The First of Many Housworths

In 1843, Abraham Housworth was 41 years old. His wife, Mary Talley, also from South Carolina, was 39. When they built their small, three room house they had four children: Thomas, Huldah, Jonathan, and Elizabeth. Miranda, Abram and Aspigena would follow in the next five years.

At ages 13 and 11, Thomas and Jonathan would have been old enough to help with the construction. By this time, the log barn had been built and a log corn crib, too, stood just to the southwest of the homesite. The girls, at 10 and 6, could have helped as well, perhaps bringing water from the creek some 50 yards away. Certainly, with such a large family and slaves nearby there were plenty of hands to help, both white and black.

In 1843, large, old-growth pines must have been plentiful. Many would be felled to build the house - trees of tremendous size. Taken by wagon to a nearby mill, they would return as fragrant lumber. These boards, some 19 to 20 inches across, would be used as horizontal paneling within the main room, single bedroom and kitchen. Wide boards cover the walls and ceilings, narrower boards line the floors. Common for the time, the kitchen stood some 10 feet from the body of the house, connected by an open dog-trot or covered area of the same unpainted pine. Less wide lumber would be used as siding and roofing supports and wood was split to shingle the small house. Square nail heads peppered the unfinished wood.

Certainly stones were not hard to find, being so close to Arabia Mountain. Great and small stones would be cut or shaped to stack the large chimneys in the main room and kitchen. Others would be used as piers to support the large beams beneath the house.

Windows and doors were likely made nearby, as nearly everything would have been. Nine panes of wavy, hand blown glass over another nine panes. Ten windows must have been an expensive addition for such a modest house. Perhaps the five wood doors were made on-site from the same wood that had grown nearby for one hundred years or more. Two wooden panels were secured in their pegged stiles and rails for each door.

It is easy to imagine that the little house was built between the busiest planting time in spring and the equally busy harvest time in late summer. Perhaps it would have grown up from the ground as the crops did around it. Candle or lantern light would spill from the windows in the long evenings as work progressed.

At last there would be the first night of many nights when Abraham and Mary would tuck their children into their beds in their own new home. In the two rooms of the farmhouse, beds would be pushed towards the walls wherever space allowed. The help and slave labor would have walked or traveled by horse or wagon to their own homes nearby. Perhaps fires would have burned in the fireplaces for heat or in preparation for coals to cook breakfast in a few hours.  A quick puff and the last candle would be blown out and the house would fall silent, knowing and protecting its first Housworth family from so much dark wilderness outside.