The Walling Cabin
The Thomas Jefferson Walling log cabin is one of the oldest and most authentic log structures in the State of Texas. A team of archaeologists found the cabin, and using their research, the cabin was restored.
Thomas Jefferson Walling and his wife, Nancy Price Walling, came to Texas from Tennessee in 1836. They first settled near Nacogdoches. Like others coming during the war with Mexico, Walling swore allegiance to Texas, fought in the Cordova Rebellion, and later in conflicts between Anglos and Native Americans over land. Based on his arrival date and family size, the Texas Republic granted him 4,604 acres of land in Rusk County in 1841. He settled on a tract of land in the eastern part of the county where he built the log cabin now located on the grounds of the Depot Museum and History Center.
Walling and his wife had four sons when the cabin was built. Nancy died in 1853, and Walling married Eleanor Hardy in 1854. When he moved west to Hill County in 1859, the family had grown to nine children.
The fireplace was the heat source, kitchen, and primary illumination for the space within the cabin. The loom, spinning wheel, and other spinning paraphernalia were used to make clothing and household linens for the family. Mattresses for the children were stuffed with corn shucks or pine straw and kept under the bed frame when not in use.
The original twenty-by-nineteen-foot structure was constructed using hand-hewn logs with square notched corners. The roof was built with log supports and wood shake shingles.
Over the years, the cabin was expanded with additions, covered with other wood, and changed in several ways. In 1982, after withstanding the tests of time, the original cabin was discovered inside those additions. While constructing a railway right-of-way for Texas Utilities Generating Company (TUGCO), now Luminant, the remains of the outer structure were found in the Oak Hill area of Rusk County, where surface mining for lignite was to occur.
In July 1982, the cabin was declared a National Historic Structure and was placed on the National Register. The following month, TUGCO gave the cabin to the Rusk County Historical Commission (Chair Virginia Knapp). The cabin was dismantled log by log, with each numbered so the cabin could be reconstructed on the grounds of the Depot Museum.
Inside the cabin are items typically found in a period home. Standard kitchen items include cooking pots at the fireplace, a stick broom, a corn shuck mop, toys, and a candle mold. The bed, chamber pot, crib, and other furniture are placed as they may have been when it was used. A spinning wheel and large loom are also on display. The furnishings inside were selected to match the period by using an 1863 probate inventory.