Here's another shot by Bill Gallaway
This is the Claiborne Kyle Log House
Claiborne Kyle Log House
Mississippi Senator, Claiborne Kyle and his wife Lucy Kyle’s home, built in 1850.
The Claiborne Kyle Log House was built in 1850 by slave labor for Claiborne and Lucy Bugg Kyle and their nine children.
Kyle was a Senator in Mississippi. He went on the bond of an old friend, Robert Graves, the State Treasurer, who was accused of embezzlement. A short time later Graves disappeared and the forfeiture of the bond was so financially disastrous to Kyle that he sold his remaining property and came to Texas. The story goes that he told his slaves, some of whom had been sold, that he was leaving early the next morning and anyone who wanted to go with him to Texas to be at the dock. An undisclosed number of slaves came with the Kyle family.
The log house is built of cedar logs, square notched at the corners and secured by wooden pegs. Alternate courses of log and rock grouting and caliche were used. The 10 by 6 dogtrot opens between two double room sections. The Kyle house is a most unusual type known as the “Linear four- pen dog trot.” It is listed in the Terry Jordan book Texas Log Cabins and a picture and story appears in the book, Nineteenth Century Homes.
(I wrote/edited this for the Kyle Chamber last year. Not sure if it's been published)
