Hunting History - Log Cabins

When I was growing up, Davy Crocket was BIG! That whole frontier world was immensely popular. People had sofa's upholstered in fabric showing scenes from frontier life, log cabins, old wells, people gathered around the old oak tree, stage coahes. Fes Parker was Davy Crocket in a tv series that ignited the popular imagination. It was a Walt Disney production in the heyday of family fare, l954-1955. All of us kids had Lincoln Logs and I loved to build villages in the bag=ck yard with sticks to make fences and pebbles and rocks to create scenery. I was just reaching ten at the time.

The love of log cabins and that early settlement architecture has stayed with me my whole life. I am not sure what re-ignited the fire but during my early driving explorations in South Jersey right after retirement, I began to hunt out log cabins of which there are surprising quite a few. I found one just as you enter Swedesboro, beside the church ol the hill, an excellent historic beauty on its own. And I found one just as you enter Salem. There is another really old one in Greenwich that you can tour during their harvest festival each autumn. Once when I was there visiting the log cabin as you'd visit an old friend, I met a man who had written a book on log cabins and I bought his book. In those early days of history hunting, I drove all over the place and found fascinating buildings and towns which excited even more avenues to explore, such as One Room Schools and Civilian Conservation Projects!

The closest log cabin to where I live happened to be the oldest log cabin, not just in New Jersey but in the whole Eastern Hemisphere, in Gibbstown! It is a Finnish/Swedish log cabin which was at the time owned by the Rink family, who had lovingly preserved it. The day I found it, Mrs. Rink was haning out wash in hwe back yard and she gave me a tour. It is the Braman-Nothnagle Cabin built in 1638! One of the reasons it is the oldest standing log cabin is the Scandinavian cultural tradition of taking down and burning an old log cabin when a new home was built. This cabin has been so famous, Scandinavian royalty has visited! It is actually Finnish style. The Fins flattened the bottom and top of the logs so that they fit so snugly there was no need for chinking.

The Rinks got older and Mr. Rink, sadly passed away. Mrs. Rink put the log cabin and their adjoining Colonial home up for sale but she felt honor bound to protect the log cabin and most of the highest offers were from the philistine developers who wanted to tear down the historic cabin as well as the now historic adjoing house to build new homes. She showed great integrity in turning down their offers and accepting one that was a fraction of the value of the property, just so she could ensure that the log cabin would be maintained and preserved. The original asking price was over a million, but she accepted $225 thousand. It seems to me that we are in a period where istory isn't as respected as it was once. Mrs. Rink however, showed her love.

Perhaps the biggest period of respect for history in the popular culture was the Bicentennial, in the 1970's. Those were halcyon days! Oral history flourished, Historical Societies saw a resurgence in membership, and old buildings were visited and admired and resored and preserved. In these days, even a Revolutionary War era treasure such as the brick house in St. Mary's Cemetery in Bellmawr, are casually destroyed for no more than a highway sound barrier. The St. Mary's house was built in the mid 1700's and had been owned by a hero of local militia who mortgaged his own home to raise a militia that fought in the local battles such as Gloucester City (the first battle of the Marquis de Lafayette when he earned his officers stripes). How sad. Preservationists protested, but the wrecking crew came in during the early pre-dawn hours and desroyed this irreplceable piece of American History in our own backyard.

On the plus side, another piece of early history has been preserved by the Camden County Historical Society, an early Cooper family Delaware River ferry tavern. We have all watched the struggle to save this building and we await its transformation into a Revolutionary War History Museum in the not too distant future.

If you, too, are either a follower of log cabin history or Swedish/Finnish settlement in the early Colonial period, look up the Nothnagle Cabin and have a drive over and get a look while you still can. And let's all say a hearty thank you to the Rinks for standing in the long line of history lovers who have preserved our shared history!