page_title: Mitchell – Foster – Young House
section_title: Construction Phases
hierarchical_section_title: Mitchell – Foster – Young House / Construction Phases
caption_attribution_description: English: Artist rendering of the G. W. Young c1840 Cabin
context_page_description: 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.
context_section_description: Constructed c1840, the house was originally a single 20' x 20' room (room 1) with a massive fireplace on the east wall.
  The cabin 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 eighteen 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 reason 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 or wall boards on the interior.  The cabin 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.
caption: Artist's concept of how the c1840 cabin looked.
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