The Xavier King Homestead (log cabin)

This is a copy of an original picture that a number of family members have.  Thanks to all of you who have allowed me to use it. CK

Xavier Francis King and his wife Emma Colburn King built this house at Chazy Lake in front of Bear Mountain (known on the maps as TopKnot Mountain) and raised their children here.  The house was expanded following a design that was used for the Badger Hotel, located on the Badger Road which ran between Redford and Chazy Lake along the foot of Lyon Mountain.  The expanded house was built by some of the same workmen who built the Badger house, including Xavier.  The original house was built by Xavier and most likely his brothers and cousins.  All of the wood was harvested locally.

The house is buit in a north country style that has roots in the French Canadian settlements of Canada.  The log cabin is unprepossessing and simple but warm and comfortable against the cold winters.  It is a very American form, in which we take great pride as a family and as part of our national heritage.  In Europe people look to the past and marvel at beautiful structures, grand and proud, but here we look to the past and admire the hardy simplicity of modest dwellings of modest people.  The difference is that these simple dwellings were built by the hands of the men and women who lived in them, with help from neighbors and friends, and though the residents of such dwellings were immigrants on the land they made it their own by their own hard work.  The grand buildings of Europe (and the grand buildings of the Southern plantations) were built by oppressing others who could never hope to live in what they built, but our forebearers built for themselves what they would live in, that being the heart of  self reliance and pride in their independence.

 

~ by cheryljk on February 17, 2008.