Georgia

Begg's Log House, near Lincolnton, Georgia, (33.817860, -82500170)

Primary Phase of House         Felling Dates: Winter 1793/4, Spring 1794, Summer 1794

Site Master 1704-1793 BEGGx1 (dates as part of area master Georgia1).

The Beggs Log House (more properly now called the Cullars-Beggs House) in Lincoln County (at the time of construction in Wilkes east of the Goose Pond settlement) is another one-room, one-and-a-half-story structure very similar to the Baber Log House. It was built on a 300-acre tract purchased in 1789 by Matthew Cullars from Robert Walton, a signer of the Constitution from Georgia and one of the largest early land grantees of the upcountry. Cullars, who had recently moved to Georgia from Virginia, was living on the land by 1790, presumably in a fairly simple log cabin such as was well known on the frontier. The land remained in the Cullars family until recent decades. It was purchased about 2000 by Kevin Beggs, a funeral director of Lincolnton, moved a short distance, and restored.

The house measures twenty feet by nineteen feet inside, has hand-hewn logs and half-dovetailed notching, and originally had only front and rear doors and no windows. It also had beaded ceiling joists and a board-and-batten door that retains its wood handle. Its logs are chinked and were originally whitewashed inside, indicating that it had no siding originally. It had a somewhat finer, boxed, stair to the loft, and, most interestingly, notches in the logs for a crib or log chimney, prior to receiving a later masonry one. This feature has been found on several back-country Georgia log houses and is known elsewhere on early structures. Dendrochronology dates the Beggs House at 1794, very close to Baber. (Mark Reinberger)

Worthington, M J and Seiter, J I 2018 “The Tree-Ring Dating of Ten Vernacular Buildings in Northeastern Georgia”, unpublished Oxford Tree-Ring Laboratory archive report 2018/05

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