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CITY OF DUBOIS Page 43
animal would be taken and the inner lining scraped off, thus forming
a transparent material which was used for windows. A fire place
would be constructed at one end of the cabin. Where stone was
plentiful it was usually built of stone, but throughout Brady
Township stone was rather scarce, and chimneys were built of mud and
sticks.
The bed of the period was constructed on forked sticks, standing
about eighteen inches from the floor. A hole was bored in the wall
and a pole four feet long placed in the hole, and the other end
across the fork. Another pole six or eight feet long ended in the
wall in the same way. This made the frame work, and upon this other
poles were rested, and the bedding was made of hemlock boughs, laid
on this frame.
The cracks between the logs were chinked with clay in the same
manner as that mixed for the chimney, and sticks were put in to hold
it in place. The chimney kept the house fairly warm, but the pioneer
was always in danger of having the chimney become too hot, and the
sticks in the mud catching fire and burning the chimney down and
probably the cabin also.
The barn and stable for the cattle and horses was built in the same
way, except that the cracks were rarely chinked.
In the second period of architecture, the settler hewed his logs
from white pine. For a barn the logs were flattened on two sides,
but in the construction of a house they were hewed on four sides so
that they would fit together as closely as possible. However, the
cracks were chinked the same as that of the round log.
When the hewed log house came into use, saw mills had been
constructed and boards could be procured for doors, partitions and
windows. Glass was being brought into the country. The window was
usually a six light size, later being constructed of two sashes of
six lights each. Second stories were added to these houses, and
rooms partitioned off with boards from the saw mill. The settler had
accumulated additional tools for the working of lumber. Iron had
become more plentiful, and the builder could have the use of nails.
He made his shingles by splitting the white pine, and shaping them
with a draw knife.
Houses were made much larger. The second house built in DuBois,
erected by George Shaffer II, was of hewed logs, and is still
standing, now known as the "Old Rumbarger House". However, to this
house has been added some frame additions, but the main building is
the hewed log house erected by George Shaffer, near the site of the
first cabin built by his father.
The third period of architecture was the frame house and the frame
barn. Construction of frame houses began about 1850.
It usually required two years to complete a house. The first year
the owner cut his logs and stocked them to a saw mill. These mills
did not cut much over one thousand feet per day. In addition to
this, the lumber had to be cured, and usually was placed on sticks
for a year until it was fairly dry. The sills and the first floor
joists for the houses were hewn out of pine timber. Likewise a joist
bearer,
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