Houses in Colonial America

by Tamera Lynn Kraft

Although most people in colonial America lived in small one room houses or log cabins, more prosperous land owners would have nicer homes. Here's a list of the styles of homes people built in colonial America.

Wattle and Daub homes were built in Jamestown when the English settled there. When the Pilgrims came to America, they also opted for wattle and daub designs. These houses had wood frames and were filled in with sticks and daub made from clay, mud, or grass. They generally had thatched roofs, wood floors, and one room.

Later, land owners built plantation style homes with more than one room. These houses were French Colonial style. They had two stories, multiple rooms and fireplaces, and glass windows. Creole homes were a smaller version of this style. They had French doors and wrap around mantels and were made with heavy wood timbers and had columns to support the roofs.

Georgian Colonial homes were the houses we think of when someone mentions a Southern colonial. In the 1720s, these houses became popular all over the colonies. These homes had large square rooms with a center hall where the stairs were located and were known for pedestaled doors, porticoes, and a symmetrical floor plans. The style originated in England and was adapted according to the resources available in the colonies.

Architect Robert Adam came up with the federalist style which became a mainstay shortly before the Revolutionary War and for the early years of our nation's history. The style was inspired by classic Roman architecture, but it used some of the style features in Georgian homes. Because of the patriotic fervour of the time it was coined "federal" although it was also called Adam's style. The main colors were yellow, white, and red. The floor plan was basically a box with symmetrical rooms, two or more deep. The front door had pilasters or columns on either side. The windows had small panes, lined horizontally and vertically in groups of seven, five or three.

The log cabin is usually the home you think of when talking about American architecture. This style home was built when people moved into wilderness areas because they didn't have the resources to mill the wood. Instead they would cut down the trees and use the unmilled logs as their building materials. These homes were rustic 12 by 16 foot square homes with dirt floors. Windows were cut into the walls and covered with wood or animal skins. Log cabins were usually meant to be temporary homes until the family could arrange for something nicer to be built. 

Tamera Lynn Kraft has always loved adventures. She loves to write historical fiction set in the United States because there are so many stories in American history. There are strong elements of faith, romance, suspense and adventure in her stories. She has received 2^nd place in the NOCW contest, 3^rd place TARA writer’s contest, and is a finalist in the Frasier Writing Contest and has other novellas in print. She’s been married for 38 years to the love of her life, Rick, and has two married adult children and two grandchildren. Tamera has two novellas in print: A Christmas Promise and Resurrection of Hope. Her first full length novel, Alice’s Notions, was released this month.

Colonial Architecture in Georgia

by Denise Weimer
deniseweimerbooks.webs.com

As Georgia got a late start to the other colonies, it’s not surprising that few 1700s buildings dot our landscape today. Begun in 1732 by James Oglethorpe as a relocation destination for those in England’s debtors’ prisons and a refuge for persecuted Protestants, Georgia received its royal charter in 1752. Savannah and Augusta flourished as its earliest cities. 

Christian Camphor House

In towns, the first permanent dwellings reflected the colonists’ memories of home: side-gabled houses with a chimney at one end or New England saltbox style, with the side-gabled roof extending at a gentle pitch above an attached rear shed (example: Christian Camphor House, 1760-7, Savannah). In the country and on the ever-westering frontier, single pen log homes like the Big Holly Cabin in Clarkesville (see example), or double-pen with a connecting breezeway known as “dogtrot” style, became common. Frontiersmen constructed these most commonly of heart pine, but sometimes of poplar or cypress on the coast. Sometimes the logs were only hewn on one side and were pegged together if square-head nails proved unavailable. English settlers often used dovetail notching, while Cherokee cabins used saddle notching. Chinking consisted of dried mud, pebbles and horsehair.

Big Holly Cabin

Finer Georgia homes of the late 1700s represented several styles:

·         Georgian Colonial emphasized symmetry and box shape, often featuring five windows across the top with shutters and a paneled front door framed by simple columns, often flattened. A gambrel roof included front and rear porches. (Example: 1797 Ezekiel Harris House, Harrisburg; and 1771 stucco over brick “Olde Pink House” aka James Habersham Jr. House, Savannah.)

Olde Pink House

Ezekiel Harris House

·         Federal Colonial also featured a prominent square or rectangular shape with Palladian or Venetian windows and an interior, curved, iron-railed stair. (Example: 1790 Grey House built by Jacob Callaway near Washington.)

·        

Wild Heron Plantation

Plantation Plain homes were two rooms wide and one room deep, situated on a raised brick basement with a pitched shed roof over the front and sometimes rear porch. (Example: 1756 Wild Heron Plantation, outside Savannah.) Most Plantation Plain homes were constructed 1790-1850, with most examples remaining in Piedmont Georgia.

·         One unique style of Colonial architecture exists near Augusta, Georgia in 1791 Meadow Garden, home to George Walton, the Son of Liberty who at 26 became the youngest signer of the Declaration of Independence. The militia colonel wounded in the Siege of Savannah retired to his two-and-a-half-story retreat on a brick basement in Sands Hill Cottage style similar to those in the Summerville area of Augusta. (See example.)

Meadow Garden

·        Another unique form of Colonial architecture stands as a solid reminder of the vanished Quaker settlement at Wrightsborough, the 1785 Old Rock House built by Thomas Ansley in Delaware Valley style. (See example.)

Looking for your own piece of Colonial Georgia? Buy the Georgia Trust endangered-listed 1798 Smith-Turner House for a mere $65,000 in Lexington, not far from this writer’s area. (See example.) But bring a little pocket change for this fixer-upper! 

Smith-Turner House - Buy Me!