The Mitchell – Foster – Young House is a historic house located just outside Oxford, Mississippi off the highway to New Albany. The house, thought to be one of the oldest standing farmhouses in the county, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Background Beginning when the original 1839 land grant was issued by President Martin Van Buren, the property was an active working farm until mid-1942 when then owner George Wright Young was infirm and left the property to live with relatives in central Mississippi. After he vacated the house, the property was then rented for several years. The house subsequently was closed and remained unoccupied for over six decades.
Over time, weather and decay caused all outbuildings, including the barn, to fall but the house remained primarily due to the integrity of the corrugated metal roof. The house's isolation in the woods hid and protected it from potential vandals.
Rotting at the corners where vines and moisture encroached finally threatened to undermine the integrity of the structure and the unoccupied house was in danger of collapsing in 2005, when a plan to repair it was created. Those plans were abandoned when termite and other animal-caused damage was discovered. The house had been originally built too close to the ground, making it impossible to avoid future similar damage if the house was simply repaired without a proper higher foundation. Alternatively, a plan was implemented to dismantle the house nail-by-nail and board-by-board and completely restore the house. A newly built barn housed the methodically marked and cataloged timbers and boards, until a new, raised foundation was built. Then, in reverse order, the timbers and boards were reassembled and reinstalled.
Several unanticipated and yet to be explained building techniques and materials used in the house's original construction were discovered during the restoration process. Additionally, a detailed review and assessment of each prior owner was performed using property and US Census records. Collectively, they established more clearly the phases and dates of construction.
History Several years after the Treaty of Pontotoc Creek between the Chickasaw Nation and the government was signed in October 1832, land grants were sold. The treaty ceded land that is now north Mississippi and western Tennessee. In Lafayette County, created in 1836, the more popular and in-demand land grants were near the rivers west of the town of Oxford. The land to the east was hillier and relatively less desirable for farming.
In 1839, the US government issues a land-grant for the Mitchell – Foster – Young property, east of the town of Oxford, to Benjamin M. Mitchell, who apparently did not live on the property, but did live in Lafayette County. He applied for and received a brand from the newly formed Lafayette County, and used the property for his cattle that roamed freely. He likely built the original 20’ x 20’ log cabin c1840 for his overseers.John Cooper Hathorn, Early Settlers of Lafayette County Mississippi, Skipwith Historical and Genealogical Society, Inc, 1980.
The original owner sold the property in 1847 Lafayette County Book of Deeds to the Fosters, a farming family of six that lived in the Paris community of Lafayette County, just south of Oxford. They were responsible for renovating the one room log cabin, converting it to a three-room house with an east-to-west gable roof. It took them several years to construct the addition to the house. In the 1860 US Census,US Census 1860 - Lafayette County, Paris, M653 Roll 585 Page 173 they were still living in the Paris community. The Fosters likely completed the house and moved before the outbreak of the Civil War. By the time of the 1870 US Census,US Census 1870 – Lafayette County, Beat 1, M593, Roll 743 Page 498a, Part of Township 8, page 32 they are living in the house.
This large farming family owned the house until 1894.Lafayette County Book of Deeds During the time they owned the property and lived in the house, it is likely the final construction was completed.
George W. Young's father-in-law, Edward Henry Woodward, bought this property and the adjacent property to the east in 1900, and along with his son, James Richard Woodward, moved their families from the Caswell Community just northeast of Oxford.
Their families lived on the adjoining parcels of land and they shared the farming responsibilities. Things were going so well that Richard bought two more quarter sections bordering on the farm in 1902. They now owned 540 acres.
Then everything changed for Richard. Henry died in 1904, and Henry's wife, Richard's mother, died a year later. Richard or someone very close to the family successfully convinced his sister Claudia and her new husband George W. Young to sell his farm in Panola County and to move to the property, where Claudia's parents had lived until their recent death.
George, Claudia, and their three children moved from Sardis to Lafayette County in 1905, and he farmed the property until 1942.
Description The George Wright Young House is located east of Oxford, Mississippi.Lafayette County: "Tax Records", 2007. The house is a two-story, side-gabled, center-hall planter's cottage with a rear ell.
The original c1840 cabin was a one-room structure with the massive stone fireplace, a north-to-south gable roof, no windows, and a door facing the north.
The house was augmented in at least three phases and is believed to have taken its present form c1859.
The main façade facing north is three bays wide (room 1, foyer hall and room 2) featuring double four-paneled door entrance in the central bay, flanked by a pair of six-over-nine, double-hung “cottage” windows in each of the outer bays. An undercut gallery with plain square wood columns spans four-fifths of the façade and features a wooden deck.
The west façade is also three bays wide (room 2, room 3 and room 4) featuring a brick shouldered chimney outside room 2 flanked by a pair of four-over-four windows on the main floor and a pair of two-over-three windows in the second floor attic, a pair of six-over-six windows in room 3, and an exit door in room 4.
The rear of the house facing south is three bays wide (room 4, center hall and room 1). There are no windows at the end of ell, but there is a six-over-nine window on the rear of room 1. The rear has a single exterior door from the hall.
The east façade is also three bays wide (room 4 and room 3 in the ell, and room 1) featuring a small two-over-two window in room 4, a single exterior door from room 3 and a massive sandstone shouldered chimney outside of room 1 flanked by a pair of two-over-three windows in the second-floor attic.
The house rests on stone piers and the roof is clad in corrugated metal. The walls of the entire façade are clad in weatherboard siding.
Construction Phases Constructed c1840, the house was originally a single 20’ x 20’ room (room 1) with a massive fireplace on the east wall.
The building was constructed with large hand-hewn heart of pine timbers. Using a broad axe, the timbers were hewn flat on both the exterior and the interior sides. The rectangular hewn timbers were typically in excess of seventeen-inches high and six-inches deep. They were stacked horizontally from just above the ground to a height of approximately 12 feet at the eve of the gabled roof, which ran north-to-south. On the east side, the eve was just below the top of the chimney. The timbers, some twenty feet long, were joined at the corners with square notching. The sill timbers were supported at the corners with piers composed of stacked local rocks.
There were generally two reasons that builders of the period hewed the exterior and/or the interior of the timbers into a flat surface. One, was to remove the bark and sapwood layers which, over time, promoted rotting, and the second reason was to apply weatherboard siding on the exterior and/or wall boards on the interior. The building likely had both interior wall boards and exterior weather strip siding.
The interior ceiling in the cabin was eight feet high and the ceiling rafters were notched into the fourth from the top course of timbers, leaving about four feet of attic space at the eves, and approximately seven feet at the gable ridge. With a hole in the ceiling and a wall mounted ladder, occupants of the cabin likely used the space for sleeping and storage.
The fireplace chimney on the exterior of the east wall extends to the original height of room 1 and is constructed from large blocks of local sandstone.
The house was augmented with phase 2 c1859 with the center foyer hall, and the second room (room 2, the right front façade bay), a small front gallery, and a second story attic accessible by stairs in the hall.
In phase 3, a third room, room 3, built c1870 directly behind the room 2, was constructed on a beam base using 2” x 4” wall studs spaced irregularly. Room 3 measures 15’ 4” x 14’ 0”. The interior wall of room 3 facing room 2 has the exterior weatherboard of room 2. Room 3 was built abutted to but not structurally integrated into the main house except with the roofing.
The 9’ 6” x 13’ 6” room, room 4, was built behind room 3 at the same time, and is also built on a beam base using 2” x 4” studs spaced irregularly. Room 4, used as a kitchen, has an insulated chimney sleeve for a stovepipe.
The original kitchen was built probably during phase 2 and detached from the house to isolate accidental fires. The vertical pine timber materials used in room 4 are similar to those used in room 2. The interior wallboard materials in room 4 are believed to be the wood that was used for the original detached kitchen when it was built during phase 2. The interior boards have square nail holes, indicating that they had been used prior to phase 3. In phase 3, the kitchen was attached to the house.
Since the completion of phase 3 c1870, no significant alterations have been made to the house. Boyd, Charles P.: "NRHP Application", 2007.
Construction Techniques Phase 1: c1840 Log Cabin
The c1840 log cabin was built from pine logs laid horizontally and interlocked with notches on the ends. The logs were stacked to a height of eight feet, and the top rail notched to accommodate the ceiling rafters. Then logs were stacked for an additional four feet of height to accommodate a nominal amount of room in the attic. The attic, likely used for storage and sleeping, was accessed through a hole in the ceiling and a wall mounted ladder. The cabin roof was gabled, running north-to-south.
The old-growth trees used had few limbs (knots) and were straight with little taper. The corner notches were not uniformly cut, indicating that each log's corner notch was cut to match the specific cut of the adjoining log to minimize the size of the gap between the logs and reduced the amount of chinking (sticks or rocks) needed to fill the gap. The height of trees on the property determined the length of the available logs used in each wall.
The cabin's corners were set on large stones and additional stones were used for support at other points along the sill (bottom log).
The cabin was anchored on a field-stone chimney; with mud applied to seal any gaps in the tight-fitting stones. The fireplace was used for cooking and for heat in the winter.
There is no evidence that there were windows. Specifically, the west wall, where a door was cut in phase 2, was composed of 20’ timbers. The entrance door was to the north; where, today, a window is installed.
Phase 2: c1850 Addition