Harris Family Log Cabin

This log cabin was built in the 1830s and was located four miles east of what would become the town of Jamesport. The Harris family arrived in the region in 1830. Jesse Harris, the head of the family, was the first white man to buy government land in the area. He came to the area with his wife, Mary Elizabeth "Polly" Harris, their children, and one enslaved person. According to the historical marker located next to the cabin, descendants of the family supported efforts to move and reconstruct the historic cabin within this park.

The Harris Family and the Cabin

Jesse Benton Harris was born in 1796 in Kentucky, the son of a young Revolutionary War veteran. In 1830 he came to the Missouri Territory to start a homestead. On this first attempt, he left his wife, Polly Harris née Embry, and children behind in Kentucky with the intention of sending for them when his work was finished. However, in 1832 he left the area for his safety owing to conflicts with area Native Americans who continued to control the area.

Not long after returning to Kentucky, he learned that many of the Native Americans who had controlled the area just years before had been forcibly moved by the American government into the neighboring Kansas Territory. He decided to try again, returning to his half-finished Missouri cabin with his wife, several children, one slave, and multiple other families intending to settle in the surrounding area. One Harris child tragically died on the way to Missouri.

The log cabin has numerous distinctions: site where the first yarn and thread was spun in the township (by Polly from wool, flax, and hemp); site of the first school, in a shed addition with 15 students; site of the first church services, by Baptist minister Rev. Elijah Murrell, and later the first marriage, Elizabeth Harris to Rev. Ben Ashley; site of first birth of a white child, James Porter Harris, the father of Dr. George Dowe Harris, early day Jamesport physician (the last Harris to live in the cabin)

Reprinted from “Treasure the Times,” a tourism publication, Gallatin Publishing Co., 1988

The last Harris family members to live in the cabin were Dr. George Dowe Harris, a physician in Jamesport, and his son James Aurand Harris, a renowned children's playwright. In 1985, descendants of the Harris family, Ray and Herbert Harris, reconstructed the cabin a short distance from Jamesport City Hall. This was done by hand, with each log being removed from the original site and moved to its new home within city limits. The floor and furniture had to be rebuilt, as they had rotted away. The Harrises, with the help of local Amish workmen, took the cabin apart and put it back together "the old fashioned way," using hand tools just as Jesse Harris had done.

Settler Life in the Old Missouri Territory

The lives of settlers like the Harris family were focused on securing food and shelter as well as trade relations for what they could not grow or produce themselves. Their life is best described by this passage from an 1882 book on the history of Daviess County:

Corn was their principal article of food, and the wild game furnished the meat for the family. ... Dressed deer skins served for the men's clothing, and moccasins for their feet. The pioneer's wife did the making, and spun and wove the home-made cotton for herself and daughters. ... An extra quality and color of homespun was the general Sunday meeting dress of the women of that day, and when the men wanted to put on style, they purchased an article of cloth called Kentucky jeans. But the dress of deer skin and a coon skin cap was all the rage in those early days. ... Now and then a cup of coffee, sweetened with honey, the product of a lucky find in the shape of a bee-tree; a juicy venison steak, or a piece of turkey; and corn-bread made of cracked or mashed corn, composed the steady week-day and Sunday diet of the old pioneer. (151-52)

Another passage describes that period's typical log cabin. This would have included the old Harris house:

The pioneer erected his cabin upon his claim and the neighbors came from miles around to help him. They gave him the right hand of fellow-ship and a warm welcome, and the new settler felt at home at once. ... The cabin, with either a [split log] or earthen floor, and chairs and table, was the regulation style. The fire-place took up nearly one end of the cabin, and the chimney was made of sticks and the best Daviess county mud. (152)

The History of Daviess County, Missouri. Kansas City, Missouri. Birdsall & Dean, 1882.Darryl.

Oldest Standing Log Cabin in the Region, Daviess County Historical Society. April 13th, 2004. Accessed October 22nd, 2022. https://daviesscountyhistoricalsociety.com/2004/04/13/oldest-standing-log-cabin-in-the-region/.

Jamesport, Daviess County, Missouri, MoGenWeb. Accessed October 22nd, 2022. https://daviess.mogenweb.org/jamesport.html.

Harris Log House, The Historical Marker Database. August 5th, 2013. Accessed October 22nd, 2022. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=67337.

Green Hills Pioneers, The Green Hills. October 30th, 2020. Accessed October 22nd, 2022. http://thegreenhills.org/pioneers/index.htm.