The walk-in interactive log cabin exhibit is an exciting way to learn about the past, especially for children. Like original buildings, the logs are flattened on the exterior and interior sides. This was done so that siding, called clapboards, could later be added on the exterior. On the inside, the flattened logs made a straighter wall. Spaces between the logs were filled with chinking, which was often the consistency of stone mortar. At each corner the logs are notched with dovetail joints.

Like Grandma’s Attic, the cabin is a great place to explore. Girls can try on pioneer pinafores and sunbonnets, and boys will have fun with the suspenders and straw hats. Find out what’s cooking by lifting the lid on the pot, or try the comfort of a mattress filled with dried cornhusks. One great feature of the cabin is that it enables visitors to experience how the cabin would be illuminated in 1850 using candles and lanterns. It would take 75 candles to equal the light of one 60-watt light bulb.

Visitors will find the interior of the cabin painted white, which accurately duplicates what would be found in a cabin of that period. Why were cabin interiors whitewashed? Interior walls were painted with a mixture of lime, sand, and water. The limed surfaces helped reflect light from candles and lamps, brightening the interior. Using lime on the walls was believed to reduce the number of biting flies that would be in the cabin (screening for windows and doors had not been invented). Other common pests that plagued settlers were mosquitoes, bed bugs, and head lice.

Conditions inside the cabin were often very crowded. A typical size for the first cabin was about 16’ x 18’, so as much work as possible was done outside. Find a room in your home that size and imagine 6 to 8 people living in the space for one year! There was no privacy in a one-room cabin. After the family was established, the cabin could be expanded or a frame house constructed. After a frame home was constructed, the cabin was often used for another purpose. By 1850, most settlers would have used a cast-iron cook stove instead of a fireplace. A stove was safer than an open fire, heated the cabin better than a fireplace, and made cooking much easier. Stoves could be disassembled for traveling.
Try some Pioneer Recipes!

Look for the fowling piece, a common firearm used by settlers. This type of gun had a smooth bore, like today’s shotgun. It could be loaded with either shot for birds and small game, or a single round ball for larger game such as deer, bear, or the occasional wolf, making it a very practical choice. Early settlers in the Lake Winnebago Region hunted passenger pigeons and prairie chickens, which flourished in the oak openings and prairies of eastern Wisconsin. One settler, Henry Gallup wrote that all they saw on the journey from Milwaukee to Oshkosh were prairie chickens! As the natural prairie habitat disappeared under the farmer’s plow, the population of prairie chickens plummeted. Today, prairie chickens are only found in select habitat in central and northwestern Wisconsin. Passenger pigeons were not so fortunate. As the great forests were cut down, eliminating the towering nesting trees, and huge numbers were killed for food, the pigeon became extinct. The museum has three passenger pigeon mounts in its collection. One pigeon is on exhibit in Grandma’s Attic.

Travel guides for settlers heading west to the Wisconsin Territory recommended that families keep at least one cat to control mice and rats. The rodents ate scarce food supplies and spread disease. See if you can spot the sleeping cat — and the rat — in the cabin.

ILLUMINATION

BELOW: Camphene lamp. Note the two pewter caps for extinguishing the wicks.

During hours of darkness, the interior of a cabin would have been dimly lit. Aside from the light from the stove, a pioneer family in 1850 had limited choices for illumination: whale oil, Betty (grease) lamps, candles, and rosin oil lamps.

Whale oil was an excellent fuel, for it burned bright and did not smoke. It was the preferred fuel between about 1810 and the early 1850s. The drawback was the whale oil, and the lamps that burned it most efficiently, were expensive. Most people on the frontier did not use whale oil for everyday household illumination. By the mid-1850s, the great days of the whaling fleets of New England were drawing to a close as kerosene replaced whale oil.

Betty lamps, also referred to as grease lamps, offered acceptable lighting but the brightness varied according to the type of oil used. A poor grade oil would offer weak light and could be very smoky. The advantage of the Betty lamp was that just about any animal fat byproduct from cooking could be used. One pioneer, James B. Tolman, wrote to his family back east in 1858, “As to our light here it is poor, the oil they use is poor Lard oil. Fluid is one dollar per gallon.” Candles burned cleanly and offered good light, but they were time consuming to make even using a candle mold, and they could be expensive to purchase.

Rosin oil, also referred to as camphene or burning fluid, was a mixture of pine oil and redistilled alcohol. The oil was fairly cheap and burned brightly, but it was extremely flammable and therefore quite dangerous. Camphene lamps had small caps for each wick, used to extinguish the flame, because it was considered too dangerous to blow out the wicks.

Kerosene, distilled from crude oil, came into common use in the mid-1850s and by the Civil War (1861-1865), it had revolutionized home lighting. Kerosene was cheap, offered bright illumination, and was fairly safe to use.

STOVES

By the time the Lake Winnebago Region was open to settlement, the advantages a cast iron stove offered over a fireplace made it a logical choice for families making a home in the wilderness. The stove found in the cabin exhibit is a reproduction that very closely resembles an 1840s stove in the museum’s collections.

It was hard to cook a meal on a fireplace, and they were dangerous to both women and children. It was not uncommon for a woman’s long dress to brush the hot coals in the fireplace, setting her dress on fire. Popping logs spewed embers into the room. This was especially dangerous for infants and toddlers, who were often set close to the fire for warmth. In the winter, much of the heat from a fireplace escaped up the chimney instead of being reflected into the room.

Keeping a cabin warm in the midst of a Wisconsin winter was not an easy task. Settler John Elliot wrote to his son and daughter on December 21, 1851: “The winter has been set in for two weeks and this week has been very severe indeed. We could scarcely keep ourselves warm by the side of the stove and every thing was even froze . . . “ In the summer, cooking was often done outside to keep the heat out of the cabin.

A stove offered numerous benefits in addition to safety and warmth. Because stoves burned wood much more efficiently than a fireplace, it meant less labor was required to keep the family in fuel. With so much work to do to create a productive farmstead, this was a major consideration. Additionally, it was much easier to cook a meal on the stove because heat could regulated, and there was a built-in oven for baking. It also meant a person did not have to repeatedly stoop or squat when preparing a meal.

Although heavy, stoves could easily be taken apart into a few major pieces during a journey. Because Oshkosh was located on a major steamboat route, shipments of stoves from factories in the eastern United States were most likely among the first items to arrive. In a letter dated February 28, 1850, Ruben Hicks wrote to his friend in the eastern United States to explain what various goods cost in Oshkosh. He wrote, “Cook stoves can be bought here for from 12 to 25 dollars.” In today’s dollars, that would equal about $300 to $630.

FIREARMS

Rifle made by George Schlerb, Oshkosh, c. 1854

Emigrant guidebooks offered countless suggestions for families moving west, including advice on the abundance of wild game, and protecting themselves from frontier “ruffians.” Among the most common early firearms represented in the museum’s collection are muzzleloading fowling pieces and rifles, double barrel percussion shotguns, and pistols.

Although not as glamorous as a rifle, the fowling piece was a superbly practical firearm for a settler. The fowling pieces in the museum’s collection are all 20 gauge, or .62 caliber in both flintlock and percussion. The Leach family brought a French Model 1777 flintlock musket that had been used by a family member during the Revolutionary War. Although certainly old fashioned by 1850, the old musket was still very serviceable and its large .69 bore was more than adequate for anything that would be encountered. The Leach musket can be viewed in the Winnebago Room exhibit. When the Wheeler family came from Vermont, they brought a French Indian trade musket made in the mid-1700s, old but still well suited to killing game.

In a fowling piece, a modest load of 50 grains of black powder and an ounce of “small shot” was powerful enough to kill small game like rabbits and birds, yet economical on the budget. Switching to a single ball, a .62 lead ball was powerful enough to kill deer, bear, or the occasional wolf if the range was not too long. Inexpensive muzzle loading fowling pieces continued to be offered by Sears, Roebuck, and Co. well into the 20th century, a testament to their popularity and effectiveness. The double barrel muzzleloading shotgun was another popular firearm that continued to be used well into the era of cartridge firearms. One can be seen in Grandma’s Attic.

Some early settlers carried rifles, or had both a fowling piece and a rifle. A rifle offered the advantage of accuracy, range, and power. A .50 caliber muzzleloading rifle could easily kill a deer at 100 yards, well beyond the range of a fowling piece. George Schlerb, a German immigrant from Darmstadt, Germany, set up his Oshkosh gunsmith shop in 1854. His well made, distinctive rifles had a gentle curve along the lower butt stock, sometimes referred to as a “fish belly.” Some guns were both rifle and smoothbore. At least one settler carried an expensive, high quality swivel barrel rifle, with one barrel a smooth bore and the other rifled. The shooter could select which barrel to use depending in the game. This swivel barrel firearm is on exhibit in the Winnebago Room.

For some settlers, carrying a pistol for self-defense seemed prudent, since enforcement of the law was weak at best. The museum’s collection includes several different types of pistols collected from families who settled in the years before the Civil war. Most are single shot muzzleloaders, but at least one settler brought a Colt 1849 percussion revolver, a new type of pistol that was quickly gaining popularity.

CATS

The humble and common house cat was an essential part of a pioneer homestead. Indeed, it was strongly recommended that a cat, pregnant if possible, accompany a family to their new home in the wilds. The reason, as you might expect, was to control rodents.

It was impossible to keep mice or rats out of a cabin, or for that matter, out of a 19th century frame house. There were too many holes and too much tempting food. A family’s precious supply of food could be ruined if rodents went unchecked. A good cat could easily kill 6 to 8 rodents a day, reason enough to make sure that at least one cat lived with the family.