Historic Truitt Cabin Walking Tour Guidebook _2015.06.09_1427

The Truitt log cabin is important to the Republic of Texas. It is aremainder and reminder of the founders of the republic and the history ofRed River and Morris Counties, a history in which John Wingate Truitt and his descendants are a part. Truitt Cousins Association 175th Anniversary Reunion Jenkins, Texas June, 2015

Table of Contents Walking Tour GuidebookCabin..................................................................................................................................................................1 Summary .................................................................................................................................................1 Location.........................................................................................................................................................1 Construction....................................................................................................................................................2 Layout......................................................................................................................................................2 Walls......................................................................................................................................................2 Entrances..................................................................................................................................................3 Porches......................................................................................................................................................3 Flooring....................................................................................................................................................4 Roofng.....................................................................................................................................................4 Chimney....................................................................................................................................................5\"Mandy's\" Spring, ca. 1840................................................................................................................................5Pittsburg and Jeferson Roadbed ca. mid-1800s........................................................................................................5Smokehouse & Outhouse......................................................................................................................................6Well (ca. late 1800s)..........................................................................................................................................7Clark Cemetery, ca. 1875......................................................................................................................................7

Truitt Cabin in relation to Truitt burial sites

Walking Tour GuidebookCabinSummaryConstructed in 1840, the John Wingate Truitt Cabin is a rectangular one-story log dogtrot house situated onapproximately thirteen acres of land that was once part of the 320-acre John Wingate Truitt Homestead. Aconcrete-lipped well, purportedly excavated in the late 1800s, is located immediately north of the cabin. The site also retains a contributing family cemetery (now under the stewardship of the Clark Cemetery Association), a natural spring, and a remnant section of mid- nineteenth-century roadbed. In June 2009, the John Wingate Truitt Cabin andHome Site was formally designated a Texas state archaeological site and recognizedwith a Historic Texas Lands plaque. According to the Texas Log Cabin Registerhoused in the University of North Texas Willis Library, the Truitt Cabin survives asthe only documented example of a log house in Morris County.LocationThe property consists of approximately 4 acres on the north side of Farm to Market Road 144 and approximately9 acres on the south side of the highway. On the north side stand the old Truitt homestead with the well andremains of an orchard (GPS Lat/Long coordinates: 32.9759057, -94.7313428). There is also the Clark cemeterythat holds the graves of John Wingate and Elizabeth Truitt, many of their children and descendants.The cabin sits 250 feet north of what appears to be an old road bed and is situated on a scenic knoll overlookingwhat today is FM 144. 1

ConstructionThe cabin was built in what is referred to as a 'dogtrot' style, architecturally similar to ones John Wingate hadseen and experienced in Tennessee, namely two main rooms connected but separated by an open area withcommon floor and roof, fireplaces constructed of local iron ore rocks in each room at the opposite ends of thecabin, and the exterior of the cabin built of 18 foot pine logs and hand-hewn timber, dovetailed self-lockingcorners, and full length porches on both long sides of the cabin. According to witnesses, mud and clay were used to seal the logs. The front and back of the cabin are made up of the original notched logs of hand hewed description, varying in width from about 12 to 14 inches, and extending most the distance to the center and in the case of the base logs the entire length of the house. The roof is now of tin, but was made of wood shingles according to available information.The foundation of the house is of indigenous stone, and the same stones that were used for the fireplace remainon the property today. According to Mary Ellen Shaver, who lived in the property in the 1930s, the home's onefireplace was on the east end of the structure in a room used for cooking and sleeping.LayoutComprised of two square pens of equal size—eighteen feet by eighteen feet—the cabin is divided by a twelve-foot-wide central open dogtrot. Sometime during the mid-twentieth century, when the structure was convertedfor use as a barn, the dogtrot opening was enclosed with a combination of simple woodframing, plywood, and board siding. A portion of that material has since been removed(circa 2008) and the passageway partially reopened. Centrally positioned single dooropenings on each pen’s interior wall allow for easy access via the dogtrot passageway.Floor joist notches cut into the “number eight” logs of the eastern pen’s north- and south-facing walls indicate the historical existence of a half-attic sleeping loft in this location. Walls The house is primarily constructed of large planked logs, each one hand-hewn on two sides, thereby leaving the top and bottom rounded. Averaging six to seven inches in width, and varying from twelve to fourteen inches in height, each log’s hewn sides contribute to the outer and inner walls of the 2

structure. Whereas the wall logs are generally eighteen feet long, the sills consist of three timbers lap-jointed andpinned lengthwise, thereby creating beams spanning forty-eight feet. The plates are similarly lap-jointed, but arecomposed of just two timbers each—one eighteen feet long and the other thirty feet long. Hurricane damage in2008 compelled the temporary removal of the south-facing plate logs, which now rest on the ground to the rearof the building. Expertly fashioned half-dovetail notches are uniformly used throughout the cabin to join the walllogs together at the corners of each pen. Half-dovetailing is not only a mark of exceptional craftsmanship, but itis also indicative of the Upper South origins of the builder.The house retains most of its major hand-hewn structural logs, although a few on each gable end are in variousstages of degradation. The uniform utilization of half-dovetail notching to join the cabin’s wall logs together atthe corners of each pen indicates the builders’ expert level of craftsmanship as well as their Upper South origins.Interestingly, half-dovetail notching is unusual in the easternmost region of Texas, the prevalent styles being thesquare, saddle, and semi-lunate notches. Its current pine planking aside, the initial use of split-log puncheonsfastened by wooden pins to the elevated sleeper timbers as a flooring surface is another mark of constructionexcellence. Despite the loss of its original roof and temporary conversion to a barn, the house has beenremarkably well preserved. Entrances In addition to the two main room entrances in the dogtrot opening, the cabin also has three additional exterior entrances, with one located on the western pen’s south-facing wall and two others positioned on the eastern pen’s north- and south- facing walls. Framed with plain boards, all door openings measure approximately three feet in width and six feet in height. PorchesAs evidenced by a photograph taken of the the structure in the1930s—and in keeping with traditional practice—a free-standing porch elevated on ferrous sandstone piers probably graced the cabin’s entire southern facade. Floor joist notches cut in a sill timber suggest that a shed room was also originally located to the rear of the eastern pen. 3

Flooring Flooring throughout the cabin currently consists of eight-inch-wide pine planking fastened with square-head nails to a total of twenty-two log floor joists, or “sleepers.” Consistently spaced two feet apart, the floor joist timbers reach from one sill to the other and measure about eight inches wide. As there were no readily available sources of milled lumber nearby at the time the cabin was constructed, it is reasonable to conclude that the present flooring is not original to the structure. Rather, the initial flooring surface was likely composed of short, split-log puncheons that were later replaced with pine planking. Exposed sleeper timbers clearly display the wooden pins that once secured the puncheons in place. Considering its antiquated eight-inch width and one-inch thickness, the current pine flooring could have been installed by the Truitt family during the 1850s or 1860s once milled lumber became more accessible from nearby towns such as Jefferson, Daingerfield, and Pittsburg.RoofngStructural evidence seems to suggest that the cabin’s initial roof conformed to the dominant constructionapproach applied to log buildings in Texas and elsewhere: the non-ridgepole roof. In keeping with thistechnique, “V”-shaped notches cut into the plate timbers at a thirty-degree slant reveal that the rafters werespaced at two-foot intervals. Opposing rafters were likely connected together at the ridge line with wooden pinsand stabilized with gable-to-gable lathing. Such an arrangementwould have given the roof an approximate height of six feetfrom plate to peak. Photographic evidence indicates that anoffset porch roof supported by four cedar posts originallyexisted on the cabin’s southern facade. The cedar posts stillremain, but the porch roof itself does not. At least since itsconversion from residence to barn (circa 1950s), the house wassheltered under a modern—if unsophisticated—tin roof. The current property owners removed that roof in spring 2008 and erected a large protective pavilion over the cabin to shield it from the elements. Within months, that structure was damaged by Hurricane Ike and subsequently replaced in spring 2009. The new pavilion is composed entirely of steel, measures seventy-two feet long by forty-two feet wide, and stands twenty-four feet high. 4

ChimneyAlthough the cabin does not presently have a chimney, both of the gable ends possess evidentiary features whichstrongly suggest that it historically possessed two. Despite the deterioration of each pen’s lower gable-end walllogs, it seems clear that six-foot-wide fireplace gaps were cut and framed by the original builders toaccommodate exterior chimneys. To the immediate left of each fireplace gap was situated one small, board-framed window—a common practice in Texas cabin construction. Whereas, because of log degradation, only anopen space remains where the western pen’s window once existed, the outline of the eastern pen’s window isstill quite visible. Further residual clues of the chimneys’ prior existence include hewn ferrous sandstone hearthfoundations at the base of each gable end; gradually tapering ghost lines on the upper gable-end walls where thechimney stone masonry ascended toward the roof peak; and a hearth gap cut in the western pen’s gable-endfloorboards (the eastern pen’s gable-end floorboards are too deteriorated to discern the presence of a hearth gap). \"Mandy's\" Spring, ca. 1840 Some 300 yards southeast of the cabin site, a natural water source flows near the remnant section of the Pittsburg and Jefferson Road. Known locally as “Mandy’s Spring,” it was so named—according to Truitt family lore—in recognition of John Wingate Truitt’s only bondswoman, Mandy, who reportedly first discovered the spring in 1840. The spring apparently supplied the family with a dependable font of fresh water for the duration of their four-decades-long residence on the property. The 1995 testimony of Mary Ellen Shaver, a woman who was born in the cabin and lived there as a small child during the 1930s, corroborates the Truitt family’s claims regarding the spring’s use and name. Pittsburg and Jeferson Roadbed ca. mid-1800s A remnant section of what may be the old Pittsburg and Jefferson Road traverses the lower portion of the Truitt cabin property, just south of and roughly parallel to Farm to Market Road 144. The ghost lines of the old road are clearly visible, as are wheel ruts left behind by decades of continuous wagon travel. Originally a “First Class Road” measuring sixty feet wide, this mid-nineteenth-century thoroughfare enabled residents 5

situated along its path to transport goods and people to the two locally significant towns it connected, as well asto innumerable destinations in-between. Local stagecoach mail service undoubtedly also flowed over this route.Indeed, according to Truitt family oral tradition, a stage line stop is located on the southern side of the Pittsburgand Jefferson roadbed as it stretches westward, where it can be discerned as a slightly raised, cleared area. Nodocumentary evidence has yet been discovered that might identify which stagecoach operation (or operations)may have historically utilized this stop or precisely when. In addition, the family has not yet identified anyreliable and documented evidence as to whether this old roadbed was connected to the old Jefferson WagonRoad. Also known as the Dallas and Jefferson road, the old Jefferson Wagon Road stretched 200 miles westfrom Jefferson, Texas, near the Louisiana border, through Daingerfield and other settlements along the way tothe Trinity River near what today is Dallas, Texas. In any case, many settlers in the area arrived via the OldJefferson Road, which may also have been the means by the Truitts arrived in the Jenkins area.Wagon transportation was used through the 1940s along the Jefferson-Pittsburg road bed. HW 144 wasconstructed around 1956 and replaced the old road bed.Smokehouse & OuthouseFrom what we've been able to reconstruct, the property also had an outhouse and smoke house to the rear of thecabin, and quite probably a barn that lay further away from the cabin to the north. 6

Well (ca. late 1800s) 120 feet or so northeast of the rear porch of the cabin is the family's deep water well. First excavated and utilized during the period after the Truitt family resided on the property, the well supposedly dates to the late nineteenth century. At present, it has a circular concrete lip that measures about nine feet in circumference and is capped with a twenty-eight-inch-squaresheet of one and one-half-inch-thick metal. Surrounded by small trees and brush, the well is situated some thirty-five yards north of the cabin. The well shaft plunges some thirty- four feet in depth. Clark Cemetery, ca. 1875 Close by the Truitt cabin is the family burial plot in what today is referred to as the \"Clark Cemetery\". The land that now comprises Clark Cemetery wasoriginally conveyed by S. W. Clark to Elizabeth J. Truitt foruse as the Truitt family burying ground on December 10,1875. On January 13, 1908, the cemetery was officially re-designated “as a public grave yard for the community atlarge.” The cemetery is currently under the stewardship of alocal citizens’ group, the Clark Cemetery Association, whichowns the land and controls the cemetery maintenance.The cemetery is located some 230 yards northeast of thecabin site and encompasses nearly three acres of land thatgradually ascends toward the parcel’s northwestern corner. John Wingate Truitt and his wife, Elizabeth, areburied there, their grave headstones marked with a Republic of Texas medallion indicating that they werecitizens when Mirabeau B. Lamar, Sam Houston, and Dr. Anson Jones were Presidents of the Republic of Texas.Buried near their graves are three of their children—James Leonard Truitt, Edward Robinson Truitt, and SarahAnn 'Sallie' Logan Truitt—and numerous descendants. Other family members and cousins are buried in theConcord, Coffeeville or Daingerfield cemeteries that are all located within ten or so miles from Jenkins.The cemetery’s irregular polygon-shaped perimeter is defined by a simple chain link fence that can be enteredvia Holt Road through either of two main gates. 7