Christian Sipe's Log House

Once again, Greene County provides fodder for a post — albeit a brief one.

I've known about the above abode for a few years, and I long ago included it in my list of likely log buildings. (If houses could talk, this one would holler, "Look at me! Look at my thick walls! Look at my boxy proportions! I'm log! For Pete's sake, I'm log!") Remodeling has spoiled its purity, but it remains a splendid example of early-nineteenth-century building practices in southwestern Ohio; the box cornice, rake boards, and asymmetrical facade are all traits peculiar to the period.

Yesterday, I decided to research its history. I must say, I expected to find little — perhaps the name of its owner at mid-century, and whatever information I could glean from census records and Find A Grave's ever-handy database. But I struck gold. First, I turned to an 1855 map of Greene County, which clearly labels the house with the name "N. Sipe." A quick Google Books search revealed this passage (in G.F. Robinson's 1902 History of Greene County, Ohio):

In 1856, Mr. [Noah] Sipe erected a brick house upon the old home farm, where he now resides. There was but one other house anywhere in the locality at the time the old home had been erected. The first structure was a log cabin, which was succeeded by a fine log house built when Mr. Sipe was a young lad, and is still standing, one of the mute reminders of pioneer days . . .

Eureka! Not only does Robinson mention Sipe's log house (a rarity in county histories), but he also gives a construction date (Sipe was born in 1820) and, more importantly, draws a distinction between the Sipe family's first-generation cabin and its better-finished, second-generation log house. Examples of this distinction are numerous in nineteenth-century writings, but I can't recall ever finding such a description of an extant building.

Christian Sipe (d. 1855), Noah's father and (I presume) the log house's builder, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, in 1814. Sipe spent two years with family in Clark County, Ohio, then purchased his Bath Township tract and cobbled together a cabin. Sipe spent anywhere from, say, five to ten years in this cabin, then contented himself, for the remainder of his years, with his "fine" two-story log house.