Morris Herrington, Jackie Harrington, Carolyn White Waldorf, Debbie Pepper : PART two: It was in 1847 that John L. Hawkins moved from Virginia to what is now Ashley county and built his house. His was no ordinary house of logs built to shelter a pioneer family from the weather. General Hawkins - as his name appears on old maps of the area - built a house in which to re-create the way of life he had known in colonial Virginia. He sent to New Orleans for a ship builder, who traveled up the Mississippi River, up the Red and finally up the Ouachita to Marrie-Saline Landing, a few miles from where land was being cleared for the Hawkins plantation. The veteran builder supervised men General Hawkins had brought from Virginia, as they cut down virgin cypress from the edges of the Ouachita. The giant trees are said to have been the first to go through the old ripsaw mill at the landing. The boards were then laid on a platform and planed by hand. shingles for the roof were also of cypress, hand-riven, and cut from 28-30 inches long. The man who had built ships to withstand the beating of storms and the pounding of waves at sea, built a house that would stand through the tornadic winds and thrashing rainstorms common to the countryside. First a brick foundation was laid; then chimneys were built two stories high. The men made the bricks on the place. Then came the structural skeleton of the house. the beams were joined with mortise and pin construction; today, they are as tight as if they had grown together. The house contained 8 large rooms and had porches extending 10 feet to the front from each of its two stories. White columns, made of the heart of cypress trees, reached 20 feet or more to support the porch roof. The great double colonial doors opened into a wide hall, which had a stairway on one side leading to the second floor. The kitchen was built about 25 to 30 feet behind the main house, as was then customary. This kept the cabbage smells out of the house and also the heat that accompanied the constant cooking that was done in the great brick fireplaces. The food was then carried to the dining room of the house. (Continued)
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 02:42:43 +0000
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