SEARCH REVEALS NO LOGS; DEMOLITION TO CONINTUE

JACKSON -- Three men poked and pried the walls, but a search at 220 N. Missouri St. Friday didn't turn up any logs.

It's something of a mystery to the family who called the house theirs for more than 60 years, and to their neighborhood friends who used to play there.

For generations, the home's original two rooms were thought to have been a log cabin built during the Civil War.

"My family and everybody in the whole neighborhood thought is was log," said Bill Poe of Jackson.

Poe and three siblings were born and reared in the house purchased by their grandfather in 1910. Their father bought the house a few years later. The house remained in the family until the early 1980s.

Plans to raze the now county-owned house were put on hold just over a week ago when a lifelong friend of the Poe family, Joe Haupt of Jackson told Cape Girardeau County commissioners of the house's perceived history.

Commissioners planned to have the house removed as part of a proposed county jail expansion project.

After receiving Haupt's information, Presiding Commissioner Gerald Jones suggested that if there were a log cabin, it would be removed piece by piece and rebuilt at County Park.

But this week, visions of a real piece of historical lore began to fade.

Friday the vision disappeared.

Haupt, Don McQuay, Cape Girardeau County building and grounds supervisor, and Bruce Watkins, Cape County park superintendent, could find no sign of a log cabin beneath the plaster interior and many-layered exterior.

"We went out and checked thoroughly," Haupt said. "It is not a log house."

"It has the old type balloon framing and boxing with board and batten siding," McQuay said.

"They put the boards upright and left a space in between each board. Over that space they would take another board and nail that over the crack. That kept the weather out," Haupt explained.

Friday's trip was a return to the site for McQuay. His check of the house earlier in the week had revealed no sign of log construction.

"When they told me there were no logs under there, I was the most surprised person in town," Haupt said.

However, Poe and his sister, Mary Smith of Jackson, and likely many friends who were reared in that neighborhood, could be contenders for that description.

The story that the house was built around a log cabin was not only taken for granted among friends and family, it seemed to have been borne out on more than one occasion.

The brother and sister each recalled efforts to drill through the walls.

"My uncle tried to drill in the walls to fish some wires through for a wall plug, but it was just all wood," Poe remembered. The log cabin theory that had been advanced to his family even before they purchased the property prevailed.

Wiring was run beneath the floors.

Poe paid a visit to his former homesite Wednesday and left acknowledging no sign of log construction.

"I guess it's not log; but it sure is unusual construction," he said.

Cape Girardeau County Commissioner Joe Gambill said the county would carry on with plans to demolish the house.

"We're getting some prices on having somebody do it for us," he said.

Removal of the house will clear a path needed for the proposed jail expansion project.

"If we uncover something in the process of tearing it down, then we'll do what we have to do," Gambill said after McQuay's initial finding.

"I am disappointed," Haupt acknowledged Friday. "I would have loved for it to have turned out to be a log cabin.

He was far from alone in those hopes. "Everybody that I talked to were so in favor of it," Haupt said.

"I was certainly appreciative of the county commission and their attitude that it should have been preserved," he said. "It would have been a good project."

Log or not, the legacy of the home will endure.

"That house, Mother made a home of it; everybody was welcome," Smith recalled.

"She always managed to have a good meal for our friends," Smith said. "She was the heart of hospitality."