Jessamine County KyArchives History - Books .....Early Houses 1898 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ky/kyfiles.html ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com August 5, 2007, 12:01 am Book Title: A History Of Jessamine County, Kentucky Early Houses. House building in Jessamine county in early days was not a very expensive or protracted work. The houses were rude and simple structures of hewn logs and the chinks stopped with mud or filled with stone and then plastered with mud on the outside. The roof was made of clan-boarding about three feet long and four inches wide, and along these were placed poles supported by blocks of wood and these were weighted so as to hold the clap-boarding in place. There was rarely more than one window, which was at the side of the door. In early days it had no glass but was closed by a wooden shutter made of heavy oak boards. The floors were made of logs or puncheons hewed smooth on one side with an adze. The logs were generally split to a convenient size and length, and then hewed flat. The doors were made of riven boards fastened together with wooden pins to wooden slabs. These doors always had the latch on the inside and a hole was bored above the latch about 4 inches, through which a leathern string passed and so fastened to the latch on the inside. .When this string was taken in there was no way to open the door from the outside. In the morning the string was passed back from the inside so that any party who desired to enter could raise the latch. From this comes the Kentucky proclamation of hospitality, "You will always find the latch-string on the outside." The chimneys were made of logs plastered with mud. The back and jambs were either covered with mud or stones were placed on the inside to keep the heat from setting them on fire. The fire places were often 16 or 12 feet wide, and while they consumed an enormous quantity of wood, they made jolly good fires, which lent cheerfulness and comfort to the whole house. Weather-boarding was not used until about 1815. Some of these houses are still standing in the county, and in some of the brick houses which were erected in early times, the doors were made without nails. One of the earliest brick houses erected in Jessamine county was that of William Shreve, which was built in 1793 and is now owned by Mrs. John Simms, a short distance west of the Cincinnati Southern depot, and it is still in a good state of preservation. Additional Comments: Extracted from: A HISTORY OF JESSAMINE COUNTY, KENTUCKY, FROM ITS EARLIEST SETTLEMENT TO 1898. By BENNETT H. YOUNG, PRESIDENT POLYTECHNIC SOCIETY; MEMBER FILSON CLUB; MEMBER CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, 1890; AUTHOR HISTORY OF THE CONSTITUTIONS OF KENTUCKY, OF "BATTLE OF BLUE LICKS, ETC, ETC. S. M. DUNCAN, ASSOCIATE AUTHOR. Every brave and good life out of the past is a treasure which cannot be measured in money, and should be preserved with faithfullest care. LOUISVILLE, KY.: COURIER-JOURNAL JOB PRINTING CO., 1898. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ky/jessamine/history/1898/ahistory/earlyhou246gms.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/kyfiles/