Tennessee Log Buildings: A Folk Tradition by John B. Rehder (review)

As an historian, I marvel that such a book as this can be published. Historians are trained to avoid first-person pronouns and separate the story of their research from the story of their subject. Rehder, however, appears freed from the literary conventions of the historian. He is a cultural geographer and folklorist who, in the tradition of Henry Glassie and Fred Kniffen, has produced a book that is as much personal and instructive as it is informational. Stories of the author’s own research experiences in the field are successfully integrated into a larger narrative of his subject. This writing tradition allows for poetic and profound elements largely absent in modern historical writing. Rehder first describes his method, the lens through which we are able to view his subject. In fact, Rehder’s participation in surveying Tennessee log buildings becomes part of the performance of folklore and, in turn, part of the history of the structures. In short, Rehder artfully shows the value of connecting the scholar with his own subject.

This publication is the manifestation of 40 years of survey work conducted in 42 of Tennessee’s 95 counties. The author and the students he directed collectively documented some 4,208 log structures in the state. While the extent of this survey is surely impressive, the author doesn’t clearly explain its geographic parameters. In fact, nowhere in the book is there a list of the counties that were surveyed. The closest we find is a line stating that “counties west of Nashville were not surveyed” (p. 56). Even the maps in the appendix are unclear about which counties were surveyed. It difficult to know then, whether Watauga County, for example, indeed has more surviving log buildings than its neighboring counties, or whether or not some of these neighboring counties were even surveyed. The 34 maps in the appendix could be made much more useful with some clarification on this matter.

It appears from Rehder’s maps and his historical sketches that most of the remaining log buildings in Tennessee are to be found in the east of the state, with the heaviest concentration in the gateway through the Appalachians, leading from Watauga in the Northeast through the next three rows of adjacent counties to the south and west. Log buildings have also been found clustered in the counties surrounding Nashville, in line with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century settlement patterns. Naturally, remaining log buildings in the state represent only a small fraction of the number that once stood.

Rehder demonstrates that the earliest builders of log houses in the state preferred yellow poplar as their construction material. Chestnut, oak, and cedar were suitable, but secondary, woods for this purpose. Surveyed log structures made of pine tended to be the most recent, as pine was used only when other more preferable types of wood were scarce. For log buildings before 1880, some 60 percent include half-dovetail notches in their construction. Vnotches or full-dovetails appear more often on older structures, while saddle or saddle-v notches are seen on more recent structures. Rehder makes use of dendrochronology (treering dating) to identify the precise origins of homes and establish a fairly reliable age-dating schema. This research shows that saw-milled lumber was common by 1880. From 1870 to 1920, log construction in Tennessee declined, as board and batten and stick-framed bungalows became popular. A 1930s revival in log construction in the state was short-lived and the product of inferior craftsmen.

Rehder presents a fascinating evolution of the log house, perhaps his most important contribution here. Log houses began with a “pen” or single room as the base unit. In time, owners constructed additional rooms of the same size. Larger, richer forms followed. Two well-known early forms were the 2-pen dogtrot, which consists of two pens with a connecting roof creating a passageway in between and the saddlebag. The saddlebag...