure required a lot of wood. If the builder was a trained farm carpenter, the cabin could include a sleeping loft, two doors and a couple of wooden-hinged, trap-door window openings. In the 1840s, these windows would not have had glass. Rather, they could simply be propped open to let a breeze blow in and be easily closed in the event of a storm or cold weather.
Most pioneers who opted to build log cabins were not trained farm carpenters. Early cabins were kept simple - one room, one door, no windows ... In this area, you might have a limestone fireplace and a shake roof. In Kentucky, a sod house might have a fireplace made out of hard-baked mud, framed with sticks.
Americans romanticize living the frontier life. Consider Laura Ingalls Wilder's series of "Little House on the Prairie" books or the 2001 PBS "Frontier House" project in which three families reenacted the early pioneer lifestyle.
Many people love the thought of life in a cabin in the woods or on the prairie.
Before anyone gets too dreamy, they should consider there was no running water. With no running water there's no indoor plumbing. The luxury of indoor plumbing for most rural Wisconsinites is less than 80 years old.
People went to bed when it got dark because lanterns were fragile, expensive gadgets and both lanterns and candles caused fires.
The pioneer life was a hard life with illnesses we take for granted as easy-to-cure often leading to death.
But that's not to say it was abominable. The only thing that can make a house a home is the happy people dwelling inside it.
No matter how much our 2,000 square-foot houses feel like a castle, a cold winter night spent in a tiny but solid sod hut must have felt like heaven.
- Matt Johnson is publisher of the Monroe Times. His column is published Wednesdays.
