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| With Liam Corry, Assistant Curator of Agriculture, Ulster-American Folk Park, at the Uriah Hupp log house. |
A log house from Greene County, Pennsylvania is a prized building in the Ulster-American Folk Park in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It was built in Clarksville, Greene County, in the 1800s for the Uriah Hupp family. In 1985, it was dismantled and shipped to Ireland under the supervision of antiques expert Peter Chillingworth of Scenery Hill, PA. There it was re-built in the “New World” section of the open-air museum that tells the story of Irish emigration on both sides of the Atlantic.
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| View approaching the Hupp log house. On the right is the Cunningham spring house from Allegheny County, PA. |
In Greene
County today, it is little known or remembered that this piece of local history
is now in Northern Ireland. Even more obscure is knowledge that the American Frontier section of the park is based on Greene County. In 1973, after being named American advisor to
development of the park, Professor Henry Glassie of Indiana University, Bloomington,
IN, led a major field study in Greene County, PA, examining 40 log
buildings. His objective was to learn the technical details of early log
construction to communicate to the Irish craftsmen reconstructing and
replicating buildings in the park.
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| Side view of the Hupp log house with Cunningham spring house on the right. |
Professor Glassie summarized his findings in a
180-page report entitled “Architecture in Log in Southwestern Pennsylvania.” No copy of this report exists in local
archives but one remains in the library at the Folk Park.
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| The Folk Park's replication of a Southwestern Pennsylvania log barn based on Dr. Glassie's research in Greene County. |
With the
goal of seeing the Hupp house and finding the report, my sons and I set out for
Northern Ireland in May. We were able to procure a copy of the report, thanks
to written permission from Professor Glassie and the kind assistance of Folk
Park staff.
Next we
toured the park, beginning in the “Old World” area where we wandered through thatched-roof
houses, past a stone meeting house, schoolhouse, blacksmith’s forge and
weaver’s cottage. Along the way we were greeted by costumed guides demonstrating
traditional crafts and explaining Irish culture.
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| Exploring the historic Ulster village with sons Franz and Tom. |
Arriving at a
village of traditional Ulster storefronts, we followed a cobblestone street to a
full-size replica of an early 19th century sailing ship upon which we
“departed” for America. Reaching the “New World,” we passed through a Baltimore
streetscape on our way to the American frontier, an agrarian landscape dotted with
log buildings and split rail fences. It is in this section that the Hupp Log
House is the star.
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| Interior of the Hupp log house, rebuilt in Ireland in 1999. |
There are
many links in the Folk Park to southwestern Pennsylvania, representing the
large number of Ulster Irish who settled in this part of the American frontier
in the 18th and early 19th centuries. In fact, the park is located on the site of
the original Mellon family homestead where Judge Thomas Mellon was born in 1813.
Five years later, he immigrated with his parents to Westmoreland County, PA,
where he grew up to become the banking and industrial magnate of Pittsburgh. One
of his sons was Andrew Mellon, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from 1921 to 1932.
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| The Mellon ancestral homestead. Photo courtesy of the Ulster-American Folk Park. |
