Georgia

Eddins Log House, Toccoa, Georgia (34.594766, -83.201745)

Primary House          Felling Dates: Winter 1806/7, Summer 1806

Site Master 1669-1806 (yellow pine) ELGAx1 (t = 7.33 TCNCx1; 5.75 SEUSAPIN; 5.68 BEGGx1).

Williams Eddins (1769-1834), from Orange County, Virginia, acquired land on the Tugaloo River from members of his wife’s family and others beginning about 1800 and built this log house soon after. He occupied it until his death, at which time his estate inventory reveals a reasonably prosperous plantation with 7 enslaved persons, 6 horses, 17 bovines, 46 hogs, and 10 sheep. He also possessed several fairly valuable pieces of furniture, such as five feather beds, a side board, two half-moon tables, a bureau, and a clock, showing that apparently humble log houses might contain nice furnishings. The single-pen log house measures 25 by 17 feet inside, has two rooms divided by a plank partition, and is one-and-a half stories high. Only the larger room is heated, by a stone fireplace with a massive lintel stone. The logs are joined at the corners with half-dovetailed notches, the most common kind in the Georgia Piedmont. Logs rise several courses above the second floor, providing additional headroom in the garret, which is lit by windows in both gables. The house had porches or other additions on both long sides, though when these were built is difficult to say.

Dendrochronological analysis has shown that the building was constructed from timbers felled in the summer of 1806 and the winter of 1806/7.

Worthington, M J and Seiter, J I 2026 “The Tree-Ring Dating of the Eddins Log House, Toccoa, Georgia ” Oxford Tree-Ring Laboratory Report 2026/04

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