A FRONTIER MANSION
The Kentucky Museum's log house is a hands-on, permanent exhibit. Donated to the Kentucky Building in 1980, the house was built in Logan County between 1800 and 1820.Until 1968, it was occupied by descendentsof the original owner, Archibald Felts (1758-1825). The family may have lived in one or more smaller structures before building this one. A house as large as the Felts House probably required several skilled carpenters using a greater variety of tools than would be needed for a simpler structure. The Felts House has been restored to an approximation of its earliest appearance. In the early 1900s, the house was modified with the addition of clapboard siding, a tin roof, and an L-addition, which served as a kitchen. The basic floorplan and frame has remained the same.
more about traditional folk architecture in Kentucky
For the time and place it was built, the Felts House would have been considered the home of a well-to-do family. The size of the house and the level of craftsmanship were much greater than the average house. Some of the features of the house that are typical of folk architecture in much of the Upper South include: a dogtrot floorplan, V-notched hewn logs, a shake shingle roof, and stone piers and chimneys.
THE FELTS FAMILY
Felts owned 800 acres of land in the northeastern part of Logan County. According to local legend, Felts came from Virginia or North Carolina around 1790. It is believed that he built a house and returned east for his family sometime between 1800 and 1810.
Relatively little is known about the Felts family. According to the family Bible, Archibald married Mary Weldon (1767-?) sometime before 1785, the birth date of the couple's first child, Sally. They eventually had nine more children. The 1810 census records a total of 15 individuals in the Felts household, six of whom were under 10. Sally Felts had married a man who became a Shaker. Shakers practiced strict separation of the sexes and did not marry, so she and her children may have lived with the Feltses during the years she was waiting for the state legislature to grant her a divorce.
According to 1819 tax records, Archibald Felts was in the upper third income bracket of Logan County taxpayers. He did not own slaves, but by 1800, he had acquired an apprentice to help him farm. It is unclear what sort of crop he raised. When he died in 1825, Felts owned livestock, grindstones, and law books worth $370, but requested that a full inventory not be taken. His will, written in 1817, divides his land and goods, including the house, among his wife and children.
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