Ambrose Baber's Historic Cabin
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Back in time
By Tracy Coley Ingram,
Correspondent, Athens, Ga
http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/
''In the latter part of the year 1800, he bid adieu to old Albermarle, Virginia, and rolled on till he reached Oglethorpe County, Georgia, where he followed the occupation of a farmer,'' wrote Thomas Baber about his father Ambrose.
When Ambrose and his family settled in Oglethorpe County, they purchased 386 acres of land and began construction on a home. It is this home that was moved to Sandy Creek Nature Center in 1980, and almost 200 years later, is at long last welcoming visitors within its walls again. While the nature center had big plans for the house, no real use was made of it until this year, when it hosted a new series of programs titled ''Earth Crafts at the Log House.'' Day-campers are currently enjoying projects and lessons in the old cabin, and with the close of summer, an entirely new set of programs will open there.
''We hope to add more programs to the house and to be able to use it as an exhibit of the way people lived long ago,'' said Randy Smith, facility supervisor for Sandy Creek.Built before Ambrose's death in 1810, the house is unique in many ways. It exhibits a type of notching on the logs that is very rare in this area. ''The Baber-Bridges House has diamond notches on the logs, and there are probably no more than six homes that we know of with diamond notches in all of the Piedmont region,'' local historian Patricia Cooper said. ''It is also very unusual to see a log house with a frame room built during the original construction. Often, people would build on to log homes and use frame construction for the addition, but to build a part-log and part-frame home as seldom seen.''
Typically, a log cabin would be built when a family first settled on a home site. The cabin would be very small with a dirt floor and very little attention to detail. The cabin was only intended to house the family during the construction of the log house. The house would be built of carefully chosen hand-hewn logs, wooden floors and a brick or stone chimney. Any
addition of doors or windows was difficult, and also tended to weaken the structure, so these were limited. The front door of the Baber-Bridges House is lined up exactly with the
back door to facilitate airflow during hot weather. As was typical with log homes of the day, the space between the logs was filled with a mixture called chinking that was made of clay and either straw, horse hair or sand. If spaces were very large, after the logs dried and shrank, sticks were used to help fill the gap before the chinking was added.Baber's children were already established when he died in 1810. (His wife died in 1809). His sons sold the farm to Solomon Bridges in 1814. The Bridges family lived in the home for more than 130 years before selling it. It changed hands several times after that, with Catherine Hardin Newton inheriting the property in 1975. Logging had started around the house, and
its future was uncertain at best. ''In 1979, Nancy Blunt-Smith was our director. We went to a conference at Callaway Gardens and she took notice of the cabin they have on display
there,'' recalled Walter Cook, founding member of the Sandy Creek Nature Center. ''She said that was just what we needed to add to the nature center. I knew Patricia Cooper had done a survey of North Georgia log homes, and so we called her for help in finding one. She located four that we looked at; the Baber-Bridges house was the best.''Newton offered to donate the house to Sandy Creek in return for the park having it moved. A Marietta man was hired for the moving, and with the help of many volunteers, the job began in 1980. Many days were spent dismantling the roof and the framed end of the house. All the pieces were numbered as they were removed to ensure proper reconstruction. The front and back porches were too rotten to save, and the roof was also unsalvageable. The
original rafters and crosspieces were saved and reused.The house was carefully jacked up to allow the stacked stone foundation to be numbered and loaded. It was imperative that the stone pillars be put back in proper order, as the house had spent many years settling onto them and would go through unnecessary stress if it were set on a strange foundation. What little glass there was in the building had either been lost prior to the move, or was lost in the move, so new windows were added after it was the home, and new porches were built on front and back. The original wrought-iron nails were no longer sound, and so new nails were used where needed in reconstruction.
The nature center is looking for old farm implements, clothing, books, lamps, pictures, or other appropriate items to decorate the home. ''There are currently no furnishings or decorations of any type in the house, and we would like to ask the public to donate any items that would fit the appearance of the building. It might be a bench made out of logs
that is new, but looks old.''
With the upcoming completion of Sandy Creek's portion of the Greenway project, it is anticipated that traffic through the nature center will increase, and it is hoped to have the old house properly dressed to receive her company.For more information, call Sandy Creek at (706) 613-3615.
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