OPINION|
Wilbur Roberts, 80, suggests a shelf be placed near the window next to the back door of the log cabin. On the shelf, he says, should be a razor, a leather strop, a small mirror and a small bowl for water.
That's a boyhood memory he has of his grandfather shaving by the light coming through the window. The cabin was built in 1837 by Wilbur's great-grandfather, William Roberts. It is a registered Greene County historic site and is being repaired and refurbished so it replicates what it looked like in 1837.
Wilbur and his brother, Charles, 70, drove up from Texas and visited the cabin Friday, Feb. 23. They have family in Greene County, including their nephew who lives nearby. Their sister, Tahlula Mae Spivey, 79, resides in Rogersville.
A fourth sibling, William, the oldest, died at age 48 of cancer in 1990. He was the only one of the four Roberts children who was born in the cabin. He is buried in the family cemetery just down the hill from the cabin.
I ask the brothers if they, too, will someday be buried in the Roberts cemetery.
Wilbur says “possibly” and Charles says “probably.”
Couple that lives nearby bought the cabin and land so it would not be developed
I wrote about the Roberts-Dryer log cabin at 1020 S. Farm Road 193 in October 2023. The Dryer family bought the cabin and property from the Roberts years ago.
The people footing the bill for the preservation work of the cabin are Jodi and Ryan Hamilton, who live nearby.
The Hamiltons bought the cabin and surrounding 27 acres of open field in July 2023 after the death of Floyd Dale Dryer, who had lived in a residence, since razed, near the cabin. He passed away Sept. 28, 2022.
The Hamiltons also removed two dilapidated outbuildings.
“We bought the property because we did not want it to be developed,” Jodi Hamilton told me in October. Her husband is vice president of Hamilton Properties. However, the purchase of the nearby acreage and the restoration of the log cabin are personal projects not related to the business.
The person hired to do the renovation work is Randy Lambrecht. Some of his initial steps included removing an air conditioner and a plastic-bubble skylight from the cabin, which for years had been used for storage.
On Friday, Lambrecht quizzed the two brothers about their memories of the cabin and how it looked when they were young.
“I really wanted to know everything,” Lambrecht tells me. “We want to take this back to 1837 when it was built. ... We didn't want to modernize it.”
Wilbur says he was born a year after William, the eldest. Soon after William was born, the family moved out of the cabin to a nearby house. As a result, Wilbur was not born in the cabin, but at a hospital, in part because his mother had health complications.
Wilbur tells me about the well his great-grandfather dug. It is down the hill from the cabin — between the cabin and cemetery.
“It was the coldest and sweetest water,” he says.
Lambrecht built a stone circle around the well and put a wooden roof over it. He calls it a “wishing well.” The stone circle and roof are recent additions, not part of the land's history. But the well itself brings back memories.
“I grew up down the road,” Charles says. “At the time, our dad owned this and farmed it. So we were here and grew up here. And there's a little well down the hill here which he's refurbished. It had a hand pump at the time. I was a child and I pumped millions of gallons of water out of it for the cattle down here.”
Older brother Wilbur adds, “I'm glad he come along so I didn't have to.”
“We walked all over these hills and hollows while growing up,” Wilbur says.
He attended a small school, called Mumford School, near Mt. Pisgah United Methodist Church, which is close to the cabin and also is a Greene County historical site.
Wilbur has an historic photo somewhere of the Anti-Horse Thief group having a picnic on the grounds of his former school.
Wilbur escorts me down to the cemetery, the burial place of his great-great grandmother; his great-grandfather, who built the cabin, and his great-grandfather's three wives; his grand-father and his grand-father's wife; his father and his mother; and his brother.
His father and grand-father raised hay and had cows on a large spread of land here in Greene County. He cannot recall the total acreage.
Up the hill, to the north, is where his father long ago made his attempt at a “row crop,” meaning anything planted in rows.
“Dad tried to raise corn on that rock pile on top of that hill,” he says. “I've carried too damn many rocks off of it.”
This is Pokin Around column No. 164.
