Sydnor, Patrick Robert, Log Cabin

About this property

Patrick Robert "Parker" Sydnor Log Cabin sits on a historic site located in Clarksville, Virginia. The construction of the cabin suggests that it was built during the antebellum period. A 1+1⁄2-story log building with a gable roof, the cabin consists of one room with a loft above, and a brick and stone chimney. Also found on the northwest side of the property is a wood storage shed, a chicken house, and an outhouse, dating from around 1930. The cabin sits on a low, random-rubble fieldstone foundation, although portions of the foundation have subsided. The first floor walls are constructed of V-notched logs with the chinking between the logs still mostly intact and in fair to good condition, with evidence of repair. There is a plank door entrance to the right and a 6x6 window to the left on the south side of the cabin. To the north or rear side of the cabin, there is also an entrance with a six-panel door. The east end of the cabin contains a 6x6, double-hung sash wood window centrally placed on the first floor, and a 4x4 wood sash window directly overhead in the gable. All the window and door openings are surrounded with simple wooden frames of flat boards without molded profiles that appear to be mid-twentieth-century. The exterior west wall stone chimney is composed of cut blocks and fieldstone (mid-twentieth-century mortar repair) with a brick chimney-stack in American bond. The stack rises from stone shoulders that begin where the log portion of the wall meets the clapboard section at the base of the gable. Within the first-floor room of the cabin, there is a fireplace at the west end. The fireplace has a solid brick mantel and a small brick firebox. At the opposite end of the room, immediately adjacent to the primary, south entrance, there is a dog-leg stair with two steps rising to shallow landing toward the loft. The stair indicates mild repairs but is primarily in its original condition. The first floor interior walls of the cabin show signs of modernization, possibly in the 1960s, but the loft walls are still unfinished. The cabin flooring has also been replaced, dating early to mid-twentieth center. The roof rafters are exposed with broad planks and a metal roof sitting atop. In the gable ends the studs and interior sides of the weatherboard cladding are exposed. Associated with slavery, the American Civil War, and Reconstruction in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, the Sydnor log cabin was a significant "home place" for several generations of African Americans from Reconstruction to the mid-twentieth century. The property was first sold to Lovice "Vicey" Skipwith (1856–1936), a former slave of Prestwould Plantation, from the holdings of the Skipwith family and Prestwould Plantation, in 1888. A purchase of this sort is representative of the histories of African-American families in Mecklenburg County and other parts of Virginia, who established themselves as farmers, after the Civil War, often on the very plantations or land adjacent to the plantations where they were once enslaved. The log cabin that Vicey Skipwith purchased would eventually become a home place to several African-American families in Mecklenburg County's Bluestone District. One such African-American family was that of Patrick Robert "Parker" Sydnor.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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