Matsell Cottage, Northwest corner of Township Road 229 & Illinois Route 1, Brownsville, White County, IL

Significance: The Matsell Cottage apparently dates to the 1850s. It is one of only two known nineteenth century log houses still standing in White County. As an example of a simple variety of the traditional Midland Log House, the cottage has "only a single room-sized square or (rectangular) unit called (a 'pen') with a loft area above used for sleeping...Framed additions and porches" of the Matsell Cottage are also typical, "added to the log house as local sawmills provided nearby sources of cut lumber." The Matsell Cottage apparently represents an example of what is referred to as a second generation type of log house. These continued "The tradition of building with horizontal log walls...in many areas long after cut timber was locally available. Usually a framework of roughly squared and notched logs was constructed to be originally covered with shingles or weatherboard," The cottage also derives significance from its function as an early residence of a pioneer Carmi township farm family who arrived in an early wave of non-Native American settlement of White county that ran from the eighteen-teens through the early 1840s. The cottage continued to serve modest income families until the 1980s with relatively little negative impact to the integrity of its basic original construction.
Survey number: HABS IL-1184
Building/structure dates: ca. 1850 Initial Construction