Individual Details

From the September 1987 “East Kentuckian” (contributed by Mary Weldinger)

Donald B. Fairchild, and his wife Ann, 10402 Prouty Road, Painesville, Ohio, furnished a copy of a letter by the late John Fred Williams, Ashland, KY. This is from the pages of the "Licking Valley Courier," West Liberty, KY, we quote some excerpts from a letter by Ernest McKenzie, Volga, KY, which appeared in the Letters Column of the Sept. 23, 1976 issue and included a photo. 'This old house is located on Lower Peter Cave Branch, better known as McKenzie Branch, a tributary of Big Paint Creek in Johnson Co.,Ky. McKenzie Branch got its name from David McKenzie who came from Virginia in the early 1840’s. He built one room about 16 feet square from huge yellow poplar logs. During the Civil War he erected a similar room from yellow pine.'

It was during this latter construction that a group of Civil War soldiers came along. It can’t be verified which side they represented, but they asked David McKenzie why his son Bud (age 14) was not in the army. McKenzie replied that he was taking no part in the war between the states. The officer replied that he would climb upon the house and get the boy. The old man replied that the first man that reached the top of the ladder would receive a hatchet between his eyes. The soldiers departed in peace.

This house has been the residence of five generations of McKenzie’s. It is in excellent condition considering its age. The top of the chimney has been removed and roofed over. David’s son, Lafayette; grandson, William H.; William H. 's son, Forest; and Forest's son, Everett, all lived there, Forest, now deceased, was born here and lived out his 84 years here.

This property lies in the take area of the proposed Paint Creek Dam. The McKenzie family reluctantly disposed of this property to the Corps of Engineers, but the Corps let the house slip through their fingers. (It was sold to a private individual)

It is believed that this house is the same building that was moved to the Mountain HomePlace.

The Mountain HomePlace in Paintsville, Kentucky
The Mountain HomePlace, a living history working farm of the 1850’s is located on a 40 acre tract of land on Paintsville Lake, Paintsville, Kentucky. The HomePlace as it is referred to is an actual working farm on a day-to-day basis as farming and survival was in Eastern Kentucky in the 1850’s. The HomePlace was developed to show people and especially school children from around the area the cultures and heritage of our forefathers.

McKenzie Farmstead
The homestead at the Mountain HomePlace was the home of David McKenzie and his wife, Anna Saunders. A great deal of information about the McKenzie Farmstead was gotten from Everett McKenzie and his sister, May McKenzie Williams.

It seems that the cellar and the smokehouse were one and the same for some time at the McKenzie house. This 11 X 15 foot building was built into the bank next to and in front of the well house. The smokehouse was used for smoking and salt curing the pork that was hung there for later use. Hickory wood was used for smoking the meat. There was a salting table where the meat was laid to be salted before hanging and a salt trough for storing the salt. The smokehouse was used for storing the family's Supply of meat and also for storing "canned" vegetables and there were always barrels full of pickled "stuff" (beans, corn, salt pickles to name a few). Fresh vegetables were also stored in the smokehouse for later use by the family.

Wells were hand dug and lined with rock. They served as the family’s water supply as well as their refrigerator. Items that needed to be kept cold in the summer were hung in the well. This included milk, butter, and fresh chicken. The milk and butter were kept in a can inserted into another can or bucket. A well house was built around the well to protect the water from animals, to protect the small children playing in the yard, and to assist in drawing a bucket of water.

A stone paved walkway ran from the west end of the porch, around the side of the house, to the well and smokehouse. There was a walk made of stepping stones running between the back of the kitchen and the smokehouse.

There was a barn built of large hewn logs in the back corner of the garden. It was about 20’ X 20’ and had six stalls. It was probably one pen with split boards nailed over the interstices. There was a front and back entrance. The log barn was torn down by Everett McKenzie in the 1940s and he built a pole log barn. There was a hog pen just beyond the barn and the hogs, before butchering time, were put into an 81 X 8’ log house to fatten. The barn you see across the road from the McKenzie house was donated by Harry Powers in honor of his father. It was moved to this site from Magoffin County.

There is a great deal of split rail fence on the property and this is in keeping with the fences at the McKenzie Farmstead. The fences ran up and to and along the ridgetops. Evidently they surrounded the corn growing area and the pasture separately. The corn was grown for feed for the animals and to grind into meal for the family’s use. It was mostly grown up the hollow on the bottoms and up the slopes, in patches wherever there was a place that corn would grow. The largest patches were "two to three acres." Fences were not only used to keep animals in but also to keep them out.

A garden was necessary for growing vegetables for use by the family. Vegetables were harvested and canned, dried, "holed up" in the ground, or stored in a cool place in order to preserve it for later use. Plowing was done by mules or horses and the garden and corn patches hoed and made by the "sweat of the brow."

In the early days of the farmstead, no outhouse was provided for the family’s use. Family members went to the back of the garden where they were hid or sheltered by a growth of elder bushes. It seemed that the outhouses came in to use in the 192Os or early l930s in this particular area.

The yard was bare of grass and was kept clean by sweeping. Loose debris was swept over to the branch on one side and over to the paling fence or grass on other sides (whichever was closer).

The creek bed served as the road well into this century.

The McKenzie House
The house was most likely build in 1860. It’s a double pen, saddlebag, story and a loft structure. The east pen is the older of the two log pens. It consists of 9 poplar logs on the front and back and 8 logs on each side averaging about 13" in height and about 6" in thickness. This part of the house was put together with pegs. The daubing in the gaps (interstices) between the logs is composed of a clay/mud composition.

The interior log walls are covered with vertical tongue and groove, oak boards 5" to 7" wide and 3/4" thick. Many of the houses of this period were papered every year with newspapers and later simple decorative wallpaper.

he ceiling consists of seven beams resting upon oak ledgers at either end. The ceiling appears to be discolored or painted with a thin black creosote type substance. Some claim it was from burning coal in the fireplace. Others agree and also attribute some of the coloring to flies that sat on the ceiling.

It was assumed that there was a corner stair in the northwest corner of the room leading to the loft. The second beam out from the corner had been cut out to allow headroom and the floor boards in the northwest corner of the loft had been cut out. If you look very closely, you might see a "shadow" of the corner stair/ladder.

The stone fireplace in this room is different in construction when contrasted to that of the west pen. It measures 4’ at its widest and the hearth measures 5’7" by 2’5". The mantel does not appear to be original. It is nailed over the top of the later vertical siding. The original mantel was probably a bracketed shelf. Probably the earliest cooking took place in the east pen fireplace.

This room in the house measures 16’3" X 16’4". The sixteen foot measurement was a standard measurement for the one room English yeoman’s cottage and this dimension was transferred to the souther and middle colonies of North America. Families at this time commonly referred to this as the front room. They were careful never to let the fire go out in the fireplace since they cooked in the fireplace before the kitchen was built. Two windows in this room let in light.

You may be able to see some poplar wooden plugs in the front door lintel. It seemed that a hole was drilled in the doorjamb and a lock of each newborn child’s hair was placed in the hole. It was then covered with a wooden plug. It was believed that this would ward off diseases and serious illnesses such as the "tizic", a dry wheezing similar to asthma.

The second floor retains almost all of its original material from the pen’s early construction. The flooring is tongue and groove poplar nailed with cut nails.

The door is a 5 board 3 batten door likely added when the west pen was built and when an outside stair would probably have been built.

The 3 1/2" X 4" or 4" X 4" rafters are poplar. In each gable there are three 4" X 4" poplar studs that are notched into the gable logs.

With many double pen houses in East Kentucky, one log pen was constructed first. Then as family needs grew or when means allowed, the second pen was built with the chimney between it and the older pen. Often, a generation or two went by before a second pen was added but it appears that the west pen was built about 10 years after the east pen. This room measures 14’ 4" X 16’ 4" making it a little smaller than the east pen.

The floor has 46 tongue and groove oak boards nailed with 10 or 12 p wire nails. The walls are covered with newspaper fragments, the most prevalent being the Louisville Courier-Journal.

The ceiling consists of 7 pine 2" X 6" beams, 2’ll" high by 2’ *1/2" wide. The three part smoothed sandstone hearth measures 4’ 7" long by 2’ 2 1/2" wide. The fireplace shows traces of whitewash and has a simple brown painted plant mantel. The east pen hearth stones were not whitewashed because they were always hot from a constant fire there.

The rear wall of the fireplace demonstrates intense reddening particularly from the floor of the firebox to about one-half the way up the wall. This indicates the burning of coal along with their use of wood as fuel.

The second floor flooring of the west pen consists of 5 1/2" to 6 1/2" wide, tongue and groove, poplar boards. The boards are 1 " thick and nailed with both cut and wire nails. The flooring is original to this room. " A circular hole about 10" in diameter was cut into the floor of both the east and west pens to carry the wood stove flue. These metal stoves replaced the open-hearth fireplaces as a heating source probably in the later 1930s when the chimney top was removed.

There are 7 rafters and no ridge board in this loft.

There are five exterior doors in the McKenzie dwelling all of which are board and batten construction. Additionally, there is one interior door and two doorways.

The front door of the west pen is unpainted and constructed of six pine boards that vary in length. All nailing is from the exterior to the interior of the door, and the wire nails display a repeated 5 nail stud pattern. Observed from the interior, this door is hinged along the right side. Hardware consists of two butt hinges and one box lock.

The front door of the east pen is similar to the door on the west pen except that it was painted brown. It’s an early style door but a replacement. It’s of seven board three batten construction and has two butt hinges and one box lock.

The oldest door in the house is the back door of the east pen. It is made tip of 5 boards and 3 battens all of poplar. The door is nailed with cut nails and has the distinction of being nailed from both sides. It’s hinged along the right side with two butt hinges and shows evidence of a thumb latch and lift bar which is missing. It was attached to the lean-to side of the door. This door was probably an exterior northern exit from the eastern pen of the McKenzie house before the frame addition of the log kitchen. It later opened into the log kitchen.

Evidence of eight current or former window openings is preserved in the McKenzie dwelling.

The front porch utilized mortises on the east pen’s walls to attach tension stringers. The east pen had a porch early, probably when it was first built. The original porch must have been extended when the west pen was constructed. The porch was 4’ 6" out from the main house to the drip line. The original porch very likely had chamfered porch posts with mortised rails. The chamfering begins just above the rail. The porch roof was not a continuation of the main roof but began below the house’s extended top plate log. The guttering along the porch roof makes a continuous wooden trough.

There is evidence that this house had a log kitchen built right up against the back of the main house. There are four 1 1/2" diameter auger holes drilled into the north (rear) face of the east pen. They are in a pattern indicating a possible connection with the old log kitchen. The log kitchen probably post-dated the east pen but pre-dated the west pen.

The Chimney
The chimney is constructed of rough squared sandstone. The east pen originally had a chimney that extended, at the base, 2’ 6" out from the west wall. When the west pen was built another flue was added, built against the back of the first chimney stack. This second flue extended 1’ 7" more making the combined chimney 4’ 1" across.

So you see the stone chimney is actually two separate chimney stacks backed against one another. While the chimney stacks proper consist of rough squared stone, the hearth areas have well dressed stone. Inside the firebox, the stones are parged with a mud/clay type mortar. This parging (which was an inch or two thick) was evidently intended to smooth the firebox as well as protect the firebox stones from heat deterioration.

Starting at the bottom of the chimney, the base/foundation of it consists of the largest stones. The stones grow smaller as the chimney grows in height. The chimney base’s bottom extends about 1 1/2 feet below the log walls. Underneath each hearth area (that area that extends out into the wood floors) squared stones underlay the edges thus supporting the closest floor joist and supporting the log walls where the hearth opening is. The area inside the squared stones is filled with rubble. On top of the squared stones and rubble the hearth slabs are laid.

All of the chimney is laid with mortar. The mortar is a yellowish colored clay mixture. When dismantling the chimney for moving to this site, it was found that the mud mortar was very hard and more stable than might have been expected, since it was almost 100% still in place. This leads one to believe that heat generated in the chimney flues baked the mud mortar into an even harder consistency. This mud mortar appears to be of the same make-up as the parging that was stuccoed inside the fireplace.

Birth	1811	Virginia
Marriage	17 Jan 1832	Scott County, Virginia -
Residence	1840	Scott County, Virginia
Residence	1860	Johnson County, Kentucky
Residence	1870	Flatgap, Johnson, Kentucky
Death	1878	Johnson County, Kentucky

Spouse	Cynthia ESTEP (1805 - 1836)
Child	Martha Jane McKENZIE (1830 - 1871)

Father	John McKENZIE ( - )
Sibling	Burgess McKenzie
Sibling	James McKenzie
Sibling	William McKenzie
Sibling	Elizabeth McKenzie