“At the end of the workday, Michael paused before his cabin and examined his workmanship: the hand-planed logs with mortared chinks. It was always a marvel to him that he had done it himself. Where there had been nothing but wilderness before, he had crafted a home. The deep pride he felt steeled him for whatever ordeal might be inside its walls.”
In my previous blog, I showed what the wilderness in South Carolina looked like. In this blog, I want to reveal the house and outbuildings that Michael built himself. Quite unexpectantly, I discovered them (or buildings very much as I imagined them) at Schiele Natural History museum in Gastonia, North Carolina.
Here’s the house, showing the small original house on the right and the part with the chimney that would have been added after the outbuildings were finished:
Here’s the barn:
And here’s the shed where Michael and his family lived after the house and barn were burned down during the revolution:
On the last day of our trip to the south, we had some time to kill and my husband suggested we visit this natural history museum. I am so glad we did because there we found these marvelous examples of buildings from the period in which Michael Eisan lived, arranged almost exactly as I had imagined them while writing the novel.