Historic Oconee log house to be preserved

WATKINSVILLE - A 19th-century log cabin in southern Oconee County will be preserved along with a number of historic artifacts found nearby. <br> <br> The landowner, Plum Creek Timber Company, has donated the log house -- which dates from between 1820 and 1840 -- to the county, which has dedicated money to move it to Heritage Park in the Farmington Community. <br> <br> No one has lived at the site for at least 60, but pieces of its former residents&#39; history keep surfacing in the red dirt of a recently built logging road. <br> <br> Archaeologist Rob Patton is among a number of historians, professors and preservationists to find artifacts, such as pieces of salt-glazed pottery, a chip of transfer-print China and brown-glazed stoneware. <br> <br> The old house looks derelict from the outside, but inside wide planks and thick, squared, hand-hewn logs have survived nearly two centuries and years of neglect. Its doorways are so low that anyone over five-foot-six must stoop to walk through them. <br> <br> Patton, a staff archaeologist with Southeastern Archaeological Services in Athens, traveled to the site recently with others, including businessman Tom Little. Little encouraged Plum Creek to donate the house to the county after the company originally offered the structure to him. <br> <br> Little said the landowner is having the area logged and didn&#39;t want the liability of an old house that someone might wander into and be injured. <br> <br> After surveying the site, Patton could understand why the builder selected the spot. He also found evidence that most of the land once was cleared for farming. <br> <br> Patton said Indian artifacts found there indicate that white settlers weren&#39;t the first to decide the site was good for a home. <br> <br> University of Georgia associate professor Mark Reinberger, of the School of Environmental Design, brought graduate students to the site earlier this week to measure the house&#39;s floor plan. For its place and time, he said, ``it was not a bad house.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> The land surrounding the cabin won&#39;t be preserved as an archaeological site, but researchers have recommended that it be treated with care since it may also contain gravesites.

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