Historians believe that the first log cabins built in America were in the Swedish colony of Nya Sverige (New Sweden) on the Delaware River in 1638, The majority of its colonists were actually Forest Finns, because Finland was part of Sweden at that time. The Swedish Colony only lasted a couple of decades before it was absorbed by the Dutch Colony of New Amsterdam, which was soon absorbed by the English. Most of the descendants of the Swedish-Finnish colony are believed to have stayed in America. They were considered intelligent and industrious; therefore, ideal citizens of the new colonies of Delaware and Pennsylvania.
The people of Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland and northern Russia have an ancient tradition of building log houses; probably going back to the Bronze Age (c. 1200 - 200BC.) Log walls provide greater insulation for houses than the typical wattle and daub house of Europe. However, the Southeastern Indian version of wattle and daub walls actually provided more insulation than log walls. When Germans began to settle Pennsylvania in the late 1600s, they also immediately started constructing log houses.
The English settlers of the coastal plains of Virginia, South Carolina and Massachusetts never seemed to adapt log construction during the Colonial Era. However, German and Quaker settlers of Pennsylvania and North Carolina did. Thus, when the Scottish and Ulster Scots immigrants began to arrive in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, they passed through regions with many German, Swedish and Finnish log houses prior to settling on the frontier.
Log construction soon became the standard on the frontier of America. Very few wattle and daub houses were built in the colonies after 1700. Most of the wattle and daub structures were slave cabins on the South Atlantic Coast North America had a seemingly endless supply of trees for log construction that needed to be cleared prior to farming the land. So, when Ohio was settled after the American Revolution, almost all the first houses built by settlers would have been log houses. That is why our young writer sees so many log houses in Ohio.
Georgia was the last colony to be settled before the Revolution. Savannah was founded in 1732. The drawings of the first houses in Savannah do not seem to portray either log houses or wattle & daub houses. They appeared to have long foundations, but heavy timber framing elsewhere, with what looks like shingle siding. Since Savannah rarely gets bitterly cold, this construction was probably adequate for the settlers.
It was only on the South Atlantic Coast in areas prone to termite infestation, that very few log houses were built. There it was tabby construction that predominated. Tabby is a mixture of sand, hydrated lime, white clay and crushed shells. It was first developed by the coastal Indians of Georgia as a finish coat for their wattle & daub houses.
Log houses also provided superior protection from Indian attacks. Many larger log houses also doubled as forts. They were intentionally built over springs in western Pennsylvania, western Maryland the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The ground level around the spring was constructed out of stone rubble or solid logs. There were no windows at ground level. The windows of upper levels could be quickly covered by heavy wood shutters to create narrow vertical slots for firing muskets. It was not uncommon for the second floor of the fort-house to be cantilevered outward about 1-2 feet so that the riflemen could shoot downward at any one leaning against the ground floor.
Log houses and cabins continue to be an American building tradition to this day. However, the fine craftsmanship that went into dressing the joints of stacked logs in the Colonial and Federal Periods are long gone. Most commercially marketed log houses are merely stacked logs held together with steel reinforcing bars. Many of the logs for the prefabricated log houses actually were sawn in Eastern Europe and shipped to the USA or Canada by large cargo ships. The times, they have changed!